‘I thought I was ready for the death of my dog of 14 years – I was so wrong’

I spent years preparing for the day and then found myself utterly unprepared when it came. Without me or my family realising, Teddy, our dog of nearly 14 years had become the soundtrack of our lives for over a decade.

The sound of his paws on the wooden floor and the whimpering for dinner that we could set our watch to had accompanied every special moment; as we navigated marriage, parenthood, birthdays, Christmases and first days of school, Teddy was there through it all. Until he wasn’t. Suddenly, I no longer had to tell the children to close the front door in case Teddy got out because Teddy was gone.

Food dropped on the floor now had to be cleared up by hand, and the sounds that had unknowingly seeped into my everyday consciousness were gone in the space of an hour, replaced by an unsettling quietness that I’m still struggling to come to terms with.

Teddy became mine through default. In 2012, my girlfriend, now wife, got him as a puppy on impulse from an idiotic family who had bought him as a birthday present but had given little thought as to how they would actually care for him.

Everybody told her not to, but there was something about his face and the way his fur felt when she cuddled him like a teddy bear (hence the name) that she ignored logic and them.

Months later, we moved in together, and the rest is history.

He quickly morphed from my girlfriend’s dog to my best mate. I would laugh at the way this usually placid dog would shake his bum like a salsa dancer at the mere mention of the word “park” and how his love for bananas meant he would be roused from a deep sleep by the faint whiff of one being opened in another room.

He was stupid, and he was brilliant.

Over the years, his calm nature made him a permanent resting place for tired toddlers. Looking through my camera roll after he passed, I was shocked by just how many photos were of my boys, Albert and Gabriel, with their heads or feet draped over him. As they got older, the roles reversed, and there were just as many of him sitting on their laps.

Losing a pet is like nothing I have ever been through. I saw people die as a soldier, and I have said goodbye to loved ones who shaped me into the man I am today, but this was different.

According to the Dog’s Trust, 38% of owners were surprised by how deeply grief affected them, while a study in the journal PLOS One found that among those who had lost both a pet and a person close to them, more than one in five said the death of their pet had been the most distressing loss they had experienced.

It feels wrong to compare the death of a grandparent, in my case, my beloved Nana Olivia, to the loss of a dog, but the reality is that, despite my attempts to convince myself it wasn’t the case, the loss of Teddy hit me harder than anything I had ever experienced.

That’s not because I didn’t love my Nana, I did so immeasurably, but she lived hundreds of miles away. I didn’t wake up with her on my feet, I didn’t trip over her every night when I cooked dinner, and she didn’t sit next to me each time I sat on the sofa.

For me and for many others, losing a pet hits so hard because they are always there. Every moment, good, bad or mundane has them in the background. Their smell, their hair and their toys fill up every corner of a house and make it a home, meaning their loss is painful and ever-present.

Psychotherapist Mark Vahrmeyer specialises in helping people overcome bereavement and loss, but found himself navigating it for real last month when his lurcher, Sufi, was put to sleep.

He told the Daily Express: “One of the difficulties with grief is that we often expect it to behave logically, as though the intensity of our pain should correspond to a hierarchy of relationships.

“Psychologically, grief does not work like that. We grieve according to the nature of the attachment and the place that the relationship occupied in our lives.

“For that reason, it is entirely possible to experience the death of a pet as profoundly, or sometimes more profoundly, than the death of a human being.

“A pet may have been beside us every day for ten or fifteen years, accompanying us through changes in relationships, homes, careers and family life. They become woven into the fabric of everyday existence.”

In my experience, more than a loss of presence is the feeling that I have been robbed of a purpose. I’m lucky enough to have children, a wife and a career, meaning I am still busy, but a strand of the things that for so long shaped my days was lost within hours.

My days no longer started with a hungry dog tapping his bowl, and they no longer ended with me letting him into the garden for a wee.

Mark concurred: “The hardest part for me was the abrupt disappearance of a routine that had structured our lives for more than fourteen years.

“Much of attachment to pets is lived through repetition: feeding, walking, touching, talking, noticing and simply sharing space. When the animal dies, hundreds of tiny relational moments disappear at once.

“A pet may be the creature who greeted you every morning, accompanied you on thousands of walks and quietly witnessed a decade or more of your life. Losing them means losing not only someone you love, but a particular version of everyday life.”

The nature of a dog’s lifespan means that the vast majority of people who take a puppy home will one day have to say goodbye.

Over the last few years, I found myself increasingly aware that Teddy’s best days were behind him. I hugged him tighter, I took more photos, and at moments I tried to soak up what his presence felt like as if capturing a photographic memory that might ease the pain that hung ominously on the horizon like a dark cloud.

In this context, the annoyance at the daft things he did was diluted by a knowing feeling that I’d one day miss them. Cleaning him up after he had rolled in something foul or walking into the kitchen to see the bin tipped on its side and the contents all over the floor was still annoying, but I knew that one day, they would become funny anecdotes. That day is now today.

The anticipation of his inevitable death came against the backdrop of a health record that I am convinced kept at least two vets in business over the last decade.

On more than one occasion, I had questioned in my head whether the latest illness or procedure would be his last, and I had, in many ways, begun the process of dealing with the grief before it occurred.

Like a lot of things I have learned over the last few weeks, that is also common and known as anticipatory grief.

Alex Frith never had children. It wasn’t because she couldn’t have them, but rather that life had simply worked out that way, and she reached a point where she decided motherhood was no longer in her future.

As such, her “king” Basil became the recipient of her maternal love, bringing light in the dark times that followed the tragic and sudden passing of her father.

His deteriorating health, which included ever-more frequent seizures, and the loss of her father and other pets, emphasised the fragile nature of life and the inevitable part death plays in it.

“Basil would sleep on the bed and quite often come and sleep next to me,” she said. “Sometimes, if I’d had a rough day or was feeling sad, I would lie there looking at him and suddenly get incredibly upset because I thought, ‘He’s just not going to be here soon.’ It was looming over me all the time.”

In Basil’s final months, Alex nursed him, sleeping on alert next to him as seizures gripped him, much like a new mother would do next to a baby.

She added: “Afterwards, I actually wasn’t as bad as I thought I would be. Then I felt incredibly guilty about that. I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe I didn’t love him enough. Why am I not crying more?’

“But I think I was in shock. And I think I’d grieved him so hard while he was still alive that there was also an element of relief. I didn’t have to go to bed frightened anymore. He wasn’t going through that suffering anymore.”

Diane James works as Head of People Services at Blue Cross and helps people navigate pet loss.

She said: “The most important thing is that people understand what they’re feeling is normal. Everybody is different.

“How somebody deals with the loss, whether they get another pet straight away or much later, is entirely individual. There is no one way to grieve. It is unique to you, but it is normal.

“One of the biggest things we see is guilt. People ask themselves, ‘Did I do the right thing? Did I do it too soon? Did I leave it too late?’ We see an awful lot of people struggling with that guilt.”

There are sayings in the English language which exist for a reason, and none is truer than “a dog is a man’s best friend,” although that saying could be extended to a number of animals.

For me, Teddy was more than my little mate. He was a near constant in my adult life. He taught my children how to love, and in return, he loved us unconditionally. There will be those who think that the words above are hyperbolic, but this piece isn’t really for them. It is for those of you who have made it this far because you saw the pet that you loved like a family member in the experiences of others above.

The obvious question, one that in hindsight I would advise people not to ask in the immediate aftermath, is “Are you going to get another”? It is well-intentioned, of course, the kids left it about two hours before asking, but in the initial days and weeks, the pain is too raw to consider replacing them like a broken-down dishwasher.

Four weeks after his death, I would like to think a dog is in my family’s future. The pain of grief has understandably put my wife off dog ownership forever, but I hope that will change.

Without wanting to sound like a self-help podcast bro, grief is a privilege. How lucky I am to have loved a daft four-legged creature so much that I randomly feel like I’ve been punched in the chest when I’m unexpectedly hit by a memory of him.

Losing Teddy was the hardest thing I have been through, but weighed against the fourteen years of unadulterated love, happiness and stupidity that he brought to my family’s life, I would go through it all again in a heartbeat.