Death of stranger’s dog reminds me how much dogs mean to us

By David McElroy · July 5, 2018

When I posted this photo of Lucy on social media Wednesday, I just wanted to share my best furry friend. But a stranger who saw the picture saw more than I intended.

“Lucy doesn’t ask for much,” I wrote as the caption. “Most of the time, she’s happy and content if she can just lie quietly in the floor and watch me work.”

This stranger named Alan made a comment on the photo.

“My Lucy would often join us where we were working, too,” he wrote. “Cherish those moments, and don’t forget to give them a pat, and talk to them.”

His use of the past tense was my hint that his Lucy was a beloved dog from his past, but I still didn’t realize what was going on. After I assured him that I talk to Lucy more than I talk to humans, he responded again.

“When my wife was working out of town during the week, Lucy was sometimes the only creature I spoke to for a day or two, when work was slow,” he wrote. “I really miss her. (It’s only been a week and a day.)”

By this point, it was clear how much Alan was hurting. Once I understood that it had been only eight days since his Lucy’s death, I was full of empathy for him. It took my heart back to the way I felt when a dog named Maggie died 10 years ago.

Maggie’s death broke my heart.

“I’m really sorry you lost her,” I said to Alan. “I’ve never cried about the death of any human being, but I cry often when I lose one of my furry friends. They are amazing companions and wedge their way into our hearts in ways that are hard for others to understand.”

Alan could tell that I had experienced the pain he was going through.

“Thanks,” he said. “You really do get it. I wept more for that dog than other humans, too. Perhaps it’s the innocence. Being the one to choose to put her down was very hard. Intellectually, I know it was the right thing to do … the cancer (in her mouth/throat) must have been very uncomfortable for her, but knowing that I chose to end her life is hard. I’d like to think she understood.”

This discussion hit me hard and it took me right back to the last night I had with Maggie. One night, she suddenly wouldn’t get up when it was time to go to her crate. She tried, but she collapsed. I picked her up and took her to an emergency animal clinic late that night.

I spent the night sitting by her side as she laid helplessly in a kennel with an open door. The scans done at the clinic showed that she had fluid where it shouldn’t be. It appeared to be internal bleeding. There were several signs that pointed to cancer. We spent the night pumping her full of fluids and medicine to get her strong enough to go to my own vet the next morning.

I didn’t sleep that night.

As soon as my vet’s clinic opened, I carried Maggie over there, full of hope that he would have a solution. But when he did surgery a few hours later, our worst fears were confirmed. Her organs were full of cancer.

My beautiful little Maggie never woke up from the surgery.

In the coming days, I created and had printed some cards to share with the few people who had known her well enough to care about her death. Here’s what I wrote:

A faithful companion isn’t coming home.

There was once a sweet and beautiful puppy who lived with a young man who wanted to make her into a “mean dog” and teach her to fight. Fate intervened and she came to a better life instead. For 12 years, she was a faithful companion and amazing friend — for all of the people and dogs and cats in her life. She was funny and smart and sweet and brave. Without warning, she fell gravely ill on Feb. 28. She had internal bleeding caused by cancer in several organs. Maggie died a few hours later during surgery. Her absence creates a terrible hole in a family. She is missed and she is loved.

A decade later, my little Maggie is still loved and missed.

Our dogs have ways of getting into our hearts that few other things in this world do. The pain of losing them is awful, but it is made worth it by the wonderful bond of love we share with them during their lives.

Thursday night, I responded one more time to Alan.

“Alan, I think the truth is that the dogs we love know that we love them — and they know we make such terrible decisions only when it’s best for them,” I said. “I’m sorry you were in that position, but I’m completely confident that your Lucy died knowing you love her. You are bearing the pain now of doing what was right for her. I think she would have approved and supported the loving decision you made for her. I’m just sorry it’s so tough now to live without your girl.”

There aren’t that many things which can so readily unite strangers in understanding of the other’s pain, but Alan and I both know what it feels like to lose a furry friend who we dearly love.

I’ll face that pain one day with Lucy. I know it will hurt, but I’m going to spend wonderful years loving her and letting her fill my days with joy and happiness.

It’s a terrible bargain, but I wouldn’t want to live without our dogs.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts