The grief of losing your dog

This is Amelia, with her Cleopatra eyeliner and wonky ears,  and to say I had a complicated relationship with her is an understatement.  She died last week and I’ve been ugly crying ever since because she’s been such a huge part of my life and her passing has left a dog shaped hole in my heart. 

Michal and Amelia at the beach

As a newly graduated dog trainer from the San Francisco SPCA, I thought I knew everything there was about dog behavior. I was determined to put my money where my mouth was and I wanted to rehabilitate a dog who someone else had given up on. As soon as I arrived back in New Zealand I set out looking for the most messed up dog I could find. And she did not disappoint. 

She was an absolute disaster. 

She had no manners, was bouncy and rude, she wasn’t toilet trained and had the highest prey drive of any dog I’ve ever worked with. She had an extreme case of separation anxiety and oh did I mention she hated other dogs? Yeah that too.

Her early years are a mystery

Apparently she’d been found playing in traffic and a kindly stranger had handed her into the dog pound. 

When I visited the dog pound and saw her she was two weeks past her euthanisa date because fortunately they had an available cage to keep her in.

I didn’t get to trial her at home. I either adopted her or they killed her when they needed the cage for someone else. 

So I paid for her and collected her from the vet after she’d been spayed and vaccinated.

She was such hard work

From the emotional state she was in when I adopted her, I could only surmise that she had been dumped by someone who hadn’t even given her a decent shot at existing. She’d had no socialization with other animals, very little with other people and she had definitely been left outside a lot (as evidenced by the fact that for the rest of her life, she refused to go outside alone).

She thwarted me at every turn. I had to throw out the rule book because a lot of what I’d learned just didn’t apply to her and this started me on a journey to dig deeper into dog behavior. As a result I became a more well rounded dog trainer. She was my best teacher. Not because she was kind and patient, but because she made me think outside the box and get creative with our training sessions. She just didn’t conform to the normal rules and figuring out how to help Amelia made me a much better dog trainer and a much better person. 

Her separation anxiety meant that she either had to be with me all the time (even coming into the bathroom with me) or be crated. Her crate had to be reinforced because she quickly learned how to escape from it, damaging whatever she could find in her panicked state including shoes, clothes, wooden blinds, doorways, tables and ornaments.

Michal and Amelia smiling at the beach

Over the years I managed to get her to a certain point of civility. She was never the sort of dog you’d take to a cafe or a busy dog park, but she loved my kids and was really gentle with them.  She developed a respect for one of my cats and an actual friendship with the others. She had a huge repertoire of tricks and training commands and by giving her the stability and leadership she needed, her separation anxiety disappeared completely. 

She also had a few doggie friends and was always a good girl with the dogs she knew and was comfortable with.

Would I adopt such a messed up dog again? 

Probably. She needed me and I needed her. She taught me things about myself that I didn’t want to know but in retrospect am glad I do.  She humbled me in so many ways but loved me despite my failings. 

I admit that my client’s dogs are much easier to work with and it would be nice to have my own dog who I could raise correctly from a puppy, but yeah I’d probably put myself through all this again if the situation arose.

Amelia made it to approximately 15 years old (she was an adult when I got her and her birth date is unknown), surrounded by love and comfort and that’s a pretty amazing existence for someone who was sentenced to die through no fault of her own.

And I miss her so much it hurts and I’m going to stop writing now so I can go off and do some more ugly crying.

So do me a favor and really love on whatever pup you can find today. 

For puppy raising tactics, save your seat in my free masterclass

“3 Simple Tactics for Raising a Well-Behaved Dog”

Michal and Amelia enjoying the view