Love and laughter
A March 2008 photo of Maxwell, a sweet friend who died unexpectedly this year.
“Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.”
― John Grogan
One year ago today we celebrated the 16th birthday of our Schipperke, Pasha. Though we hoped it would not be his last, we knew it might be. We did not know he would leave us only two months later after a mercifully quick decline. We also had no way of knowing how many of our friends and loved ones would be sharing our grief through the loss of their own dogs during the twelve months to come.
Marlee, Salty, Austin, Maxwell, Molly, and probably others I am forgetting to name — each leave their unique paw prints on the lives and hearts of their families and friends.
As Grogan attests, our dogs bring us closer to other people. We have experienced bittersweet memories of Pasha over the past year as each milestone passes for the first time without him. Our animal-loving friends understand, and knowing that they do, we feel a bond with them that goes beyond the words of consolation we speak to each other.
Such short lives, for them, and for us too. Let’s honor their memory by spreading love and laughter to others, as they did for us.
One year ago today:
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: comfort, death, dogs, fond memories, friends, life, love, loyalty, saying goodbye to pets
Defeat Despair 
Such a cute picture! I copied down the quote from John Grogan to use if one of our friends have a pet that passes away. Then I clicked on John’s name and found his blog, plus discovered he wrote Marley and Me. John has a new puppy, Louie the Labrador — well worth reading about the joy this puppy is bringing. Something is really wrong with your blog website this morning. I can only see the top half of the letters I’m typing.
SS
Judy, sorry to hear there were website problems when you posted this. Have they resolved since? In recent years, WordPress has done a lot of tinkering around, changing things that weren’t broken for reasons I can only guess at. But since I pay to keep this site going (to avoid having it junked up with ads) I feel frustrated that they seem to be messing it up. Several times I’ve gotten so frustrated with them that I’ve considered discontinuing the blog. The comments, for instance, were recently changed so as to be much harder to navigate/reply/moderate but I noticed lately they’ve gone back to the old way. Thanks for posting your comment despite the difficulties. I hope this is not happening to everyone else as well, but I would not be surprised if it was. Sending warm thoughts to you all!