Crossing the Rainbow Bridge: Saying Goodbye to Some Good Boys and Girls (Pt. 2)
The Dirt Nap Universe offers remembrances of their now-departed pets.
Ed. Note: You may have expected me to write something about grief and the 2024 presidential election and I still may, but not today. I offer only this: we got what we asked for and what we deserve.
Two weeks ago, my main man
gave us his story of Zoey, his dog that passed a few years ago. I also offered a few words about my childhood dog, Nikki, who left us about 20 years back.This week’s Dirt Nap features stories from my friends in remembrance of their good boys (and girls). In the interest of space, I’ll have a third edition coming up. If you’re moved to share a story of your own, I’ll run more of your stories. Send it to me with a photo of them at jaredpaventi@gmail.com.
Scott Merritt
We lost Shadow in March 2024 and we haven’t been the same since. When we come home from work, from shopping, or even just from a trip to the mailbox, the house immediately fills with a deafening silence that bounces endlessly off the walls. No matter how many people are here, it’s still empty. Shadow wasn’t just part of the scenery, she was a fully patched-in member of this family.
I never imagined that losing a pet would be so profoundly soul crushing. We knew the eventual loss of this adorable puppy — our Schnoodle — was an inextricable part of the deal when we agreed to adopt her. But nobody ever thinks about the end, do they? It would make pet adoption impossible. But the end does come, and if you’re lucky it comes after 12 or so years. We got lucky; Shadow was with us for 17 years. It still wasn’t enough.
But it was her time. And making the decision is brutal. In all honesty, we hoped we’d wake up one morning and find that she’d passed in her sleep. That would remove us from the decision making process and give us a sliver of peace in an otherwise horrible situation. After all, why do I get to decide when a living being dies, and how will I know that I’m not making the decision prematurely? We’ve all heard the refrain a million times: you’ll know. But we didn’t know. We kept watching her health decline, knowing the end was coming, but it seemed impossible to imagine we’d have the kind of epiphany that would permit us to end the life of the cutest member of our family. And suddenly one Sunday morning, as if someone flipped a switch, we knew. All four of us, collectively. We hated having to make the decision, but we’ll never regret having made it. It was the only humane thing to do. It was time. I was tasked with making the call to the service that comes to the house. Yada, yada, yada…
I cried. Hard. Sloppy. Endlessly. We all did. And we still do, this many months later. I had to excuse myself from more than one Zoom call with clients and coworkers, just because I was suddenly overcome with emotion. I’ve got that in check now, but I’d be lying if I said I still don’t miss her every single day.
Dealing with her loss has been a battle, but a creative one. We did the stuff everyone does: we got her paw prints in clay, kept some clippings of her fur, and got an urn with her ashes in it. But I needed to do more to ensure Shadow’s memory would live on for us. My wife, Debbie, is kind of famous for making up jingles she sings to pets. It’s a weird thing, and the jingles would be silly if anyone else heard them, but Shadow had a theme song. Because anything worth doing is worth overdoing, I went to work.
I covertly recorded myself singing the song into my iPhone and I hired a jingle company to record it, professional singer, musicians, recording studio, the works. Then I bought a stuffed dog on Amazon that looked a lot like Shadow, along with a sound box with a button on a wire. I uploaded the song into the sound box and brought it to a tailor to install it into the stuffed animal. I now had a custom Build-a-Bear-style Shadow with her song embedded. I surprised Debbie with it. It wasn’t cheap, but it needed to be done. It kept me occupied, it kept Shadow front-and-center, and now she continues bringing joy to our family.
A few nights after we said goodbye, Debbie and I were standing in our bedroom openly weeping and I said, “If I ever bring up the idea of adopting another pet, remind me of this moment.”
That’s how I felt then. And I still kind of feel that way, but time does have a strange way of healing all wounds. I realize that there are few, if any, things in life that bring the kind of long-term joy that a pet brings. It just sucks that it’s always punctuated with a loss that’s almost too much to bear. Almost.
Bill Schewe
Heartbreak is a strange thing. It is a two-headed monster that can deliver painful firsts and lasts. The first big break up you have, the first time you lose a loved one, the first time you sleep alone after you lose your partner. The last time you are called granddaughter/grandson, the last time you are called a son or daughter, the last time someone tells you they love you.
People take all kinds of paths to deal with these events, and hope to heal and possibly move on from them. Some of these paths can be healthy; some not so much. Many people find catharsis is the comfort of their pets. Unless one of those firsts or lasts, involves your pets. The first time you lose a pet, the last time you walk your dog(s).
Great Danes are known as the heartbreak breed. They have short lifespans compared to other dog breeds. But as a kid, it was the first dog breed I fell in love with, so it was the first family dog my wife and I got. From the first time Fritz popped his head out of a pile of puppies, I just knew he was our guy. He was perfect: beautiful blue merle coat, Carolina blue puppy eyes and massive paws. He was a huge puppy. Both his parents were wonderful dogs — huge, friendly, and well-behaved. Fritz was the best of them, so much so that when he turned three he had a lovely weekend with a lady Dane and, well, mother nature took its course and Fritz was a proud papa. We brought one of his daughters home. Minka was now part of the family.
We had three wonderful years with both Minka and Fritz. Minka was the Tigger to Fritz’s Atticus Finch. She was the constant ball of energy, and her dad was the stoic, doting father. They were the perfect family dogs, great with the kids, awesome in public and on walks, and just fun to be around. Minka was tiny for a Dane; we used to joke she was a teacup Dane. She was sleek, fast and could run for days. But, when she was three, she was not gaining weight like I thought she would. I chalked it up to her being so high energy, until she started to look too thin. That's when the dam broke. She started to lose weight rapidly and she got a nose bleed. Dogs don’t get nose bleeds, it’s a major red flag so off to the vet we went. She had a rare form of blood cancer. A death sentence. All this happened in about a month. Once we got the diagnosis, we had no choice but to put her down. The decision was made on a Friday, so we spent our last weekend spoiling her in every way possible. I have lost pets before, all to old age where they had passed in their sleep. Knowing every minute that weekend we spent with her were her last was…was a kind of awful that I would not wish on anyone. That Monday she was gone, we had lost a family member. Fritz lost his daughter. I don’t think dogs should see their kids go before them either. Maybe that's too anthropomorphic, maybe not.
Fritz whined at the door when she didn’t come back, and was very clingy for a few days after she was gone. Maybe he knew. Or, maybe dogs just have that innate ability to move on out of an ancient survival instinct. Maybe mourning is for creatures that are not afraid of being next. The latter was not the case for my boy. I would love to say this is the part of the story where the sadness ends, but it is not.
Three months later I was on the road when my wife sent me a picture of Fritz's lower left leg. It had a bump on it, like a really big bug bite. She thought maybe he had been stung by something. I got home the next day and it had not gotten any smaller. In a week, no change for the better or worse. No change in his behavior, eating fine, no issues on walks, or changes in his day to day operations. But the bump is not going anywhere. My wife and I were not saying it out loud, but we both knew one of the major killers of Danes is bone cancer. We just didn’t want to believe that this was happening again, that cancer could possibly be taking to another one of our dogs so soon.
Osteosarcoma. That was what the vet told us when we brought him in. It was that cold empty feeling, like when you can’t cry anymore and just want to burn your emotions away and go numb. The tumor would just get bigger, breaking his leg as it grew. The cancer, we were told, would spread to other parts of his body, most likely his lungs first. Amputation of the leg was an option, but not a guarantee it would help anything. At that time Fritz was 170 pounds. He was a big boy; not fat, just big. I could not imagine him losing his front leg, with no guarantee it would do anything to improve his condition. Fritz lived for two more months before we had to put him down. He could really walk anymore and was struggling to get up.
You tell yourself it's the right thing to do, until you're holding them as the pink poison runs through them and this gentle giant lurches to the floor, big tongue that gave your kids so many kisses hanging out. Then that's it, you're sitting there on the floor of the vet's office sobbing, and the only right thing feels like beating your fists against your chest, but all you can choke out is “I’m so sorry buddy…I love you.” The only thing that was emptier than the leash when we left was me.
Fritz was a special dog. He had something I could search for in a million other dogs and never find again. He looked at you and you could tell that he had such a deep love for you, and that he would do anything to keep you safe. He loved his people and it was clear as day that he did. Whether it be him letting my daughter lay on him while she watched her morning cartoons, or letting my son sit on his back like he was a pony and walk him around the house, you could tell he did it because he loved us. He had this sound he would make when you rubbed his stomach like a motorcycle engine and it would make everyone laugh, and he had this look like he was sad anytime one of us was hurt or upset.
Bill’s daughter Ava, now a senior in high school, added the following:
I was a little girl when we got Fritz, so my memory of when he was a puppy is very foggy. All I really remember is him walking around with tampons holding up his ears and trying to eat everything off the counters. As he got older, he absolutely still did eat everything he could reach, which was most things. However I don't think I could have asked for a better dog to grow up next to. Not in the he was my-partner-in-crime-way because that was always Minka, but in a dad way for a lack of better terms. I would sit next to him and read my books to practice my reading. If i was ever upset over something, I would go lay my head on his chest and cry and he would let me until I was better. He put up with all my stupid make-believe adventures on walks, and most importantly he did all of that up until he couldn’t anymore.
Losing him was the hardest thing I have ever had to go through. He died from cancer, so it wasn’t quick and easy, which may have been the worst part of it all. I had to watch something that in my memory of my childhood was all I've ever knew fade away day by day. The day he passed I didn’t give him his daily good-boys and hug goodbye, which I was immediately sad about when I got on the bus. I never realized how deeply I would regret that moment. The second my parents walked into our grandparents house to get me and my brother after school, I knew Fritz was gone. I have never seen my dad — the strongest1 and most admirable man in my life — shed so much as one tear and I didn’t think it was possible, but he walked in crying and I felt my heart shattered inside of me. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of me, but the second I heard the words in confirmation to what I was thinking I broke down. I remember being so angry.
We’ll have more stories of pet grief next week.
Final Thoughts on Finality
“The walk is the basic unit of the human-and-dog commerce of unconditional love. We take care of George and George takes care of us. No matter how awful the day, or how awful I am behaving at any given moment, George doesn’t care. He finds me smoldering in my chair and dashes to my lap. Every dog is a rescue dog.”
— John Dickerson for The Atlantic
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
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At 6-6, Bill was always the most physically imposing person I knew growing up.
All of these dogs were first ballot, unanimous Hall of Fame Good Boys and Girls. I'm sorry for all of your losses, but thank you for sharing your stories.