the dog spirit
When Loke passed, I was crazed with grief. Literally. He had not been well. And the day he died, I had gone to town, to a store to pick up water and supplies and I was [irony] on the dog toy aisle in that store looking for something for him when I knew, Go home, your dog needs you NOW. And I went. Dropped everything I had and went.
We were in the country then. I had to drive 12 miles of bad dirt road to get to my dog. And I did that drive, hard driving, pushing harder and more dangerous than those curves and drop offs and dirt roads liked, cursing, wanting to get to my dog, saying, Loke, hold on. And he did hold on. He was waiting. Waiting for me to get home before he died. And I sat and cried holding my dog when he died.
And then I went out on the porch paralyzed in the night and everything in me was crazy and angry and crying. For a long time. I do not know how long. But a long time.
And then the dog spirit came.
The dog spirit is not something you can see. It is not something you can hear. It is something you feel. Washing over you and through you. Dog spirit. Dog love. Love of the dog spirit.
And it is not even exactly The Dog you just lost. That dog is there. But it is — more than that. So my only name for it is The Dog Spirit.
The dog spirit is something 24 hours later in the light of day you can wonder about. Wonder if you were so full of grief you made it up in your head, were just off your head. I was off my head. I was off my head with grief. I could have been just dog spirit confused.
Except. It didn’t happen once.
The dog spirit came, washed through me, told me I was loved, had not lost that love. And it was not the only time I met the dog spirit. It was just the first time.
Where this came from : i posted a portion of that
at kitty’s once
0 Responses to the dog spirit
Thank you for your heartwarming story.
i, too, have felt the spirit
It is weird how we sometimes know. As if our furry friends have a way to communicate with us that is simply unfathomable, but incredibly real and precise.
Now you gone and made me all verklempt. Dogs do that to me. Still, better to know that feeling than to never have had that eager companionship at all.
Beautifully written.
And, it is Gaia who is the mother to them all–the spirits of the animals, the Earth. It is they who are restless at this time of the great transition, for they know the pain of the cull, and the love that awaits the knowing when we are once again in harmony with the forces that hold the greatest mysteries, the greatest joys. The animals speak this language. To have loved an animal and shared a life with them is to have gone into this place, for they try…how they try…to teach us. With patience, they try, for they know our failings and the fallacies we hold onto.
Theirs is a wisdom we should be proud to learn.
I cannot stop crying. I am so moved. Dog – just God spelled backwards you know.
Thank you for all the nice comments.
What a touching story!
Does this mean there is cat spirit too?
Of course.
Jeez, Fork, you had a slew of comments in the spam filter. How’d you end up in there?
That is a grief that is so overpowering… w/o the dog spirit I don’t know how to survive it.
Beautifully expressed.
I’m going to remember this and send it to friends who lose their dogs.
Thanks Pooks and Kym.
It’s a magical thing, the bond we have with our pets. When my dog was hit by a car, I was so profoundly devastated – he didn’t die, but something like this, this Dog Spirit, helped me stay calm and gave me the strength to take care of him that night.
Can relate so much to this.
Nothing crushed me quite like losing my cat Zooey (over a very rough six months of leukemia the kitty shots didn’t cover) a few years ago. I picked her up from the shelter along with another kitty (two cats are better than one, especially if they grow up together), and even though I adored both of them, Zooey was pretty much my lifeline after my mom passed. I was pretty fucked up over a lot of stuff, and I think one of the only reasons I healed was that cat.
I still have dreams about her being around, which is messed up, but also… kind of nice.
I’m sorry, Eric, I don’t check in here much and don’t always catch the posts. I missed that one for a long time. My apologies and thank you for sharing the story about Zooey.