I had the greatest dog in the world. I think it's important that I start this out that way, just because I can, and because it's true. Of course yours is the greatest, too - to you. (Please insert whatever meaningful animal in your life in the "dog" space, and if you don't like them or don't have them, pick something else or pretend. It'll be good for you, I promise.)

My greatest dog in the world died on Friday. I have a gazillion more photos of him, but this is all I've labeled on Flickr.

I wrote this post about him shortly after I got the news. His name was Punkinhead, and he was a 13-year-old Boston Terrier. He waited until I left the country, for another continent even, which was a questionable move on his part, or at least the universe's, but I don't want to ponder that right now. I do know that the day before I left, he became ill. My parents took him to the vet, and before they left, because I thought that he would not come home, I held him in my arms on the living room couch and sobbed into his head for probably half an hour. I mumbled things he couldn't understand except whatever he could recognize in the tone of my voice or in random trigger words after 13 years. He looked at me like, "What in the hell is wrong with you?" He looked at me like that such that I thought maybe this was a false alarm.

He came home that night and still seemed pretty weak but the vet thought it was a drug interaction related to his medication for chronic epilepsy, and made a plan to adjust it. I got on a plane for Vietnam on Thursday morning, for a long-planned group trip for school, facing a 24-hour trip to a part of the world I'd never visited, nervous and without an international cell phone.

The first e-mail I could receive from my mother, 11 hours behind me on Eastern Daylight Time, was that he was better. By Friday night there, not so much. He had one last series of "stroke-like" episodes, and, she said, appeared to go to sleep.

He was peaceful, she said, and he was gone. It hurt, but we had done our best for him and the lives of everyone in our family were better for having him in it for so long.

What this means is that I'm stumbling around in Vietnam, trying to focus on the things I'm doing and mostly succeeding, with a mental and emotional backdrop of the sweetest animal imaginable who has shared my home and my heart for the better part of the past 13 years. It means I was standing on the side of a military memorial today, taking some faux-artsy stupid picture of a macro brick or something, when all of a sudden a little black and white face popped into my head and I started to cry without any means of hiding or stopping it.

This hurts. This is grief. And although it's really weird to be doing it from a distance, I can't imagine being in my house right now. As I write to my mom about taking his stuff to the local humane society (a cool thing to do when you lose a pet that I gently recommend because it really does make you feel good if you can stand it.) from a computer terminal in my hotel, I'm still crying and my heart is sore.

Ileaffy lost her Boston Terrier in January. I could have written this post, except for a few identifying details (Punkin's much-hated t-shirt said "Rockstar" on it.)

And my dog was awesome. She was deaf, clumsy, and didn't understand how to play fetch. She was the most gentle, benevolent soul I ever met. If you rubbed her belly or gave her some food, she loved you unconditionally---even if you happened to be a serial murderer or a child molester. That was just the way she rolled. We had to make her wear sweaters and diapers the last two months of her life and she hated them, which I regret. But I also like to think that she had a good last two weeks of her life, because of Christmas and New Year's, where she got to eat a lot of good food and snuggle in a lot of warm blankets with a lot of people that loved her.

She would be 14 years old in February, which is kind of insane. We got her when I was four. She ate rocks when she was a puppy, an early indicator of her personality. My mother had trouble clipping her toenails because she was scared of the clipper; as a result, as she walked around on the hardwood floors in any house it made the sound of a dog wearing tap shoes.She died in this sweater she had to wear because it was so cold---it said "Cold Paws--Warm Heart."

The sounds she made this morning as she struggled to breathe were the scariest noises I have ever heard. The silence I hear now, as my family is gone, and I am truly alone in my house for the first time in 13 years, is deafening.
I miss her. Rest in peace.

My dog had chronic, idiopathic epilepsy that started when he was about five years old. That official-sounding title basically means he randomly had seizures of "unknown origin," and there was little we could do but manage them with medication. His life was relatively stable otherwise (you know, besides the colitis. And the allergies. Needy little thing, I called him.) There were a few years in the past eight since his diagnosis when he didn't have a single seizure. They started up again more frequently last year, I believe because his brain had adapted to the medicine, plus he was aging, which changes dogs significantly in sometimes short periods of time. And the reality is that time is time and it does what it does, in spite of all efforts to manage the blows. 13 equals what, 91 in dog years? In spite of my desire that he live forever, this is not so shabby.

If you happen to have a dog with epilepsy or seizures related to any cause, I'll tell you what I wish someone had told me several years ago, which is please do not suffer on your own. First and foremost, you need a veterinarian who will listen to you and work with you on a treatment plan. I'll do a future post on that choice, but just make sure not to settle for a practice or a doctor you don't feel comfortable with. In addition, there is a lot of information about canine epilepsy on the Web that helped me tremendously. It's a difficult disease to manage and when it's active it can be emotionally and physically draining if you opt to go full-force with care like we did for our dog. Check out the Canine Epilepsy Network from the University of Missouri School of Veterinary Medicine. The Canine Epilepsy Resource Center is another site I found helpful.

Here are some other things that have helped me a lot during my dog's illness and death:

The support of friends: Some of my friends have and love pets too, and some don't. I'm lucky that my closest friends on either side of that strange dividing line always understood what a good part of my life my dog was, even when he was struggling. And when the worst did happen, those were the people who have generally been present for me. This includes my blog friends who love pets, who have been great enough to leave me comments on the post I wrote about my dog's death very shortly after I learned about it. That's Joanna, Grace, GenieAlisa and Denise. My friend Marit in Ohio, who I met online through her now defunct blog only because she has a very special Boston Terrier, sent me the most supportive e-mail tonight that made me feel entirely understood and supported, 10,000 miles away. (That special guy, Pete, was nominated as a featured pet here last week.)

We need people, people. That's just the way it is.

Candace Schilling writes at Itchmo about losing her cat in last year's pet food recall. She shares a reading list for pet lovers who need advice about health and safety issues and talks about how friends have helped.

Losing a pet teaches us things, too, like who our friends are and how great our vet really is (or, sadly for some, is not). I am so thankful for online resources like Itchmo, Pet Connection, the Pet Food List and more. From insightful articles to equally insightful and spirited comments, these sites were my lifelines during the recall.

And don't forget your dog's friend's too. Our dog was an "only" since my other dog died six years ago, but he did appear to grieve for her. If you have other animals in the house, particularly a pack animal like a dog, they'll feel the loss of a companion too. Here's some cool advice from Kaley at SanSanPups about how to work with a surviving animal. Also good advice here about getting another dog - a move that should generally be handled with care.

First of all, you are grieving and so are your humans. For awhile things will be different, it is grieving and healing. Best your humans are always there to give you the same comfort and assurances to you, just as humans do for other humans. This all will help you and your humans. Try to have fun, play, cuddles and hugs.

The kindness of strangers: A young girl who just met me in January, who is on this trip with me, and incidentally has never had a dog, made me a card with flying angel pumpkins on it (for Punkinhead) and said that if I needed anything to let her know. Another girl who I've known for the same span of time offered me her room to cry in for a while because my roommate was asleep. Really, these were gifts from the heart, and I was so grateful.

A great vet: It's really essential to have a veterinarian who will listen to you, who will answer questions honestly, and who will present you with the best options for your pet. Veterinary care is crazily expensive. In this case you should definitely get what you pay for. It also helps if you know the office staff and they're cool people who won't make you feel like a fool when you call in hysterics either the first or the 20th time your dog has a seizure. It comes with the territory. I spent many minutes apologizing to the receptionists at my vet, but bottom line they knew and obviously cared about my dog, and about me.

On the flip side, there are some other things that don't really help. Thankfully I've had to deal much less with the unhelpful than the helpful, but I think that means I try to surround myself with cool people, a move I highly recommend:

Suggesting euthanasia: This is especially unhelpful if done in a flippant manner or a manner suggesting that the pet owner is cruel or insane for not making that choice. My family chose to put our last dog to sleep because she was in pain that came on quickly and there was nothing to be done for her. I would never allow an animal in my care to suffer with no chance of relief. However, this is one of the most painful choices in life for many who have to make it, and remarks related to that choice are best not made. I'll vouch from recent experience that they are quite difficult to hear. It's a true mind-your-own-business situation unless and until advice is requested.

Advice about when and why to acquire another pet: Bad idea. I know I don't want to talk about it at all and I can't imagine when if ever I'll want to bring another dog into my life. For some people it's the right idea. For many it's not. Regardless, this could just be called the "don't give unsolicited advice" category because that's another good guideline.

Running With Scissors wrote on the Daily Kos about her dog dying late last year. She got another dog shortly after because it was the right thing for her and her other dog. Cool story, and I love the beautiful pictures in the comments.

But I thought I'd brought her out of it and was certain she had once again triumphed against the odds.

I was wrong.

So goodbye, my beautiful girl. You were such a sweet and loving girl. I especially enjoyed you helping me with the weeding, sitting like you would at my side and looking so regal. And I'm grateful I was able to make your last years at least a little fun.

Be kind to your critters, dKossians. They're with us much too short a time.

UPDATE: First of all, I can't believe this made the rec list. But it's such an appropriate honor for such a beautiful girl.

Next, I just returned from the vet's and, if all goes well, a lovely red bone girl will be joining the family this weekend. My lab is desolate - he's never been without a doggie best friend before, and this girl not only needs a home, but seems so far to have exactly the right temperament for my wild and crazy boy.

Demeaning comments about pet ownership in general: I've learned that people - even people you wouldn't imagine would - can say some really unfeeling things based on their own philosophies. So they think it's stupid to love a dog this much. So they think it's just a dog, or a cat, or a hamster or a fish. So their grandparents were farmers and never let their animals inside. I'm not a farmer, I likely think something they think is awesome and essential is stupid, and I love my dogs. I didn't ever and don't now want to hear such things, and neither does anyone who is dealing with the illness or death of a pet. I always point out to people who make even halfway joking comments about attachments to pets that it's useful to look at how much love is there in that relationship that isn't hurting a single soul, and leave it alone.

That's enough of the bad stuff. Like I said, the good far outweighs it.

As I wrote on my blog, I will miss my little guy for my lifetime. I'm still in a surreal geographic and psychological place about it all, and as much as I'll be glad to go home, I'm already sad about who won't be there waiting for me at the door. He was part of my life and my house and my family. I'm not ready to talk about a rainbow bridge or something making me stronger that didn't kill me. I'm mulling over memories of him really carefully in my mind right now, feeling tears that I know are this heavy because I loved him so much. He was everything good and I really do think that the mutual love between a dog and a person is one of the coolest things in the world if you can stand the sad parts.

Whenever I left him, I told him multiple times that he was super nice and I kissed him on the head. I don't know where the phrase came from. Like a lot of pet speak it just evolved and it was just one of our things, like my predilection for calling him Monkeyshines and his for sitting just on the edge of my foot. And that's where I'm leaving it today.

Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites.