Earlier this week I received a call from Guide Dogs finalising the rehoming of Isla, my retired dog. In four days, she’ll have lived with her new family for two years, but various logistical things meant this process took longer than expected. It was a routine call and yet when I hung up all I could do was wrap my arms around myself and sob. I miss her. It’s a physical pain. I miss her so much and I’m never going to stop missing her. She isn’t mine anymore. Perhaps I have no right to this pain. I chose to rehome her and it was absolutely the best decision I could have made. I’m a postgrad, I could never have provided her with the kind of life she has with this family.
But it hurts. It hurts in a way nothing else has ever hurt. It’s an awful, living grief inside me. I miss her sleek fur and her constantly wiggling body. I miss the way she’d stretch and how she liked to carry things and how quietly she could pad through a room. I miss not feeling like a ship drifting at sea with nothing to anchor me. There’s an intense, soul deep bond between a disabled person and their assistance dog. I didn’t understand it until I didn’t have it anymore. I’ve written about my grief before. How I was working through it. And sometimes I feel like I’m ok, like it’s going to stop hurting. But it doesn’t, it never does.
I don’t know how people repeat this with dog after dog. Perhaps they’re able to compartmentalise the pain and accept it. I don’t know that I ever can. And I don’t even know how to explain it. Because Isla is alive. She is happy and loved. And yet I’m breaking again and again. And I’ll wash my face and pull myself together and continue on with my day like it doesn’t hurt, because what else can you do?
I doubt I’ll ever get another guide dog. I don’t know that I have enough love inside me to give it away again and again and again. I admire people who can do this, who have such deep reserves of love and strength they can withstand the process of gaining and losing multiple dogs. I wish I was a better person. That I had more to give. But I don’t.
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That’s so sad, I’m sorry to hear you are struggling. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t be afraid to ‘give away’ the love, because more love will grow to take its place. (and that can grow too). It won’t run out, so try not to deny yourself something that will make you happy. xx
Sending love and hugs. I decided I couldn’t ever have a guide dog after seeing the heartbreak of another person when their dog was retired. I was broken hearted enough when my pet crossed the rainbow bridge 6 months after my sight loss was diagnosed. I’d had her from puppy until she suddenly got ill 3 months before her 9th birthday.I know I couldn’t do that again and again with a guide dog, even if they were retired and living their best life elsewhere.