Sophie is a Golden Retriever. She has unusually fuzzy front paws and a big heart. When I’m not feeling well I often wake up to find her paws around my  neck and her head resting on my forehead. Any other time she will get up and move to avoid my snuggling with her.

If Gary wanted to snuggle, she would be there in a heartbeat. She was definately bonded to Gary the most and she adored him.

Ever since Gary’s death she’s not acted quite the same. She’s been lethargic and is aging right before my eyes. Within a month the fur around her eyes has become white. White faces are normal for a Golden but I don’t recall Boman’s face turning white overnight like this.

Sophie has been trying to get in the closet for awhile now. The closet doors in the RV snap shut so they don’t open during transport. I have a hard time getting them open at times because the latches have quite a grip.  Sophie has tried clawing at the doors and nudging at them with her nose. Since I’d hidden some doggie treats in there I’ve been running her away from the closet because I knew she could smell them in there. Still, it was odd behavior for her. She normally would have waited for me to go somewhere before trying to get a treat from a place she knew she wasn’t allowed.

One day,  a week or so ago, I got out of the shower to discover Sophie had finally managed to get the closet door open, but the rawhides were untouched. I was a little puzzled but I had other things on my mind and didn’t think much of it. Later Sophie refused to come to dinner. She had hole up in the passenger seat of the cab in the RV. She likes to go there when she wants to be alone because I have a hard time getting in there the way I’m set up. The other dogs won’t go in there if its already occupied.

Later I pulled out some goodies for the dogs, and still, she wouldn’t come. This worried me. Sophie’s not one to turn down a treat unless she’s sick.  I made my way over a few things and pulled back the dividing curtain and saw sophie laying in the front seat, her head on top of something like a rag. She didn’t lift up her head to look at me when I entered her space. She just lay there looking straight ahead into the dashboard. When I reached down and lifted her head, the shock sent me into a downward spiral that lasted four days. Four days of uncontrollable sobbing and grief.

She had managed to get the closet open but it wasn’t the treats she wanted. She had smelled and confiscated the shirt Gary had died in. I haven’t washed it because it smells like him. I hold it to my face sometimes and cry. I sleep with it sometimes. Now here was Sophie, in her alone spot, grieving hard and laying on top of the shirt, unwilling to part with it.

I put my head close to hers to tell her I love her and to snuggle her a little. Thats when I heard the quiet little sounds she was making in her throat. Gary called them “puppy whimpers”. She makes those sounds when he loves on her and sometimes when I love on her, but not like she did with Gary. The sounds she was making along with the effort it had taken her to get the shirt ripped my heart out.  I let her keep it until she was ready to give it to me herself.  By midday the next day she let me have the shirt without a fuss.

Since that day she’s been more like her old self than ever before. She’s playful again and more attentive to me than she has ever been. She needed that time to let go of her former master who hadn’t come home in such a long time. I know she realized what happened to him even if she doesn’t quite grasp what it is. She knows he’s not coming back. She’s never encountered death so I don’t know if she understands that aspect of it. Then again, I’ve underestimated my dogs before. I wouldn’t be really all that surprised if she knew exactly what has happened just by the smells on that shirt. I worry when I’m having a really bad day because my being upset and crying scares the dogs so much. I try to keep it together for them because I know they want to understand but to see their Alpha so unstable must be frightening to a pack.

People who don’t think dogs have emotions obviously have never owned one.

Tags: Death, Gary, Gary Tenace, illness, Pets