Puppy Love: Reflections on a Good Dog

Wise Readers, 

Our beloved dog Liberty crossed The Bridge yesterday.  And this letter is about love—dog love.  

Some would say it’s “just” dog love. But “just” dog love is remarkably life-affirming.  In experiments, petting dogs lowers stress hormones.  Having a dog lowers blood pressure, enhances our optimism, lifts our sense of well-being, and lengthens our lives.  It can even assist education; since dogs aren’t judgmental, kids who read aloud to dogs often learn to read better, faster.  Some of the research is experimental and thus cause-effect: Petting a dog causes blood pressure to lower and stress hormones to abate.  Some is correlational: People with dogs tend to walk more, enjoy better health, and have longer lives for many reasons.  All of it tells us what we know in our co-evolving DNA.  Dogs are good for us.  

Dog love is special because it is unconditional, constant, and uncomplicated.  Dogs don’t love us if.   They love us, period.  So this letter today is for Liberty.  And if you have been owned by a dog, it’s for you.  

Liberty was probably born in July of 2001, but we don’t know for sure because someone dumped her. They picked our vet’s office. And the vet, knowing how much Vic loves animals in general and golden retrievers in particular, naturally called him right away: I’ve got a pretty little fluffball here for you, needs your home. That was in September, just after 9/11, and it’s how Liberty got her name. 

She used that name to the full. When she ran towards freedom, it was always towards love: towards the school, where we’d get phone calls saying, Your dog is here spread-eagle getting belly rubs, can you please come get her? Or into people’s houses. If your door was open, Liberty ran inside grinning and wagging: I’m here! I love you! I know you love me too! Life is wonderful! YOU are wonderful! Give me a belly rub!

Her nickname was Pig Dog. This might not seem very nice. Maybe it wasn’t. But Lib made grunting noises next to the dinner table. Sometimes she would engage in eager little hops up to where you could see her brown nose just above the table’s edge. It was like having a sinus cavity watch you have dinner. A sinus cavity that always got a payoff, by the way. 

Lib was a good, good dog. She never met a stranger. Heck, she never met anyone she didn’t love. She adored Vic most of all. When anyone but Vic came over, she barked joyfully; when Vic got home, she waited, silent and rapt, for him to enter—tail and ears full-mast, eyes focused on the door— and then fell at his feet, or more accurately, on them. She was the dog they’re talking about in that prayer: God, Please make me the person my dog thinks I am. And Vic came a lot closer than most of us to fulfilling it. They were a team. 

Liberty was a smiling dog. She smiled with her mouth, she smiled with her eyes. She smiled with her whole body and her entire being. Until the days she started looking sad. She looks…depressed, we’d say. And we would linger over that word, depressed, because it was so unlike her. Other days, she was her happy self. As we would learn, that’s because tumors were bleeding intermittently, and on the days they bled, she hurt. Removing her spleen might give her a few more great years, so the vet did. We would know if the cancer returned, because she’d get depressed again. 

Liberty had a few more months as her former self before the tumors returned, this time large enough to cause bleeding whose pain could not be relieved by any means. We were with her when the vet helped her cross The Bridge. It was worth it to put her past all pain, and to see her comforted one more time. But the hole left in our lives is huge.

Now we’re haunted, as anyone who has loved and lost an animal is. Her presence is everywhere: getting just one dog’s food out, taking just one on a walk, laundering just one set of bedding, holding out a dinner plate’s scraps and finding nobody there to take them. Coming home and not seeing her there. 

There will be other dogs, we know. They will not be Liberty. But we will mourn Liberty in her own unique way, and in the meantime, someone else needs a home. Someone who will make her own special way into our hearts. Someone we’ll someday send with a piece of our hearts over The Bridge to meet Liberty and all those who went before.

Love,

Duana

All material copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D., and LoveScience Media, 2013.  If you have a question for Duana, please email her at Duana@lovesciencemedia.com for a confidential and free response.  

Comments

[Chuck]

Duana, so sorry to hear about the loss of Liberty. We are currently owned by three little dogs. Previously by two other dogs and a cat. I don't know what we would do without them; they bring a lot of joy and laughter into our lives.

Chuck