#loomyposting

I miss my dog, a lot. I loved him- I still love him, of course, so, so much. I've mostly been crying on and off all day today. I cried when some nice people let me pet their dog at the stationary store, I cried when I got this ask, I cried when I called my Mom, etc., etc. I've always been a crier anyway, and if there's any time to cry, realistically it would be now, but... I don't know.

He'd been around for a long time. 12 and 1/2 years- I was young when we got him. I remember it so vividly- my Mom and I had done a 5k run together, and she took me to look (just look) at some dogs at the local shelter. They didn't have any puppies, though, (and as a tiny child I was set on getting a puppy) so the attendant told us of a litter being shown off at a nearby pet store that doesn't exist anymore. So we went there, and I met him. He was a shy little puppy, and looked up at me with big, precious eyes. There were only two brown puppies- he was a chocolate lab with a teeny bit of terrier- in the litter, but the other chocolate lab wasn't there at the time. So, when the woman fostering them asked if I wanted to take a puppy for a little walk around the pet store, I pointed at him and said "The brown one!" and that was that. My Mom called my Dad from "work" (though he was actually on his lunch at a fast food restaurant) and told him that we were getting a dog (in the end we got two, social animals like dogs are best adopted in pairs, and his sister had charmed my Mom anyway) and that he needed to come sign the paperwork. My Dad is a big animal lover, so he turned right up. We finally brought them home a month or two after that, and he'd been with us ever since.

We changed his sister's name, but his name was left up to me, and I decided to keep it as it was- as Bear. I remember being asked about naming him something like Cocoa or Hershey, but I told my Mom that naming him that would be like calling a kid with a peanut allergy 'Peanut', and choose to keep him as Bear. I called him Bear-Bear, most of the time, or some other affectionate spin on his name.

He was so sweet, and so wonderful. He came out of his shell a bit more as he got older. He was only really cuddly with me, which made me feel so loved and so special. I've always been a night owl, so during summers when I could get away with staying up nearly the entire night, we'd squeeze together on one of our couches that really wasn't wide enough for both of us, but we'd make do. Until the very last time we went downstairs together, he always took the lead. He liked to be first and walk ahead of me, though he'd always turn around to look up at me at least once. We'd walk up the stairs back to my room together, I slowed down for him as he got old, and went back upstairs to what really is my bedroom, but it was more our bedroom than anything. It was the space we both occupied, and gladly shared with one another. I could always look over at him and see him there, with me. The bed he slept in is empty now, never to be filled again.

I haven't really had to live in a world without him, before. I mean, obviously before he was born we didn't have him, but I was quite small back then, yeah? I don't remember a ton from before we had him, really, and certainly not what day-to-day life was like without seeing him, or at least living with the knowledge that even if I was far away from him, he would be there waiting for me whenever I got to come home. I don't really want to live in a world without him. Not in a suicidal sense, mind you, but just... home feels less like home without him, and the world feels that much dimmer and colder for it.

I've known for a long time that his end was coming. I got in the habit of checking for his ribs rising and falling if he was sleeping too still or too quietly. He was an old dog. Just a slight bit past his breed's average lifespan, outliving his sister by a year and a half. He'd been sick for a long time, too. We'd taken him to the vet a few times, though they could never seem to figure out what was wrong. His hearing had gotten worse, he slept most of the day, one of his eyes had cataracts, he had all the bumps and growths that old dogs will usually get. He couldn't always make it outside to go to the bathroom, and my Dad was kind enough to deal with it for months until I got back from university. He and my Mom had agreed it had to be my call, since despite him (and his sister) having been family dogs, he always was and always will be my dog. His health was clearly declining, and he really did sleep most of the time. His quality of life was not good anymore, and I think it would have killed me even more to not have been able to say goodbye, and for him to have died alone.

My whole family was there when he passed. That's unusual. I'm usually in another country entirely, and my Mom and sister live a long distance away. But all of us, even our remarkably healthy 17 year-old cat who has outlived every other pet we've had, were the for him when he closed his eyes for the last time. I was holding onto him, one hand scratching his head and another rested on his back. I felt it when his back stopped rising and falling, when he stopped breathing entirely. I knew the moment he was gone, even before the vet checked and said he was at peace. He was so limp and lifeless when she and my Dad carried him away, it makes me feel sick thinking about it now. I kept his collar, and I've put it with his sister's things.

I miss him. Life is going to go on, and I'm going to have to learn to live without him in the world, but I'm so very sad, and so very scared that someday I'll forget the coarse-soft feeling of his fur. That I'll forget how he'd howl along when I howled at him. How he'd learned to lick my hand to tell me he wanted to be pet. Humans, as cruel as it is, live so much longer than dogs do. I'm going to have to live his lifetime over and over again without seeing him, hearing him, holding him again, and it hurts, so badly and so deeply.

Today, the day after his passing, I found a shiny Electrike in my copy of Pokemon Legends: Z-A. It's probably a bit stupid, but I named it Bear-Bear after I caught it, and I like to think it just might be his way of telling me hello, he loves me, he misses me, and that he's okay on the other side, or whatever happens after death, if anything. It's comforting thought.