I had a dream a while back, it was a few weeks or a few months, I can’t recall. What I do remember, in the dream one of my pups died. I don’t remember which dog, Danny or Lily. I don’t remember how they died. But what I do remember it was an emotionally charged dream—or more aptly nightmare. And I do remember the relief I felt when I woke up and discovered it had all been a horrible dream, and both my sweet pups were still with us.

This morning, I woke up and was not so lucky. What happened yesterday had not been a dream. Our, loving, exuberant, goofy, sweet Danny boy is gone. He died yesterday in a tragic, stupid, senseless accident, and unlike the nightmare, this one is too real.  To say Don and I are devastated and heartbroken would be a gross understatement.

We have loved, lost, and grieved for other dogs before. But somehow this is profoundly different, both Don and I feel it.

Part of it I suspect, the cause of death was so senseless. Our other beloved dogs passed from old age or illness, while Danny’s was a fluke accident. While jumping up on the sofa to bark at someone who had come to our front door, he somehow managed to fall off the sofa, and when doing so fell on his back and died minutes later. I was by his side, and I don’t know if I will ever get the sight and the sound of his final howl out of my head. It haunts me.

I believe dogs come to us during different seasons of our lives. Dogs who come to us before we have children—or instead of having children. With us, Danny came to us in a season of our life that made his loss more impactful than our other pups. And it’s not because we didn’t love them as much.

Don and I have raised our children. Don’s retired, and I work at home, making up stories in my head that I share with the world.  We don’t have the same social life as we did when we lived in Arizona.

Our daily life consisted primarily of Don, me, Danny and Lily. And we loved it. The simple pleasure of sitting outside and watching Lily playfully chasing Danny around the yard and seeing how he would intentionally slow down so she could catch up to him, gave us immeasurable smiles. Or how they would wrestle in the house on rainy days.

We were living in Arizona when Danny came to us. A tiny pup, we picked him up and I held him all the way home on my lap, some four or five hours. After that first ride, Danny bonded with me. He loved Don, but we all knew I was Danny’s person. 

Lily came into our home several months later. She was a little over two months younger than Danny. They bonded immediately. Best of friends and play pals. While they are not siblings, we had no intentions of breeding them. In our hearts they were siblings. Those two loved each other. And my heart also breaks for Lily. 

Lily could sometimes be snarky with Danny, but being so good-natured, he always took it.  Yet if Lily thought another dog was picking on Danny, she would immediately jump in and be his defender. While I was Danny’s person, if we took Lily to the vet without him, when we returned, it was Lily he wanted to see first, not me.

Danny was my shadow. If I went out to the family barn without taking him, he would sit by the window in the house waiting for me.  At night he slept by my feet, at the foot of the bed. If I walked by the mattress before going to bed, he would roll over and show me his belly, wanting tummy rubs.

Danny was a barker, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He loved to annoy our son, who lives next door, by barking at Scott every time he would see him yet would then immediately beg for Scott to give him belly rubs when Scott got closer.

Danny loved playing ball and the only time Lily chased the ball was if Danny was playing. But if she got the ball, she refused to let it go.  This was the reason we had more than one ball. Because if Lily grabbed the ball first, Danny would find another, bring it to me, and then I would throw it again. Lily, of course, would race Danny to the new ball…and the game would continue, with Danny bringing me a ball and setting it on my lap. If I failed to throw it, he would nudge the ball at me. Damn, I will miss that.

I will miss how Danny would run along the end of the back yard, as if on patrol. I will miss how if he was in the back of the yard and I was on the patio, if he saw I was about to go into the house without him, he would race up to the house, reaching the door before me.

There is so much I will miss. I know dogs only come into our lives for a relatively short time, but I thought I had more time with Danny. He would have been seven on July 1 of this year. Yet the truth is, no one ever knows what will happen tomorrow, an hour from now, or the next minute.

I love you so much, Danny. I imagine Mom met you when you passed over. I know she will take good care of you. You are profoundly missed.