Last night, Sylvia, our dog of 13 years, died. She was probably 15–maybe even older. The animal shelter we got her from definitely lied about her age, but for noble reasons. They had her on the euthanasia list and, the day she was scheduled to be put down, I found her on Facebook. Immediately, I messaged and said, “I’ll take her!”
“A second dog?” My husband looked at me, unamused.
I had not consulted him.
(Ironically, Sylvia would become his best friend, a constant companion. I was the spare parent in this case.)
Sylvia was insatiably curious and willful, in the best ways possible. When she wanted something, her ears would be in a very specific, alert position. Her brown eyes were always bright and attentive, in case food might be on the offing. (My father in law loved to feed her cheez-its which she loved to eat. I’m pretty sure she could identify the box.) She was quite forceful: if she wanted on the couch, she used her paws to hit your leg. When Sylvia played, her paws would smack the ground and propel her forward. It was so cute.
One of my favorite memories of her is at my grandmother’s in Northern Michigan. Most of the time we were there, she was snarling and snapping at hummingbirds. But on an afternoon walk around the property, Sylvia stilled. Her ears were akimbo. Then she was off! She quite literally bounced through the forest, narrowly missing her quarry, a partridge. Remy sat by confused at what Sylvia was doing. She came back, visibly annoyed that there was no partridge in her jaws…
December of 2023, our other dog of 12 years, Remy, passed away after a blood cancer became incredibly aggressive. He was quieter and less pushy than his sister; to be fair, he had not ever had to live on the streets. If Sylvia was attached to mountain man (my husband), Remy was more dog. He would protect me if mountain man tried to hug me. He would curl up in my lap, a holdover from his puppyhood. And he was always so excited to see me, even if I wasn’t in a good mood. His death was so sudden and happened while I was living 3,000 miles. So I didn’t have the sense of closure that I have with Sylvia. I sometimes come home and expect him to come up to me. His absence sometimes blindsides me when I remember summer days in South Carolina walking around our old city together.
So here I am, 32, with no dogs. I feel like something is missing because it is.
I’ve been trawling reddit recently to cope with the news and given the economy, I have seen far too many people disparaging people who have pets, saying they cost too much. They’ll even say that poor people especially shouldn’t have pets because it’s a bad “financial decision.” This is middle-class bullshit (they also say that you shouldn’t have kids unless you can afford them). It denies the warmth, love, and comfort animals give us, especially in a culture where people are increasingly aggressive, unloving, and distant. And, relatively speaking, animals are less expensive than many things people think are essential–such as a car.
My family, no matter their financial situation, has always had animals and often multiple at a time. I think I come from people who are more comfortable with animals than with people. The communication is more straightforward and an animal doesn’t really make any moral or social judgments about you. (Unless you’re taking too long to feed them, of course.) So having two dogs was sort of…normal. Even though we got the dogs when we were broke college students. We’re still broke. Just not college students.
My partner bought me a book many years ago that Mark Doty wrote about his dogs and I remember being so moved that he had written an entire memoir about his nonhuman companion. Now, as I sit here with Sylvia as we wait for a crematorium to open, I have a hunger for more of these stories to talk about what animals mean in our lives. They are central rather than extraneous.
(In the hall, a neighbor walks their dog. I can hear the clicking of puppy nails on vinyl.)
I struggle with sound sensitivity so there are aspects of having pets that are difficult for me. But for many years, I acted as if my dogs were in the way of my writing, my thinking, etc. without really understanding that they made my daily mental health possible. They gave me a reason to get up in the morning. They made sure I went walking. They demonstrated a way of living that I couldn’t quite grasp because I was so snowed by achievement/burn-out society. My dogs were really central to my life and how I organized it. While many people thought it was strange to “tie myself down,” I realize I really was tying myself down to the earth. They grounded me. Reminded me who I was: an animal in need of love and play and sunshine and cuddles on the couch.
Both the dogs went from the East coast of the US to the west, then back to the East coast, then up to Montana. They made friends quite literally all over the country. Now I just think of how lucky I have been to know them, to have them in my life, to benefit from their love and affection.
I miss them terribly.
Kaelie Giffel 