01/09/2026
Maybe we don’t grieve dogs so deeply because they’re “just dogs.”
Maybe we grieve them because they’re where we felt safest putting our love. 💔🐾
Since losing Barney Gemma Honey & now Pendy, I’ve been thinking a lot about that.
Why does losing a dog sometimes feel so overwhelmingly painful?
And I think, for some of us, our animals become the safest place for an enormous amount of our love to land.
Human relationships can be complicated.
People misunderstand us. They disappoint us. They withdraw. Sometimes the emotional closeness we want simply isn’t there.
Dogs don’t ask us to navigate any of that.
They just think…
“There you are. That’s my person.”
So we pour ourselves into them.
We nurture them. Talk absolute rubbish to them. Rearrange our lives around them. Spend fortunes at the vets. Panic because they’ve looked slightly odd at breakfast.
And apparently it’s perfectly reasonable for them to occupy 80% of the bed while contributing precisely NOTHING towards the mortgage. 😂
But underneath all those silly little things, something incredibly powerful is happening.
We’re attaching.
Thousands of tiny, ordinary moments quietly become a relationship.
And when they die, we don’t just lose a dog.
We lose a presence.
A routine.
Someone to care for.
Someone who was always pleased we came home.
A little heartbeat that had become part of the rhythm of our own life.
I’ve wondered whether I become so deeply attached to my animals because there have been times when I’ve missed that kind of emotional closeness with people.
And maybe there’s some truth in that.
But I’m starting to see it differently.
The depth of our grief isn’t evidence that we loved an animal “too much.”
It’s evidence of how deeply we’re capable of loving.
Maybe dogs simply give some of us somewhere we feel completely safe letting that softer part of ourselves exist.
No judgement.
No wondering where we stand.
No holding back.
Just love.
And if the price of loving them that completely is having your heart broken when they leave…
I’d still choose the love.
Every single time.
Pendy,Barney,Honey&Gemma never just dogs.
Pendy was eight years of tiny moments.
And he was my boy. ❤️🌈🐾
