Earlier this year, my childhood dog, Pepe, had to be put down. He was ancient in dog years, and his quality of life was poor. It was the right and humane thing to do, and I cried for days afterward.
I felt ridiculous for feeling unbridled grief over a pet, even though it was involuntary and objectively sad. In search of validation and comfort, I wondered if it was normal to feel grief like this over a pet.
People under 35 are more likely to consider their pets “members of the family,” according to a study published in 2022, and this fact can greatly affect the grieving process and subsequent emotional support following the death of a pet. A similar study conducted in 2020 found that people are less likely to receive substantial emotional support when a pet dies, despite exhibiting equivalent symptoms of grief to people grieving another person’s death.
In honor of my grief and loss of a once-in-a-lifetime companion, I wanted to share the story of the day I met Pepe.
Some years ago, my maternal grandma and her mother lived in a brick house on a hill on the back roads of Cartersville, Georgia. The hill was not especially steep, and the house was not particularly grand, but it was perfect and magical to a wide-eyed and insatiably curious child like me.
Each time my parents rounded the curved driveway lined with tall trees that hid the house, I pressed my face against the window to see the sturdy structure reveal itself. The scene was pictorial, complete with a thick tulip poplar in the front yard, its base usually skirted by fallen buds.
The keeper of the house, my great-grandmother, whom we simply called “Grandmother,” sat on a porch wrapped in wrought iron rails as my siblings and I stumbled over each other to escape our minivan, racing for that first hug and the first of many secret treats that she kept well stocked for our visits.
My sister is ten years older than my brother and me and went to a college close to Grandmother’s house, so we visited regularly. During one particularly uneventful Spring Break visit, my grandma took my eight-year-old brother and 10-year-old me to a park to kill an afternoon.
After we’d played and scraped our knees for some time, a strange, but friendly woman approached us with a small, white ball in her hands. My grandma spoke with the stranger while my brother and I fawned over the sweet puppy before us.
From the woman, we learned that a river behind the park had nearly swept him and his sister away. My naive heart broke as I heard the tragic tale (though in hindsight she was likely trying to get rid of the dogs, as we saw other young children play with an equally small white puppy across the playground — not to mention that neither pup was wet nor seemed traumatized by a recent brush with death).
Regardless, my brother and I loved the puppy instantly. He was white with light brown spots, including one shaped like an upside-down heart on his side. We called him Lucky and silently willed Grandmother to distract the woman with conversation, hoping to spend just a few more moments with the cutest ball of energy we’d ever seen.
To our delighted surprise and our parents’ disappointment later that afternoon, the woman abandoned us with the puppy to “check on something” and never returned. We convinced our grandma to let us bring him back and present the adorable case to our parents.
Whether we swayed them with his puppy-dog eyes or ours, our parents let us keep him. Originally called Lucky, our newest member of the family was Pepe before we made it home.
Pepe lived a long life and was deeply loved. He saw my family when it was whole and when it was not. He could do lots of tricks and loved to nap. He sat with me when I cried, seeming to know that I needed nothing more than quiet comfort. He was also annoying and needy and shed too much hair. He barked at random sounds and peed on the floor often. He was as strange and imperfect as the rest of his family, and I miss him all the time.
He passed away earlier this year at 15 years old. He was old and sickly the last time I saw him, but was still as much himself as the day that strange lady brought him to us on a random Wednesday in a random park in Cartersville. Despite the numerous days I spent and countless memories I created there, I cannot think of Grandmother’s idyllic house on the hill without thinking of the day I met Pepe.