It will be no surprise to any of you reading this that our dogs do not and cannot live long enough. As the saying goes, it’s their only fault.

I accept and acknowledge this. My mantra is that they’re here for a good time, not for a long time. So I want to make sure dogs have the goodest of times over every minute of their relatively short lives.

While I want to keep my dog safe, a safe and sedentary life is slowly killing many many pet dogs, assigning them to a long and often miserable life.
Yes we can keep them safe but they also need to live. Live a good dog life.

Decker has always been gung-ho and has been very hard on his body (and on mine). But he has been robustly healthy, and I didn’t make an insurance claim until he was about 8. Soon after turning nine, running at his usual torpedo speed, he got caught between some rocks and shredded his CCL. A good healthy and strong ligament but a few toes misplaced by centimetres resulted in a bit of a reckoning for me.

All the care I had put in at every step of the way, from before he was even conceived, and I couldn’t prevent this from happening. He didn’t have the predispositions most often associated with this injury and joint disease, and I thought I had done all the things to make sure this sort of thing didn’t happen. Shows what I know.

Since that he has experienced several other near-death incidents, largely associated with him living his best life as full on as possible. All of which, he has so far recovered from apparently unscathed.

While his behavioural resilience is solid and astounding, I can see each of these knocks are accumulating. His old body is not bouncing back as it once did. Every little knock, on top of all the other knocks, is taking some life from him.

At the same time, it’s knocking me. I can’t control incidents and accidents, I can’t prevent them. And I don’t want to restrict his living his life to the absolute fullest. This lack of control feeds my anxiety.

And my anticipatory grief.

He is old.

Decker is an almost 12 year old AmStaff. This is a dog who is typically very hard on their body and are not known for living on into their teens. When I say Decker is old, I mean he’s old for an AmStaff. Just recently, as I qualified this to another person, they interjected and agreed that he is old. For a dog.

But no matter our dogs’ age, we go into this pretty safe in the knowledge that they will likely be leaving before we do. Indeed, we may go through this many times over our long lives; I have loved and lost many many dogs. Every time, I go into it with the hope that we will have forever together, but the knowledge that we will have just a few short years.

I live with and love an old dog. And I have all sorts of conflicting feelings about that.

Anticipatory Grief is Real

Grieving relating to pet loss is certainly very real, but grief doesn’t just come after loss.

As our pets age, or if they experience chronic illness, we can start to grieve for the life and experiences we won’t have with them. We start to imagine what life might be like without them, and think about how we are going to cope with that. Anticipatory grief might even have us thinking about the practicalities of their loss and after their loss.

The strong emotional experiences associated with grieving loss can be paralysing. This can overwhelm in anticipation of loss too, and the concern may be that this impacts how we spend what time we have left together.

Our pets are unlikely to be aware of this, lucky for them. They probably don’t have awareness of their impending demise and are not thinking about the life they won’t get to live.

When we experience anticipatory grief our awareness and sensitivity may be heightened. It’s important that we can recognise it and its effects on us providing for their needs.
They still have life to live and they still need to live that life to the fullest. No matter how long.

Maybe anticipatory grief can be a bit of a gift too. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of crying and pain. But maybe, just maybe, anticipatory grief can help us start to prepare for loss and narrow our focus to concentrate on making sure every minute we have left together will be the best.

It can help us be in the moment with them, increase our awareness of each moment together, the sensory experiences of those moments.

The thoughts of what’s to come is overwhelming but in this moment, we are still together. Make it the best moment, and the same for the next moment, and the next.

Focus on those feelings and remember, they’re here for a good time, not for a long time.

I take photos. So many photos. Photos of our adventures together. I get to live it, remember it, and photograph it. He is living his best life and I’m just along for the ride.
Decker’s adventures can be followed here (@fwwhiskeyontherocks).