Writing as Therapy-WA-2

My emotions were going haywire. My dog was dying and I couldn’t handle it. I got her about eight or nine years ago. She had been neglected as a young pup and when we got her you could see her ribs and her beautiful fur was nappy. She was mixed but mostly spaniel. Her condition was specific for spaniels and often causes them to die young. I was the first one to notice her change in behavior. She was refusing food and she would lie in bed like a bump on a log. Her body wasn’t producing enough red blood cells for her to live a normal life. She was black and white and her name was Cinderella but we called her Cindy.

When she was going through her rough time it was really strange for me because I felt sadder then when my grandmother died from a rip tied in Guatemala or when any of my other pets had died. I was really confused because I didn’t know why this was happening to her. At the very beginning of this process I would just think back to before she was sick and wonder if it was anything I did. When we first decided to take her to the hospital she couldn’t walk down the steps she was so weak. She was trembling and I knew something was wrong. All I wanted to do was cry with Cindy because that was what I usually did when I cried. Part of me couldn’t imagine that I was crying over a dog, I couldn’t imagine that I had been crying that whole week when the statistics came out about her 25% chance of survival. I was even embarrassed at who I had cried to. I felt like it wasn’t real because I used to cry just from thinking of my dog dying, even when I first got her and now it is reality.

When she died it was like someone had died in our family. My whole family was crying for hours. It really shocked me to see tears streaming down my brothers face. I think that probably made it worse for me because I never see him cry. My grandparents were devastated as well because we used to vacation with Cindy down at their house. The worst part was seeing my mom’s reaction. Almost every day for about a month, I would come home and my mom would have red circles around her eyes from crying. I knew that Cindy meant the world to my mom and to see her upset like that was awful.

I knew it was selfish but thoughts slowly marched through my head, with each step pounding into me, about how my life would be different. I kept hearing the clicking sounds from Cindy’s paws on the hard wood floor. That sound would drive me insane as well as the sound of her tail hitting the furniture and making a loud thump because it made me think of her whenever I was home. For a long time her hair was everywhere in the house and her smell was on every couch ready to sneak into my nose. Her presence was inescapable.

Cindy was the best dog we could ever have had and she left a mark on our family that will never be erased. Thinking of her and hearing that tapping sound still makes me cry. I will never forget her.