Unbearable Grief.

I'm writing to you today as Dunkin's mom, Mindy. Yesterday my best friend old dog got extremely sick and went over the rainbow bridge. The grief has been unbearable. No matter how many years I prepared myself for Dunkin to pass, this is soul crushing. Walking into my house today and not having my old man greet me has wrecked me. Waking up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and not stepping over him has wrecked me. It's the small moments, the muscle memory moments that make losing a dog unbearable for a period of time. Bending down to fill his water bowl and it not being there. Looking at our backdoor to see if he's ready to come inside from going potty. Walking upstairs and expecting to hear barking from downstairs due to his protesting I'm on a different level of the house. All those moments add up to a soul crushing grief.

But the thing is, Dunkin was worth this. He's worth sobbing over. He's worth going through an entire box of Kleenex in one day. He was so special and so loved.

In the fall of 2012, my best friend Beagle passed away rather unexpectedly. I was a complete mess. I'm a licensed therapist and know all the skills to work through loss, but nothing prepared me for the loss of my first dog. I was completely obsessed with her. She was such an eccentric dog (she once locked herself in my car- stepped on the key fob that was sitting in the front seat while I ran inside to get something- so she wouldn't have to go to the vet) and people seemed to love the Lucy stories at work. My boss, Trish, who was the Chief Nursing Officer of the hospital at the time, was also a dog lover and noticed I was quite heart broken. At the same time, there was a therapy dog in one of the hospital's Eating Disorder Residential programs who was very much not acting like a therapy dog. He was barking at people, pooping and peeing on resident's beds and luggage. You know. Very non-therapy-dog things. She hoped that putting us together would heal both of us and oh man was she right.

I brought Dunkin home for a "trial" weekend in January of 2013 and never brought him back. I loved him from the moment his neurotic little paws stepped into my house. He became best friends with our other dog, Cohen, and they were besties until the end of Cohen's life. They spent ten glorious years together as brothers. You don't expect to have a decade with a shelter dog adopted at 2 and a failed-therapy-5-year-old-dog. But we did get all that time. They were with us through loss, through all the peaks and valleys of ten years of life.

The first weekend we had Dunkin, we took him on a walk thinking all dogs like walks. Fun fact: not all dogs like walks. Dunkin was afraid of basically everything- light poles casting shadows (including his own shadow), strong breezes, leaves blowing in the wind. Everything around him freaked him out and we learned how to adjust to his needs every day for the last 13 years. Dunkin truly didn't know how to be a dog until his last few years of life. While Cohen was alive, he would somewhat mimic the things Cohen did trying to pretend he knew how to be a dog. Cohen would chase a squirrel up a tree and stand there barking at the tree like a dog. Dunkin would watch Cohen, then start barking at the wrong tree without a squirrel in it because he was trying to pretend he knew how to be a dog. It was adorable and ridiculous. We would throw a ball for Cohen to play fetch, Dunkin would run, get the ball, then drop it somewhere random because he didn't know what to do with the ball when he finally got it. He was a character.

In his old man years, he started to become a dog who did what he wanted. Chicken nuggets in human brothers hands? Sounds yummy. Salami laying on a plate within reach? Awesome! He was so naughty, but it was almost a relief to see him acting like a dog.

I'm going to pause this story for now and keep this blog open for a while. I know I'm not ready to close it down. It's going to take a few more posts to fully memorialize a dog that had so much purpose for so long.

Rest easy, Dunkin. You are loved forever.