Literary Icons on the Harrowing Heartbreak of Losing a Pet

Roxy is dead.  Roxy is dead.  Roxy is dead.  It was the day every dog owner dreads: the inevitable day you lose your pet.   

I knew it was coming: her kidneys had been failing since her surgery.  When I first heard the diagnosis, the doctor was vague: “She could live another month or another year.”  I deluded myself into thinking we had more time.  But after 3 days in the hospital, her creatinine levels had barely budged.  When the vet sent us home with Roxy’s medications, she enclosed a hospice packet.  “Everyday with Roxy is a gift.  Appreciate it.”  

In 5 days, she was dead.

I’ve never known more devastating sadness.  The grief was immense: it seemed to fill every nook and cranny of my existence.  I felt a gaping hole in my chest.  I could barely leave my bed.  I bobbed, directionless, on the seas of my depression.  My bed was a raft with no rudder.  Each day seemed meaningless.

My house felt haunted.  Every corner was a cruel reminder that she was no longer there: her empty water bowl, her unoccupied cone collar (a heart-wrenching reminder of the last nightmarish month of medicine and surgeries and sickness), her brown doggy bed next to my desk.  I dreaded waking up every morning to the inescapable fact that my beloved best friend was dead.

The silence was deafening: no more crying to be let up on the coach, no more jingle of her signature pink collar, no more click clack of her dainty nails on the hardwood floors, no more grunts of contentment.

I missed her.  I missed the dignified way she carried herself as though she were an Austrian princess instead of a 17-year-old chihuahua terrier.  I missed her delicate way of crossing her paws as if she were constantly posing for a magazine cover (her enduring elegance is why I nicknamed her Puppy Vogue when we first got her).  Most of all, I missed her expression of inexhaustible excitement whenever I opened the front door. 

I felt lost without her.  In our 12 years together, Roxy and my routines had become intimately intertwined.  When you have dogs, life arranges itself into regular rituals: morning walks, meal times.  Without my canine companion, my calendar was a blank void.

Why is the loss of a four-legged friend so devastating?

Dogs connect us to a more innocent, playful part of ourselves (As Virginia Woolf once wrote, “A dog somehow represents—no I can’t think of the word—the private side of life—the play side.”).  They bring us joy with their silly antics, remind us of life’s simple pleasures when they bark at their own shadow and skip giddily at sound of the word “walk.”

Roxy brought me almost unimaginable delight in the 12 years I had her.  Everything about her was adorable: her impossibly soft fur; her expressive smile; her big, brown eyes; her white eyebrows.  (Does everyone think they have the cutest dog?  Probably but Roxy actually was the cutest dog.)

Roxy was the epitome of a good girl: she never ran away, she almost never barked.  Her and my dog Yogi were Lady and the Tramp: while Yogi was a trouble-making rescue dog, Roxy was the embodiment of sophisticated femininity.  “Elegance!  Glamour!” I’d always coo.  Anyone who met Roxy would comment on how refined she was, more like royalty than a dog.

Yogi was a mischievous mutt: while he’d run away the second our gardener left the gate open, Roxy would obediently remain in the yard.  

Yogi, a spunky black ball of no more than ten pounds, would find the biggest, baddest dog to wrestle with at the dog park; Roxy would stray no more than a few feet from me and didn’t much care for playing with the other dogs. 

Yogi would eat your spaghetti the moment you left your plate unattended; Roxy would just stare at you with her irresistible brown eyes in hopes you’d generously spare a bite. 

One time in the last year of his life, Yogi got into a worrisome amount of chocolate when I was at a birthday party.  Uncertain if Yogi and Roxy had eaten it, I had to get both of their stomaches pumped at the emergency vet.  “Looks like he was the greedy one,” the vet laughed when Yogi was the only one to show signs of eating chocolate.

Yogi was the lovable bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks; Roxy was my darling innocent princess.

Losing a dog can be more excruciating than losing a human.  “I’ve cried more after losing my dog than losing my parents,” many dog owners ashamedly admit. 

How is this possible?  How can we mourn a creature who we only know a small fraction of our lives, an animal who can’t even talk, more than the two people who gave us life?

One reason is our relationship with our pets is gloriously uncomplicated: they love us unconditionally and we love them.

So much of our human relationships is fraught with miscommunications and misunderstandings, rivalry and resentment.  Our dogs don’t pout if we stay out too late with friends or get annoyed if we forget to call them back.  As Caroline Knapp writes, “There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges.”

Animals accept us.  They don’t care if we’re multi-millionaires or unemployed college dropouts.  Their devotion isn’t tied to what we do or what we accomplish.  They love us regardless of the number of zeros in our bank account or our marital status.

Roxy loved me when I couldn’t find a job right out of college, when I had a nervous breakdown, when I was depressed and heartbroken.  She loved me when I struggled and when I succeeded.  From age 23-35, she was my one and only constant.

Roxy was totally devoted to me, though as a fallible human being, I often wondered what I did to deserve it.  She loved me so completely, it was hard to understand: she’d cry if I was gone from the house for more than a few hours (or hysterically if I ever had to leave on vacation); she’d follow me everywhere.  When I’d get out of the shower, I’d always open the bathroom door to find her patiently sitting there.  Animals—distinctly dogs—remind us we’re worth loving. 

“Grief when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be,” Joan Didion incisively observed in her crowning classic The Year of Magical Thinking.  The complexity of grief is compounded when an animal is the object of your grieving.  Unless your closest confidantes are also animal lovers, the death of your pet will often be accompanied by well-meaning advice or outright insensitivity. 

“He was old!  He had a long life!”

“It was her time!”

“Why don’t you just get another dog?” (as if all dogs were exactly the same and not singular creatures with their own singular personalities). 

Grieving a pet is an unrecognized sort of grief.  Most work places don’t allow you to use bereavement hours for a dog’s death and your boss might look at you funny if you insist you need to take time off to care for your sick pet.  If you’re still crying and inconsolable a few weeks after your pet’s passing, family and friends might worry.  Why isn’t she “over” it? (as if you could just “get over” losing your best friend to sickness or a terrible, traumatic accident)

It’s lonely to grieve an adored animal companion.  Isolated on an island of grief, I set out to find a map to lead me back to civilization, to some semblance of normalcy.  I wanted to know I wasn’t alone in my agony.  

What I found was The Book of Pet Love & Loss, a one-of-a-kind comforting compendium of artists, musicians and writers on the miracle of loving a pet and the harrowing heartbreak of losing one.  After author Sara Bader lost her 13 year old cat Snowflake, she was bereft.  Searching for solace, she sought out “small bits of literary nourishment that would provide perspective without required sustained concentration.”  Like me, Bader longed for a guide to grief.  When she couldn’t find the book she was looking for, she wrote it.

After years of rigorous research, Bader realized the intensity of her grief was “personal and specific, but not unique.”  Many, many people had known the same heartache (As poet Mary Oliver once wrote, losing a pet is the “deepest sting”). 

A true labor of love born of tremendous generosity, The Book of Pet Love & Loss complies hundreds of never-before-curated quotes from literary legends’ letters, memoirs, and biographies.  Below are some of my favorites.  Hopefully they can help the road of grief feel a little less lonely.

Patti Smith 

“The oldest, our queen, saw her seventeenth birthday but suffered a terminal affliction that defied devotion.  The gravitational pull of her imminent departure cast a spell on our household…My daughter attended every atmospheric shift, the daily reality of her stoic deterioration.  We awoke through the night to do her bidding.  When she passed quietly in my daughter’s lap we mourned deeply, as fully as for any human being.”

Mary Oliver

“I think they are companions in a way that people aren’t.  They’ll lie next to you when you’re sad.  And they remind us that we’re animals too.”

Anais Nin

“Tavi, my cocker spaniel, lies at the foot of the bed.  He is fourteen years old, the equivalent of eighty years in a man.  He is deaf.  He does not see very well.  He sleeps most of the day.  I once thought we would grow old together.”

Anne Patchett

“She [my dog Rose] was loyal and brave and as smart as a treeful of owls.  By explaining her talents and legions of virtues, though, I would not be making my point, which is that the death of my dog hit me harder than the deaths of many people I have known.”

Donna Tartt

“My dog has a number of acquaintances of his own species—as do I—but it is abundantly clear to both of us that there is little company in all the world which we enjoy so much as each other’s.”

Edith Wharton

“Stanch & faithful little lovers they are, they give a hundred fold every sign of love one ever gives them—& it mitigates the pang of losing them to know how very happy a little affection has made them.”

May Sarton 

“I was not at all prepared for the volcanic eruption of woe when I left the vet’s.  I was crying so much I forgot to pay the bill and had to go back, and all the way home I could hardly see to drive.  I felt cracked in two.”

Eugene O’ Neill

“Blemie’s death was a blow.  I knew I would miss him badly when he went, but I had no idea how badly.”

Truman Capote

“Forgive the silence; but the trip to Munich—as you know—was an ordeal, and to top it all my bulldog, my much beloved Bunky, died while we were there.  I’d had him eight years, and loved [him] more than anything in the world.  It was like losing a child, and I wept till I could weep no more.” 

Raymond Chandler

“I didn’t send any [Christmas cards] this year.  We were a bit broken up over the death of our black Persian cat.  When I say a bit broken up I am being conventional.  For us it was tragedy.”