United in Grief: Our Intense Love of Dogs Brings Us Together Online

Losing a dog to the inevitable Rainbow Bridge is hard enough. Losing a young and assumed to be healthy dog to a very sudden and unexpected passing on what was an otherwise normal day, is jarring at best but truly closer to soul crushing. Only other dedicated dog parents know the depth of the grief that grips us when we suffer such a loss, even when that loss is expected, such as with old age or illness. I have written about the beautiful support that the internet has previously provided when I lost my beloved Siri. Siri’s passing was of the expected variety and simply a matter when. After all, her health had been failing and she was nearly 14 years old. For a very large dog, that’s epic. Expected doesn’t equal welcome though and grief is still huge when the love is so great, as it always is. You can read about that experience here.

I am no stranger to having my dogs pass away but until now, it’s always been of age/illness related complications. Only my first dog, a Pekingese Chihuahua mix named Samantha passed away suddenly, but shortly after an operation to biopsy her liver. She was 12 years old though and had already lived a long happy life. That fact didn’t change my trauma over losing her so suddenly and without my presence, but it’s somewhat easier to console yourself when you have been honored to share so many years with a dog and there has been a preceding illness.

On Valentine’s Day of 2022, my dog Kenzo and I suffered the very sudden loss of my/our beautiful Chow Chow Mela. It is thought that she had a stroke/aneurysm or heart attack, as she woke up very suddenly from a nap, nearby me where I was working on my computer, and made the most unearthly cry. I immediately rushed the 3 or 4 feet to her to comfort her from what I thought was a bad dream, but she arched her back and passed away in my arms, on my kitchen floor. It was a moment that will forever replay in my mind. I cannot think of this without scrunching up my face into the beginning of an incredibly ugly cry. Maybe someday but not now, not soon, with the feelings so very raw. When I got home from the vets, where I immediately rushed her to, hoping to revive her, I couldn’t say anything more on my own timeline, other than that Mela had very suddenly passed away. I was in shock.  I shut off my electronics and huddled with Kenzo, who had been present and mere feet away and “knew” what happened. I think he thought that I would come back with Mela all good from the vets and that didn’t happen. We were both so incredibly sad. I barely remember that evening now. Just the incredible pain that I think that we both felt, amidst the shock.

While I was screaming “no” at the universe, before heading to the vets, he hurried into the living room, clearly scared of what was going on. I carried her to my vehicle and then reassured him that I would be back and drove like a fiend there, knowing already that it was too late. My vet’s staff was wonderful and rushed out immediately, as I had already called them. But she was gone. We will be mourning for quite some time. I will tell the story to honor her life, which was so very important.  I am still trying to find all of the right words to show how very important her life was for her story. But this story is about what happened immediately after our devastating loss.

The next morning after this crushing loss, after not even being able to keep coffee down and less than an hour of nothing that I would be so generous as to call sleep, first making sure that Kenzo was fed, I wrote this post on Dogspotting Society (written first on my own timeline/Instagram and Facebook business page, also widely supported), but then edited for public viewing for the Dogspotting Society Group on Facebook.

A wondrous and beautiful thing then happened that went a long way towards helping me cope and far surpassing my wildest expectations of support. My goal at the time was badly needing and wanting to share my love for Mela and my intense trauma and have people know how very important Mela’s life was. But it became so much more. The rush of love that I received both in the DSS group and on my own timeline and business page, was something I will cherish forever. With the DSS post, there were over 12,000 reactions, more than 2500 comments, nearly 60 shares, and nearly all of those comments, etc. supportive and helpful. Villa Stokroos send me a lovely video to help me cope, featured here below.

Tammy Dolby Tobac created these two lovely graphics above for me.

Erin Nicole reminded me that Chow Chows overwhelmingly enjoy being a bit (if not more than a bit) contrary, snippet here

(all used with permission). I also got 3 new Facebook friends from this sharing of love and support and that means a lot to me. All of this  was more helpful to my state of mind than I can ever possibly express. Having so many people cry and feel my loss with me was very cathartic. I also want to state to anyone reading this post, that if you commented on my DSS post and I did not react, then it was only Facebook algorithms that did not allow me to see them all. I tried to keep up but there were so many and Facebook did not allow me to click all the way back. But please know how much ALL of your support meant to me. You are all wonderful to take time out of your day to help someone cope.

I don’t want to minimize the support from those I know, both in real life and on the internet, on my own timelines, business page, and Instagram feed. That support was also badly needed and greatly appreciated. I received hundreds of words of comfort, as well as cards and even a beautiful floral bouquet delivery that is still alive 4 weeks later, honoring my beautiful Mela. But I wasn’t as surprised about that support as I was by the support of perfect strangers who held space for my pain. You are ALL appreciated.

I was terribly sad and surprised to learn that far too large a quantity of dog parents have experienced a loss nearly exactly as I described. I would never wish this experience on anyone who loves a dog, let alone the sheer quantity of people who have had this same heartbreak. I don’t know if there is anything that can change this in the future, but I sure hope that I have already had my share of this experience, so that I never get to be a repeat member of this tragic club.

The internet can be an amazing thing. I am 100% sure that if we had been discussing any other topic, dog related or otherwise, from the controversial to the benign, arguments would have been far more abundant than agreements. But everyone who chose to participate in my post, shares one very big trait: they love their dogs fiercely, so they understand how much it hurts to lose them. We all want forever with our dogs. This is something that brings us all together.

Thankfully, only a very small handful of people chose to be pedantic instead of supportive: three corrected my medical knowledge and three more “diagnosed” my dog’s reason for passing and two shares, (probably the same person, I hope) painted me as the bad guy because I admitted in my post that got frustrated with my sometimes challenging dog that day. I am human and believe me, I will carry that burden forever. But all the same, I know in my heart that Mela and I had a wonderful relationship, and I can assure anyone that Mela likely got frustrated with me far more frequently than I was ever frustrated with her. She had rules and I “violated” her rules probably as much as she tested my parental boundaries. I console myself with the fact that my beautiful little warrior loved nothing more than a good battle. She would have been at home in a context of guarding the castle walls and relished every attempt to breach such. I want to think of her doing just that and waiting until the moment that we will meet again. I miss her so.

Until that day (and beyond), I will cherish forever, how very much Mela was the reason that more than 12,000 people came together for her memory. We need more of that kind of internet. Dogs truly do have the capacity to create more bonds than conflicts. We need those bonds. Please be kind when possible, to those with whom you engage with on the internet. You never truly know what they are going through. And you never know what kind of an effect you will have on them. I am grateful for those who chose to share my grief with their love and kindness. Thank you and I will pay it forward. You are forever in my heart with gratitude.