My Dog

I have a couple of scares with my 16? Year old puppy (as my 18 yr old daughter likes to refer to her as).   Chili is a sweet mellow dog that we adopted 11 years ago.  They did not know exactly how old she was but she was around 3 to 5 years old at the time. 

The scare was when she collapsed into convulsions a month ago.  It turned out that she was diabetic but the vet said that the convulsions should not be related to diabetes.  Fortunately she had only two episodes but at the time I was prepared to say goodbye to her at the time.

Today she had a more serious episode by having multiple convulsions here at home and later at the vet’s.  They did not know whether she would be able to recover from it.  With her glucose levels back up after a day of being on an IV, she stopped convulsing and able to get up (somewhat).

I wonder about experiencing a death of a pet.  I have had three other losses in my life with a pet.  Once while I was in middle school with our family dog.  Another time when I was in high school with our family cat.  And the last time when I adopted a dog and she was hit by a car after having her  for week and a half.  It took only a couple of months since Ruby’s death for me to decide to adopt Chili.

All my previous pet deaths did not have a real emotional impact on me.  I wonder about that.  Now with the near death brush with my animal companion of eleven years, I check in was surprised and somewhat ashamed that I am not so concerned if she left me in death.  I really question my emotional health by not having that fear or sadness of her potential loss.

I know there is no one way to grieve and to experience loss but I judge myself for being so emotionally shut down for that absence of feeling.  

Adopting a dog was and is a great responsibility.  I knew that when I did it.  I did not fully grasp the magnitude of that responsibility when I need to consider to kill my dog or not when I took her into my life.  The act withholding care because of the cost and based on her age makes me wonder how to judge the value of the life of a pet, of another sentient being, of a constant companion of eleven years. 

I question my heart and values when I can easily make that decision to let her go, to accept that she can be gone the next day without pain or grief.  I have no answers or explanations.  How does this relate to my spirituality?  The foundation of any spiritual practice, in my view, is love.  Where is that in this situation?  How do I feel that?  How do I exhibit that?  Is it just because she is “only” a pet?  Or it goes further where I do not fully live my wannabe persona of a spiritual and loving man?   Questions… no answers… yet.