What Dogs Can Teach Us {Personal}

Photo by Valerie Demo.

Today we lost our Maggie dog.  Dogs can teach us so much – and Maggie taught me more than I ever thought possible.  She was a rescue, a foster fail, and what she taught me I can never be grateful enough for.

Maggie taught me how to parent.  She taught me that I wanted to be one in the first place.  Maggie taught me the importance of a great life.  When she came to us, she had been extraordinarily mistreated.  She was missing teeth from being outside and not being fed – so she’d eat the rocks.  Maggie was partially blind and always a little deaf and it only got worse the longer she was with us.  She had an infection in her uterus and heart worms.  This was 7 years ago.

Every night for 3 months while she had heart worms, I came home from work and she snuggled me.  She loved me HARD.  I told Chris that we had to keep her.  I could feel it.  She was mine.

At this point, she was our THIRD dog.  Three dogs.  We could handle it.  When we realized we could handle it, or rather, I realized I could handle it, I realized we could handle kids.

Maggie was everything. She was sweet, lazy, hilarious, the pretty kind of ugly – and she loved hard as fuck.

I’m going to miss her.  Every day.  Walking into my house without her today may have been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Maggie, you taught us how to be a family.  Thank you for that.  It meant the world.

It’s amazing what kids can take from this kind of thing, too.  Piper, my oldest, never cried.  She hugged Maggie a lot, gave her kisses, and hugged me even more.  Piper spent more time reassuring me that everything would be okay – she said, “we’ll have our memories, and we’ll make new ones now, too.”  Really, kid? How are you such a sage at such a small age.

A few photos from our goodbye over the last few days:

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