The anticipatory grief of losing a pet

I want the impossible: to talk about my grief and also to not talk about any of it at all

I’m watching my dog die.

You wouldn’t know it to look in on us, though. Then again, I guess don’t know what I think looking after a terminally-ill pet should look like.

After adjusting her medication into a cocktail that’s freed her from pain but not zonked her out, she’s doing well. I’m relieved to see her shuffling about, nudging her snout into my arm, trying to get to my dinner. I give her a green bean off my plate and watch her greedily snap it up. She’s alert, sassy and only wants cuddles when it suits her. She’s my usual Dolly.

Muddled in with the all-consuming sadness are other, more shameful emotions. When the well-meaning texts asking how she’s doing come in, I’m glad to be able to reply that she’s quite good at the moment, but also feel a twinge of guilt for having made them worry about it. Then I feel bad about myself for thinking like that.

I just feel so awkward in my grief. I’m either sobbing, on the verge of tears or puffy from so much crying. I never realised how many TV storylines involve dogs. Did they always play sad music in Tescos or am I just tuning into a melancholy that was always there but I just never noticed before? 

I want people to know what’s going on because it feels dishonest to not explain why I’m not myself. But every time I go to tell someone, I brace myself. Not everyone is a pet person and I feel embarrassed at the thought of them not getting why I feel so awful.

No one has said anything unkind – quite the contrary – but the conversation moves quickly on to the minutiae of their own lives. I know it’s not their fault, because I want the impossible: to talk about Dolly and my grief and also to not talk about any of it at all. I saw a comic once about what it’s like to socialise while grieving, in the box on the left-hand side a cartoon woman has a thought bubble above her head: “What if someone asks me about it?”, and then the mirror image on the right-hand side: “What if no one asks me about it?”  

I took this picture last week. I spend most of my time on the sofa with her

Bizarrely, I feel most comfortable in the vet’s office. I hate going there because each trip feels one step closer to the inevitable, but it’s the one place I’m not embarrassed by my tears and red face. I can sit in the waiting room and not explain myself to the strangers in there with me who, without asking, know exactly what’s happening and silently hold the space I need.

The vet told us that we’re heading down a one-way road and there will come a point when we need to make the decision to put her down. They said that we’ll know when it’s time. But I’m not sure I will; the weight of holding her life in my hands is unbearable. I hope that I wake up one morning to find she’s passed away in her sleep. 

Dolly and me on the waterfront in Brooklyn circa 2016

It started with a coughing fit in the night. 

Dolly’s had an odd cough for years that sounds somewhere between a cat hacking up a fur ball and a reverse sneeze. Vets were never quite able to work out what it was but determined it wasn’t anything to worry about. Then one night at the beginning of July, the cough took hold in a way I’d not heard it do before and she just couldn’t get it under control.  

When I took her to the vet in the morning, she was less worried by Dolly’s cough and more by her weight loss. The whole time I’ve had her, I’ve been told to keep her weight down to help take the pressure off her arthritic joints. And now suddenly she's too skinny.

The concern was that sudden, unexplained weight loss in a 15-year-old dog is almost always a bad sign. The vet told us to try feeding her more to see if she’d put on weight.

So for a week, every time Dolly pattered into the kitchen to see what either of us was doing in there, we fed her. She got pasta, freshly cooked chicken and liver treats. My boyfriend bought her the most expensive dog food the pet shop carries; the kind that you can see chunks of actual meat and distinct vegetables suspended in jelly.

The morning I was due to take her back to the vet, I was initially planning to just go alone. But with my hand on the doorknob, I asked my boyfriend to come with me. I couldn’t explain why, but I needed him to be there. 

We plopped her on the scales in the waiting room. She’d dropped another half kilo. Every time I stroke her now I can feel her spine jutting out of her like a horrific shark fin.

Top row: 1. Dolly in my New York apartment shortly after I adopted her 2. In her rain jacket 3. In her sweater in Haggerston park in London. Bottom row: 4. In her Chelsea shirt, watching a game 5. Looking down from the window in the flat we lived in in London 6. Dolly in her trolley

Once the vet said “cancer” I didn’t hear much else. Tears clouded my vision. The vet said a lot of other things, most of which I don’t remember, but what I did hear was that while we don’t have to worry about it now, when the time comes, which it’s going to, we can put her down at home.

It’s a badly wrapped gift that I didn’t walk into that appointment with Dolly and leave without her. We get more time with her, as difficult as that time is. Her bad days are like quicksand, pulling me under. I spent most of last week sleeping on the sofa because she was too exhausted to make it up and down the stairs. Our other dog, Jack, stayed down there with us, too. For a split second, it's almost fun to be camping out in my own living room with my dogs until I remember why I'm doing this.

Dolly’s “profile” at Bideawee, the rescue shelter I got her from in New York in 2015. She’d been brought there from Puerto Rico. I moved back to the UK in 2017 with her.

I heard the term "anticipatory grief" once. As in, you start mourning for a loved one while they’re still here. The best way I can describe how I feel right now is like I'm living out an ending. While Dolly naps next to me, I scroll through the album of her I have on my phone. As I look at the hundreds of photos I cannot believe that there will come a time, very soon, when these pictures will be all I have left of her. The crush of that thought makes me feel sick.

I'm devastated that our time together is drawing its last breath. I'm desperately trying to commit everything to memory. Maybe that explains the impulse to write this; I need a container for the overwhelming feelings I’m having as I navigate this. I want to, no I have to, remember it all. The sound of her licking her bed for comfort, the chatter of her teeth when she's vying for attention, how she scrunches up her face when she crunches on a crisp, how she loves crisps, how she lifts up her front paw for a chest rub, how she flops her head down, how when she pops her head up after lying down for a while and her lip gets stuck to her teeth, how she sounds like she's deflating when she plonks herself down, how she's not phased by any dog she encounters, how she takes herself off to the bed when she's tired, how she gets startled by our laughter late in the evening, how she eats the compost in my flower bed, how she loves lying in our bed but gets annoyed when we get in it with her, how she and Jack mirror each other’s positions, how she lies on the sofa and watches TV with me, how good she is with kids, how she loves long car rides, how fussy she is and only wants the most expensive food, how she barks to get us to come downstairs and sit with her, how she appears in the kitchen whenever I'm cooking, how she jumps off the sofa when you wave her harness at her, how she sits in front of anyone she thinks might have a treat for her, how much she’s taught me in our time together, how fiercly I love her. 

She’s doing ok right now.

This respite from her bad spells, however, is fraught. In these peaceful moments, I forget that she’s not well. I have to catch myself and remind myself that this doesn’t mean she’s getting better, all it means is that she’s having a good day. The storm hasn't passed, we're just momentarily standing in the calm of its centre.

1. In her favourite bed 2. With her favourite toy 3. In New York 4. At Christmas 5. With her brother Jack 6. At my dad's place