Anna and Troy’s Weblog

I just wrote the title to this post, and already I am crying.

Yesterday morning, Thursday July 9th, 2009, our sweet happy little puppy died.

It was a tragic freak accident. I had gone to take a shower and left Booda and Max outside to play.  Somehow, Max’s mouth got completely twisted up and stuck in Boo’s collar. I had only left them outside for maybe 20 minutes but by the time I found them, Max had stopped fighting and they were just lying together face to face in the grass. At first I thought that they were just eating something that they shouldn’t be eating (like poop or a branch from one of the trees). The collar was twisted around the bottom of Max’s mouth and one of his bottom canine teeth was caught in one of the collar rings. The whole thing was wrapped so tightly around both of them that I had to cut them apart with pruning sheers, and Max has a pretty nasty abrasion all around the lower part of his mouth. I didn’t realize that Booda was gone until I had gotten them unentwined, but looking back he never moved, and I am sure that he was already gone by the time I got to him.

I think that yesterday was the first time in my life that I have actually been hysterical. Now I feel really bad because when I called Troy at work I was so frantic and upset that he couldn’t understand anything that I was saying. Of course the first thing he thought was that something had happened to Emerson, which is such a horrible thing to do to a parent. Needless to say, Troy immediately came home.

We are all so incredibly devastated.  It has taken me several attempts to even write this post.

I think that people that have never really loved an animal as a member of their family cannot really understand what it is like to lose one, especially in such a stupid and untimely way.

And Booda was such a sweet good dog. Troy and I got him when we were brand new; he was the symbolic and physical start of our family. He was our first baby, and we were so sure that he was going to live to be an old lazy dog. In fact, it NEVER even crossed our minds that he wouldn’t get the chance to be old. We were so sure that we were going to have to have talks about the ridiculousness of spending some ungodly amount of money to get his hip replaced or some other old age dog malady; although, there is no question that we would have paid it.

When I was pregnant with Emerson multiple people warned me to be prepared for my “changed” relationship with my dogs. Once your baby is born, they warned, your dogs will just be dogs, they won’t be your babies anymore.  I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Of course, we had less time to “baby” our dogs, but they were still our babies. When Emerson was born we loved them just as much, we just loved Emerson too.

The thing I find strange about Love in general is that people seem so determined to quantify it. I suppose that is just a general trait of human nature, to quantify or rank things….. But I think that with Love (the kind of love with a capital “L”) it doesn’t really work that way.  Once you fall in Love or surrender yourself to it, it just is. Loving one person or thing can’t make you love another less. It isn’t as if there is a finite amount of Love to be passed around your life. When you REALLY Love someone or something, you just DO, there isn’t an amount attached to the feeling. You may Love differently because the objects of your Love are different, but the ideas of more or less or rank are inconsequential.

Max keeps looking all over for Boo. It is horribly heartbreakingly tragically sad. He sniffs all around the place in the yard where Booda died, and alternates between wandering all over our house and back yard and lying on the couch. Nothing anyone will ever say will ever convince me that our pets don’t have awareness and feelings. People can tell me that I am anthropomorphizing, but in my heart I know that Max is sad, confused, and depressed. I am sure that he is mourning the loss of his brother and friend.

Booda, we are so sad.

We miss you so much.

Our hearts are broken.

We Love You.