My condolences, brother.
My worst nightmare was losing our pug, Ozzy. One night, while my wife was 1400 miles away with family, that nightmare came true and we lost him due to nonstop seizing that $5000 worth of anti-seizure injections didn’t even touch. Aside from dealing with the loss of Oz, not being there for him and my wife took a really big toll on me, circumstances be damned.
I can tell ya what helped us tremendously though…..and some good puppers!!!
We knew it was going to be a while before we got another dog, but we REALLY love dogs, like, a LOT. There’s a no-kill shelter a few miles away and we found out they’re always looking for volunteers to walk the dogs, since they don’t have the manpower. So every Tuesday evening we’ll go over and take 6-10 dogs for a walk over the course of a couple hours.
This ultimately healed us so much faster than we were expecting. A lot of these dogs lead full, happy lives until one day an owner decides they can’t care for them and the shelter they go, confused and scared. Sometimes they don’t get out of those cages for longer than an hour a day, so after a week of that, having a friendly human come up and spend some time with them really helps their spirits while their waiting for adoption.
And you just might end up walking someone you make a bond with and decide he has to go home with ya! That’s how we came across Griffin, who was surrendered after his owner had him and two other dogs living in a car for months. The owner lost his job and was doing all he could to keep his dogs, he lost his wife and children as a result of everything and they were all he had. Eventually, he couldn’t feed them and when they were obviously getting malnourished, he turned them in. The younger ones were adopted immediately, but Griffin was an old man, 13 or 14 years old with CRAZY anxiety issues and chronic arthritis.
No one even gave him a second look and my wife and I didn’t even need to talk about it. We found out his brothers were adopted and he came home with us that night. There was no way were going to let that beautiful dog die alone in there. We were told he had about two months due to his health. We put him on an awesome diet and CBD, within 2 weeks he was running laps in our backyard and stayed with us for 3 more years. We just said goodbye a few months back after he developed cancer in his nose and it was just going to be too much for him to handle. It was time for him to move on and knowing that we gave him the best life he could possibly have is one of the more rewarding acts I’ve ever done in my life.
We decided we’re going to continue taking in senior dogs. While we wish we had room for ALL the dogs, we have to be reasonable. We have a deal worked out with the shelter; they’ll provide us with any medical assistance they can (everything but surgeries) as long as we can keep taking in these old guys. We’ll generally make a $20 donation whenever we walk the dogs and when they’d give us Griff’s meds, we’d give them $50 because we know it’s costing them money they don’t have.
I was so scared to even see another dog after we lost Oz that when I finally did see one, I didn’t want to approach him. Something kept telling me to do it though and I found myself wandering in their direction to ask the owner if I could pet him before I even thought about it. That was about 3-4 days after losing Oz and the second I touched that other dog I immediately remembered why I loved Oz so much, why dogs were awesome and how much we don’t deserve them.
