I realize your post was over two years ago.  My westie died 5 weeks ago and I’m not doing well, I’m crushed.  I should have forced the vet to do blood work to see if they could detect Addisons disease but even the autopsy isn’t clear, she also might have been poisoned.  The vet missed it and I missed it.  I feel such sadness and guilt.  I miss her so much.  I wrote the following.

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In 2010, we adopted a 10-week-old west highland white terrier.  In hindsight, even without scaling any grand heights of self-awareness, it seemed an unashamed attempt to inject some past childhood joy into my current family.  As a child our family had a westie and I had seen how even in an often-fractious household a dog could bring a family together; indeed, our westie had been showered with affection, her photos fill childhood albums, my father even had a friend blow a glass statue of her.

So now, middle aged, married, and with two young children, my own family had a westie, and, with respect to my wife and mother-in-law’s Russian roots we named her Nika.

It is difficult to understand the bond between man and dog.   We filter everything though language and to imagine what goes on in their consciousness is perhaps wishful thinking.

So wishfully, I can only try to interpret the eager tail wags, her ears dipping and rising, the different tones of her barks, or as Russian dogs speak – “guff-guff.”  Chasing my kids around the pool, barking fiercely, that game was called “life guard” and she would not be content until the kids had jumped into the water.    And in the morning, with her banned from adult beds, she would do her rounds, scratching at the door and coming into my room, her ears pasted back, her tail wagging, and after bashfully looking to make sure my wife (who enforced the dog bed rules) had left she would put her paws up on the bed and lick my nose.  On some mornings I would pull her under the sheets and she would lie still, unseen to my wife exiting the bathroom.  Then she would clump down the stairs with me as I, still groggy with sleep, walked into the kitchen to see my daughter munching on a Nutella covered bagel.

“Car ride, car ride Nika,” my daughter would say, as Nika put her small white paws on Sophia’s chair; each morning those words sent Nika into a tizzy, thrilled to be participating in the six-minute drive to my daughter’s elementary school.  One morning Nika had been allowed in the school –  they seemed to relax the rules for twenty-pound terriers who fall in love with everyone they met – and she went into the middle of the room of grade fours and sat down, her ears flattened with joy, soon rolling over for a belly rub as children flocked to her.

And she was such a terrific mooch, she had taken dog training lessons, but nothing had ever stuck, she had never learned a trick, coming on command often seemed to be more of a case that she was going that way anyway and she had no problem with putting her paws up on your lap as you ate, asking for a morsel of “measa,” the Russian word for meat.   And my mother in law would blow on a small piece of beef, cooling it down and drop it to our waiting beast.  When I didn’t give enough meat my English challenged mother in law would say, “no scrooge, give measa!”

Frequently in the evenings I would come home late after a long commute and as I entered the dark kitchen, as the family slept or stared into a screen, I would feel the rough paws of Nika on my knees.  When I came in through the front door, I would look through the narrow rectangle of glass to see her white furry face, black nose and twitching ears looking at me, her brown eyes glistening with what I would only see as uninhibited joy.  And sometimes when I spoke to her – my daughter would chide me gently for speaking to this near mute creature – she would cock her head from side to side, desperately trying to understand my words.

Four weeks ago, I went to check on Nika in my daughter’s bed.  My daughter was up, but as our morning ritual played out sometimes Nika would sneak back onto her bed and I would go into Sophia’s room to visit our little beast.  But Nika was gone, she had passed in the early morning; she was still young at 7, cruelly taken by some unknown disease or heart failure, the pains she never was able to articulate.   I rushed her to the vet and, though she was still warm, there was no bringing her back.  I drove home, staggered to the front door, “she’s gone, she’s gone” I said.  “Haroshea sabaca,” good dog, good dog, my mother in law cried, clutching my daughter in the desperation of grief.

Having lost a mother at young age, a dear friend a year ago and other relatives I had hoped for some inoculation from the effects of grief.  But no, the house was quiet, no click, click of Nika on the kitchen tiles, no placid white face waiting patiently; all I noticed was the bottom of the kitchen door out to the backyard, the paint worn away by the gentle erosion of a small white terrier’s paw asking a thousand times to be let out to pee.

The comparison contest of griefs is futile, surely yes, she was not as treasured as most wives or children, any day’s newspaper tells of stories which would certainly trounce my grief.  But Nika was with me and they are thankfully “there”.  So, in the days following her death, there was always a tinge of embarrassment when I met inquiries into my wellbeing with, “my dog died.” And certainly, now four weeks on, society accords me no more tears, it’s of course well known that Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ stages should gobble up no more than a half day each and emotions lasting longer than a few days is nothing more than bourgeois indulgences.

But all I know is that the space at the end of the couch is unfilled, the window by the door now clear, the landing on the staircase is empty, no longer guarded by the little westie who would sit waiting to bestow on her family her endless affections.