When An Dear Friend Bites

My friend and her family had to make the very hard decision to have their lab put down today.  He was all black and had the greatest of faces.  Unfortunately, in the last few years, he seemed to undergo what may have been neurological changes, and he would lash out to his family for no reason; last night resulted in six stiches for my friend's husband, and that was the last straw.

Unless you have had pets, you cannot feel that awful ache of a loss when they pass away.  People who never had pets or do not like animals think the rest of us are pretty strange for crying when we lose our dear friends.  I remember my mother would talk about our little Boston Terrier, Kippy, years after he died, and she would just tear up about it.  I get that.   Our pets' soul intertwine with ours and lift us up to a higher level of existence with regard to compassion and empathy.  They don't ask for anything but love, a scratch on the belly or around the ears, a warm, dry place to sleep -- preferably with us -- and the freedom to run around and bark or purr whenever they need to get our attention.  It's not really that much to ask, right?

I have another friend who studies a lot of material that's sort of new age, but it delves into spirituality and the possibilities beyond our earth-bound existence.  One of the things she read was when we pass on, the first souls to greet us will be our pets who will run through the crowd to seek us out.  That would be cool.  Whatever somewhere there is after the now, you have to believe that animals have a place in it too...just because their existence is no less important than ours in the scheme of things, right?