Better to have loved and lost

On the D For Dog forum, in Prince's goodbye thread, Graham says:

It's so sad in many ways, that we all seem to have some experience of the gravity of such a loss - and many of us very recently.

It got me thinking.

Loss and grief are the price we pay for opening ourselves to love, but love is it's own reward. The trick is to not close your heart because of the pain of loss, but to hold on to the memory of love and so allow it into your heart again.

To quote Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

So many people say silly things like "I'll never love again" or "there'll never be another ". They're right about the second one - there will never be another Prince, or Cleo, or Timmy, or Lady or (in my case) Duke, or Nisse - but each dog, and therefore each love is different. Some people ridicule the love that can exist between owners and their pets and think that such owners are somehow warped, and that that love could be better 'spent'. Personally, I think that the more you open your heart, the more love you find that you have to give, and the more you receive in return. In fact, pets are so good at opening people's hearts and healing their minds that Animal Assisted Therapy is becoming more and more popular and achieving amazing results.

I would turn what Graham's said around - the fact that so many of us have experienced the gravity of such a loss, although painful, shows that we can love. It shows that our hearts haven't hardened, in spite of the terrible things that are on the TV and the internet daily. That gives me hope.

Gone, but not forgotten

Just read on Graham's blog that Prince was put to sleep this morning. I think when you know an animal that well you can tell when they've given up and it's time for you to give up too and I join with others in applauding Graham for all he did for Prince, and for making the right decision when the time came.
I shall miss reading about the little fella, he was a real character and I'm sure he'll be sorely missed. Thank-you, Graham, for sharing his last weeks with us.

RIP little one, and I sincerely wish Graham all the best.

Dominance

Graham has been discussing dominance on his blog after I mentioned that we, too, wrestle with our dog!

When we first got Mollie, I was very worried about dominance and was all for making sure Mollie was always on the floor, not allowed on the furniture etc as a lot of people say that encouraging any kind of bossy or pseudo aggressive behaviour can cause your dog to become dominant and basically potentially dangerous. But then I read about wolves and watched that TV program where that bloke basically 'became' a wolf, and I thought, hey - among dog and wolf packs, the leader still plays with the others, and it's an integral part of the bonding process. So, Mollie gets occasional reminders about walking behind us when going upstairs, and she gets fed after the cats, and has to sit or lie down for treats etc, but we play with her as if we're dogs. To start with, she didn't know what to do - if you went down on all fours, growled and bounced her, she'd run away - but now she bounces back and plays properly!! Sometimes it looks and sounds for all the world like she's biting my hand off, but leaves nothing but a slightly damp patch - and she always stops when we stop. Ultimately, I guess it depends on the relationship you have with your dog and on your dog's character. We have to be on our guard as Mollie will occasionally push the boundaries a bit (she IS a terrier, after all!), but it's fairly easy to put her in her place ("BED!!" usually works!), and she was doing that when we first got her anyway. And a knock on effect of us playing with her like this is that she's much much happier playing with other dogs now!

The landing game

Mollie, my partner Tracy and I have invented a game.

It's one of Mollie's favourites.

We keep the door through to the living room closed so that the cats can't go upstairs unless they're invited (the reason why is another story), and we have a laminate floor in the hall. Mollie likes to try to be first through the door when it's opened (from either side), so if going from the living room to the hall she does a kind of sideways cartoon scrabble on the laminate then runs up the stairs.
The game is for one of her humans to crawl up the stairs, bang both hands on the landing (dog pounce) and go 'hah!' or similar. This is Mollie's prompt to a) grab a toy/sock/slipper and b) run past taunting us with it. The landing runs across the top of the stairs, so she can run from the master bedroom to the bathroom shaking her 'toy' wildly... and whichever human is at the top of the stairs then has to try and grab the toy or the dog as she runs past... sometimes it ends up with a spot of dog-wrestling, either way it invariably leaves the (dark blue) landing carpet covered in white hair. Don't let anyone tell you that smooth-coated terriers don't moult, they definitely do!!

On a separate note, thank-you to Graham for his mention yesterday!! Mollie unfortunately took Prince's advances the wrong way and thought he was after her chew, which she promptly glued to the sheepskin rug in front of the fire. Does anyone else find their dogs do this? We have a huge fluffy beanbag in the living room and on more than one occasion we've found a partially masticated rawhide knot hanging from it... in fact, at the weekend she glued one to our bedsheet and it left little hard patches which I'm told were quite uncomfortable to sleep on... hehe, glad it wasn't on my side of the bed!!!