"Happiness is a Warm Puppy" Charles M. Shulz

I have been thinking about grief and loss a lot lately.

Recently, some very dear friends of mine lost their most beloved pet. Their dog was sixteen years old so he had been part of their lives for a very long time. More than half their son's life.

When my cat died she was twenty-one. She saw me through the loss of both my parents, some rocky times in my marriage, several moves, weight loss and weight gain, and a couple of surgeries. She wasn't nice to other people but I knew she loved me.

When you own and love a pet, your habits become about that pet. Your sleep patterns, what you do when you get home from work, even the position you lie in bed is adjusted for that furry family member. They end up owning you right back.

When a pet dies, as with any family member, you feel the grief and loss completely. However, we don't get to give our pets the same kind of send-off that humans get.

When a person we love dies, whether it is suddenly or after prolonged illness, we go through stages of grief.

Maybe we plan their funeral, pick out music for a church service, order flowers, call friends and family, call the newspaper, prepare tons of food. People come in and out of your house at all hours. It's almost like the preparations we make for other, more happy events in our lives. Just add grief. It's a busy time and you don't have much time to dwell on the loss. The grief seeps in gradually.

When a pet dies, it is much more solitary. Depending on whether or not the pet dies of natural causes or we make that all too difficult decision to humanely end their suffering, the immediate family gathers, we say goodbye, and we cry and then it's pretty much business as usual. You don't get paid bereavement time. You don't even get the finality of a funeral or church service. Maybe the vet takes care of the whole thing or, after a couple of weeks, you have a container with their remains. Some people choose to take them to a pet cemetery, some choose a sunny spot in their yards, but we are expected to grieve and move on almost immediately.

But, after the first couple of days, when we come home from work or the grocery store, our house seems much more empty than it did before. Our hearts are broken. We are grieving. 

So why risk it?

One of my co-workers and I were having lunch and discussing grieving a pet's loss and she said that was why she doesn't think she would ever get a pet for her children.

I said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

I have been thinking about that ever since. It could easily be said the other way round, "nothing ventured, nothing lost," right?

So why do we put ourselves out there and risk loving a pet? I think it is a valuable lesson to teach all of us about grief and loss but also about unconditional love and joy.

I look back to my first pet, Guy. He was a French Poodle. He was a bit of a misfit, though. As were all of my pets, I think.

He lost part of his ear, he chased cars. But he was a great dog. He was well behaved. Well, except for that time he bit my brother's cheek. In Guy's defense, I believe my brother was forcing the dog to wear his underpants at the time. He had  been clipped by cars a couple of times but he never got seriously hurt. Then, one day, he got hit. My mother was at work and my sister had to deal with the whole thing on her own. Their was a nice, elderly man who lived in our apartment complex and I remember his kindness when my sister came and told us what happened. But I loved that dog and I still remember him and all his quirks. He loved us unconditionally.

Then there was Chip, Chippy. Or as we lovingly called him, Poopie or Poop or Poopie Head. My mother called him Shithead. Come to think of it she called all our dogs Shithead. She had a theory that it was all in how you said it not what  you said. For that reason, I called my cat Fuckface.

Let's face it, many people out there are not pet owners or maybe they don't even like animals or the messes they make. 

I think pet ownership is the great metaphor for life. People break our hearts every day. They break up with us, they never call or write (or text), they do or say hurtful things, they manipulate us. And still we love.

All pets want from us is food and water and shelter and love. Just like children. They are not manipulative or petty. They don't betray us. OK, maybe they chew up our sofa or poop in our shoe or knock that beloved picture frame over and it seems calculated and spiteful. But they are not deliberately malicious. They just want our attention. They grow old. They get sick. They die.

Isn't that life in a nutshell? I learned grief at a fairly early age because Guy got hit by a car. I remember my mother being very gentle with us when it happened and letting me sleep in her bed.

So risking it, risking our hearts this way-adopting that dog, winning that goldfish, rescuing that kitten, has a big pay off. It teaches us how to love and accept love unconditionally. It teaches us responsibility for another living being. It teaches us that, while opening up your heart to all the joy and heartache love can bring, if you don't sow the seeds, you don't reap the harvest. And, yes it teaches us to grieve.

But let's not forget, it also teaches us how to heal.