Six weeks and four days ago I lost my best friend. It’s taken me 6 weeks and 4 days to put enough space between myself and this loss to write this post. Six weeks and 4 days of expecting to turn around and see his face, his tail. My heart breaks every time I walk out of the bathroom in our room and he’s not lying there waiting for me. Six weeks and four days and I am still shattered.

                Rider wasn’t “just a dog”. He was my reason. My reason to get up, my reason to make an effort at healthy, my reason to go to work, come home, shower, eat… basically my reason to live. Nothing brought joy into my life like watching his eyes light up as he danced around me with his wubba in the most adorable old man zoomies.

                It started slowly. Just a little more care when placing his paws. Rider had had femoral head removal surgery nearly a decade ago and always walked gingerly on his back paws. Like a woman in sky high heels, he balanced almost completely on the front with his back paws just touching the ground. The beginning of this year, maybe the end of last year, he started resting his back legs against each other and getting more tired more quickly. Then, it was like watching a snowball roll down a steep mountain. He stopped wanting to do 2 full loops of the complex a day. The limping began in May or June. I thought he’d pulled something going in and out his doggy door and needed a rest. Month later he had some tummy troubles and still didn’t want to walk. I assumed it was hot and he’d get there. He did maybe a half dozen full loops of the apartment complex the last 4 months of his life. In my heart, I knew in July he might not see the end of the year. I started bargaining, researching, ordering Amazon order after Amazon order of anything to give him relief, to bring back my happy old man dog with zoomies who loved adventure and exploration.

                In September he stopped enjoying car rides. From happily riding in the back seat over half the country and even out of it, to not being able to lay comfortably in the car (or even really at home) for more than an hour. We had to start leaving him in the car. We’d get out to see a roadside attraction with a little trail and he’d be in too much pain to get out of the car or walk a few hundred yards on an overlook. His last full day on earth we took him up highway 1 from Malibu to Ventura and he basked in the sun with the windows open. I couldn’t stop crying.

                The final decision was made when this proud, amazing, stubborn as hell monster peed while lying in one of his dog beds and stayed laying in it. It was all the indication we needed but we weren’t ready. Michael and I sat hugging him and crying for nearly 3 days before we gathered the courage to make the appointment to end his life. It was the worst 3 hours of waiting for the appointment followed by an hour of sheer emotional agony. Nothing prepares you for the loss of a loved one, no matter how inevitable it seems, you will never be prepared.

                I wanted to change my mind. She gave him the sedative and he tried to pull his paw away from her and I wailed. Obviously he wanted to keep going or he wouldn’t have taken his paw back. Dr. Hall said the medication is just cold. He slept then, peacefully snoring so loud I laughed. We all laughed. Remembering the vocal inflections Rider added to narrate his daily opinions on the activities of his family. This is when I started shaking. The last shot was in her pocket and I might have screamed, or maybe I only screamed in my head. Dr. Hall asked if we were ready and I wailed. I made no words, just noises and slobber as I held his paw and turned away. I couldn’t watch her kill my best friend. I remember his eyebrows twitched. She’d listened for his heart and said he was gone, but his eyebrows twitched. All my biological knowledge and I hoped it meant she was wrong and my baby survived and was well. None of it had been real. It wasn’t until I was sliding the collar off his head and he didn’t pull back to help me that I knew. My best friend was gone.

                I don’t know when I stopped crying. I wanted to drink wine but I couldn’t. I couldn’t drink anything. It was like Michael and I were sitting in a void with nothing. Not even the other was real. I woke up empty. I felt him. I expected to see him and without him there was nothing. I moved robotically through coffee and showers, but I didn’t see a point.

                That’s when the projects started. All the Rider remembrance plans and ideas to keep him with us were the line separating me from the edge of existence. If I could just hold on, make a piece of me him it would all work out. I drew a tattoo and had an appointment for application in the first 2 hours I was awake. We loaded photos, bought frames and had one hour prints by the end of the day. It felt good to be doing. When I went to work the next day, I kept doing. I told myself he would be there when I got home, compartmentalized and powered through. Until Lover by Taylor Swift came on and I fell apart, bawling at the memory of dancing with my baby dog and changing the word “Lover” to “Rider” and hating myself for this decision. I had been wrong, Rider should still be here or the world should have ended.

                A week and a half later, we were in San Antonio. The Centro de Artes had an exhibit on the Day of the Dead and I found myself staring at the depictions of the afterlife, but paintings inspired by loss and death itself held me in a trance. One painting, depicting an artist’s reaction to the mass shooting in an El Paso Walmart, had two panels. On one side was a pile of skeletons, one for each life lost, the far right skeleton leaning with its hand extended toward the right most part of the canvas. The panel on the right depicted skeletons in grief. The far left with its hand extended to the outstretched hand of the neighboring panel. You could see the grief. You could see the division. The loss and death that separated the two, thin but impenetrable by either side. Feel the despair in the framing and shaping of the bones. I couldn’t stop staring and crying and feeling the pain of my loss, knowing that it’s not just surface, loss fills your body and embeds itself in your very bones.

                Six weeks and four days and still I am lost.

                Six weeks and four days and still I look for him.

                Six weeks and four days.

I love you and I miss you Rider.