Losing man’s best friend is never easy

If someone showed me a picture of my dog today, I would burst into tears like it’s nobody’s business. It’s not an unusual reaction because I’ve lost a lot of people in my life; I know what grief feels like more than most people. But never had a loss, such as the one I had suffered this past summer, affected me so greatly. On July 22, my shih tzu, Kobe, took his last breath of life.

Kobe had been a part of my life since my parents bought him for my eleventh birthday, five years ago. From the moment he was brought into our home, we knew there was something different about Kobe. A year before Kobe’s death, he had started urinating small amounts of blood, but he got better after his vet prescribed him some medicine.

We should have taken that day as an indication that more complications were to come with Kobe’s health. A couple weeks after his fifth birthday, Kobe began to weaken. In a matter of two days, he had urinated a gallon of blood and my mother immediately took him to the vet. Kobe stayed in the veterinarian’s office for an hour, with an IV plugged into him, before the vet called my parents and told us to come see him because he was knocking on Death’s door.

When my parents walked into the hospital room, Kobe was lying on his side, his skin was yellow, his eyes red and his stomach had purple splotches on it. The vet explained with big scientific terms that Kobe was bleeding from an unidentifiable internal source and that he might have cancer.

My family decided to put Kobe down peacefully so he wouldn’t suffer any more pain. The following weeks after his death were beyond difficult. Kobe was always a silent dog but after his death the silence that filled my house was overwhelming. It was wrong.

Everyone grieves differently. They either try to suppress the memories and the pain by forgetting their lost companions, or they try to bring back the happiness they lost by buying another pet. The grief of losing Kobe was so great that my mother couldn’t last a week without him and immediately searched for another shih tzu. My family dealt with the pain by bringing a new dog, Charlie, into our home.

“I do recommend getting another pet after losing your first one because it really helps you be happy again,” said sophomore Arpi Iskandaryan. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll forget your first pet.” Iskandaryan had also fallen victim to grief when her two parakeets, PJ and Princess, were found dead at the bottom of their cage.

“I cried for three weeks and I still think about them a lot,” she said. A month or two after the death of her parakeets, Iskandaryan bought another bird, Muchik, which has helped heal her and her family tremendously.

However, bringing another pet into the house isn’t always helpful. Sometimes the memories are too traumatic to relive with another pet, just like in sophomore Vana Ter-Hovhannisian’s case. Ter-Hohannisian and her siblings were beyond disturbed when another dog at a park had attacked her seven-year old Maltese, Dingo.

The feral dog had grabbed Dingo with its teeth and shook it until his lungs were pierced and he took his last breath. “My younger sister had seen him get attacked and she was really traumatized,” Ter-Hovhannisian said. “We had to tell my little brother that Dingo had ran away and we all cried for a long time.”

Our pets are so important to us that we even in death we still take care of them. Animal cemeteries, such as the Pet’s Rest Cemetery and Crematory in Colma, California, provide a final resting place for departed pets since as early as 1947. Ninety-nine percent of pet owners decide to cremate their beloved companions and the other one percent bury them, according to the Pet Loss Professionals Alliance (PLPA).

“It’s never easy losing them, especially when you get too attached,” said Teresa Hernandez, Pet’s Rest office manager. “I’ve lost a pet too and it’s really tragic when they die at an early age before their time comes.”

Losing a companion doesn’t just depress you for a while; it can also affect your behavior and your life. Seventy-five percent of people who lose a pet experience difficulties and disruptions in their work and relationships, according to Laurel Lagoni, M.S. Furthermore, studies show that people feel a greater sense of loss when their pet rather than a close family member dies. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the loss of a pet is more profound because by 2014, households have more pets than children and pet owners regard their pets as members of their family.

Studies also show that our attachment to a pet grows to a very special level when we’ve helped them, and vice versa, through a chronic illness or troubled times in general. Kobe had always quietly shied away from other people and animals and tended to be physically weak so my family would be defensive about him and we took special protective care of him.

It becomes hard to carry on through the day when our four-legged friends leave us. The amount of grief someone can feel can be so overwhelming that help and comfort from a hotline or support group would become necessary. The ASPCA Pet Loss Hotline is an example of a support group that helps people through their grieving process. They provide an extensive amount of aid to those who simply cannot cope without their best friend.

All the feelings, behaviors, programs, hotlines and cemeteries are normal for people who are going through such a loss. A pet isn’t just an animal that you have to clean up after, they become much more than that. They become your family, your best friend, your caregiver, and your healer. Pets deserve all the treatments and love that humans get because they are equal, if not more, in their position in our hearts. Kobe was a member of my family and his existence started a new chapter in my life. Though his death was devastating to me, I will keep his memory alive forever.