Last week my pup was up in the middle of the night and I could hear him coughing and choking. I went into the next room and and he was breathing rapidly and hard. He laid on the floor on his side. I laid next to him on the floor and the more I listened the more upset I became.

Now this is the first animal I have ever had in my life. We had a few cats wondering around as the kids grew but they were feral cats and belonged to themselves. After the kids were gone I thought about getting a small dog, I thought about it more and more and looked occasionally at the local adoption agencies around my city. I even went so far as to fill out an adoption form that was 12 pages long for a pug but didn’t get the adoption because of a question about how much I was willing to spend to save the dog if need be. Apparently my limited knowledge of vet costs was not acceptable.

I had about decided it wasn’t meant to be when my oldest daughter face timed me to tell me she had found my dog. I fell in love with him the first time I saw him. My daughter lives in another state so I filled out the paperwork and went to pick up my new love 2 weeks later. The rest is our history, the snuggles, learning each other’s likes and dislikes, walks, friends of both species, and love, lots and lots of love.

So as I lay on the floor watching my friend of three years struggling to breath. I thought he wasn’t going to make it until morning and I was overwhelmed with heartbreak and grief. I took him to the vet the next day and he was fine after some medicine and TLC.

I never understood before when people would talk about the loss of a pet, after all they aren’t people. How naive I had been all those years about the love between a pet and it’s person.