These are my two cockerpoos, Sid and Peggy. Sid died in June, aged fourteen and a half years. Peggy came to live with us at the end of August, aged nearly four months. Amid my grief for Sid, I did what all experienced therapists do and googled ‘how long should I wait before getting another dog?’ The answers were as meaningless as the question deserved but I don’t think ‘give it a couple of months then get a hyperactive puppy that your partner doesn’t agree you’re ready for’ was the top response. That, however, is what I did. The marriage has survived, and Peggy is making her mark on our family, often with her teeth. And her head tilts, her back leg balancing, rolling, fluffy tummy, floppy ears…
Peggy is currently sleeping under my desk, occasionally sighing. Bliss. Of all the things I missed/miss about Sid, his sleeping presence as I worked (and slept) was the hardest to bear. When a pet dies, we don’t have a lifetime of conversation to draw on. Well, I had many one-sided conversations with Sid, and I suspect many of his responses to what was coming out of my mouth were signs of hope that I was about to offer him cheese. He could certainly vocalise too. He was a marvellous howler, kept the house safe by barking through the window at every passerby and his sighs and snores were the soundtrack of my days. The memories of him that are hardest to access are of his physical being: of his gait (always slightly wonky), the texture of his curly fur, the weight of him. Not just the fourteen kilograms that in his latter months I would carry upstairs so that he could carry on sleeping at the foot of our bed, despite his decreased mobility. I also missed his weight against my side when I sat on the sofa, or on my feet if there wasn’t room for him to join me on a chair or brushing against me on a walk. Photos and videos allow me to see and hear him but not to touch and hold him.
This of course is not exclusive to pet loss. Physical presence is what all bereavement takes from us. But because so much of our relationship with pets is experienced exclusively through their physical being, it’s a much more obvious part of the experience of losing them. And if, like me, you spend most of your days working from home and your pet spent their days with you, that absence is bound to be felt in a very visceral way. Throughout this summer, after Sid died, I felt his loss as physical ‘panic’, a difficulty to swallow, a heightened awareness of my breath, an urgency to get back home (planes, trains, cars and cinemas would set this ‘flight’ response off most strongly). While I’m aware that there were other stresses that were setting off this alarm in my body, since Peggy bounced into our lives, the panic has subsided.
Pets demand and give permission for physical touch that is obviously much more complex in relationships between people. Some of us (i.e. me) are not natural huggers, back slappers nor arms graspers of our fellow humans. But show me a dog and I’ll have an urge to scratch behind its ears, rub its belly or get close enough to its wagging tail to feel its breeze. That dog ownership grew so much during the pandemic was a symptom of the increase of people working from home (and our inability to know that this would not be permanent) and of living through a time when touch between people was a threat to health and restricted by law. To introduce a puppy into the lockdown home may not have been the most sensible choice for many, but it makes sense in terms of the sensory and emotional needs provoked by the restrictions.
Which brings me back to Peggy. She has not stopped me grieving for Sid. In fact, she’s allowed me to experience the part of my grief I was struggling with most: its physical dimension. Her little body, her soft fur, her curly tail, aren’t his, they’re hers. The transition from the pace of an elderly dog to that of a puppy is at times overwhelming, though as Peggy and I get to know each other we’re getting more in synch. She has re-energised me and I’m learning how to calm her through play as well as affection and a mountain of ‘natural chews’ (there’s a whole other blog to be written on the ‘stuff’ and advice that has arrived in the world of dog in the interval between Sid’s and Peggy’s arrivals). She wasn’t a ‘sensible decision’, but she’s calmed my breath, soothed my panic and allowed me to feel at home again wherever I am. Through her little body, I can remember and grieve for what I lost in Sid and delight in the new relationship we’re forging. Hopefully, one that will involve less communication with teeth.
