You were our favourite hello and our hardest goodbye

Had I ever been in need of further confirmation that our dogs are truly a part of our family, I would have it now. Because the grief I have felt since Friday, when we made the decision to have Justin put to sleep after his heart condition stopped responding to medication, and his suffering became unbearable, is all too familiar to me. I recognise it well from October 2020 when my dad died, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a heart attack. There is the same physical pain, and the uneasy sense that the earth has shifted slightly on its axis, and things will never be the same again. The same overwhelming exhaustion, and all-consuming sense of loss.

Now, I appreciate that this may sound dramatic. I fully understand that some people will be thinking, in the words of a friend of my parent’s when he learnt that they were going home in the middle of a wedding to check on their Yorkshire Terrier, ‘It’s a bloody dog, like.’ But I challenge you to spend years of your life cohabiting with a creature which loves you more than it loves itself, which would accept anything you do and still only want to please you, and not return that affection.

Justin joined our family nearly eight years ago, when Florrie was only four months old. Truth be told, my love for him was a bit of a slow burner. He was a rather difficult puppy, prone to gnawing on things (including, once, Sasha’s feet, which were left shredded and bloody as a result), and to say he was energetic would be an understatement. He was a prolific humper, a trait of which some fellow dog owners are more tolerant than others. He also had an intensely irritating tendency to stay about two feet away at the end of a walk, refusing to have his lead attached, moving back slightly every time you edged towards him. This would add a significant length of time to every outing, which was particularly inconvenient when I needed to collect one of the children at a certain time — which, of course, applied to almost every occasion. He also had no fear, or sense of his own size, often picking scraps with Rottweilers and the like, which of course I had no intention of intervening in as I usually had a baby in a sling, or child in a wheelchair in front of me.

But as the months passed, Justin embedded himself into our family and our hearts. He grew into the most loving and loyal of companions. During that awful period in 2020, he behaved in a way which I had never seen before, sensing our grief and taking it in himself. If we cried, he would come running, ready to lick away our tears. He sought opportunities to be close to us, never missing a story time snuggled at the end of the children’s beds. He was calm and placid (although I must acknowledge that there were a couple of occasions on which he snapped at people’s fingers!) His lovely temperament meant that he was a pleasure to take on holidays and trips, and he always seized life with both paws. He loved the beach, and the woods, and water. We were never short of people to look after him if we needed doggy day care — I have lost count of people who have said things like, ‘If I could clone Justin, I would definitely have a dog,’ or ‘Justin is an absolute legend.’

Last year, he was diagnosed with a heart murmur during his annual check up at the vets, with a scan confirming this. We didn't think much of it, as he didn’t seem to be showing any effects, but looking back he had begun slowing down. Always horrifically greedy, he had become less likely to be under your feet every single time you prepared food. And he was sleeping later in the mornings, meaning it had been some time since we were woken up by him clawing us enthusiastically in the face. And around a month ago, he deteriorated quickly, fluid now building up in his lungs. Despite medication and trips to the vets, it slowly became clear that he wasn’t getting better, and that the medication was no longer helping. We realised that we were keeping him here because we couldn’t bear to let him go, not because it was the right thing to do. It was our turn to love him more than we love ourselves.

So on Friday, we called the vets. The rain that fell that day was almost biblical, as if even the skies were crying. There was no doubt that we wanted him to spend his last moments on earth in his home, where he had always been happiest, with us by his side. He went on his last walk in the woods he loved so much, although he could hardly make it home, and then we sat and stroked him, and told him how much he was loved. The end was peaceful and painless for Justin, but at the moment we said goodbye, we felt our hearts break.