Hope 💔 Why Do Dogs Leave Us Too Soon

<p> Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, the show that's here in support of the person you're becoming and your quest to live a meaningful life. And today, I'm hoping you'll just join me by taking a deep breath in and a slow releasing breath out. I wanna talk to you about Hope. Not the emotion, but our dog, Hope.</p>
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<p>She recently passed away. So today I also wanna talk with you about grief. I've tried to record this already a few times, and each time I break down, and I'll probably do so in this recording as well. And if you're an animal lover, you might join me. So if you hear my voice cracking or my sniffles, it's all part of it.</p>
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<p>After all, we're all perfectly imperfect. Except for Hope. She was perfect. She was the type of dog that would meet people who would say they don't like dogs, but then they fell in love with dogs, all because of Hope. Hope was 16. She was an English Springer Spaniel. She came to live with us 10 years ago.</p>
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<p>She used to live on the farm my wife grew up on in Oregon. In the morning, we got her from the flight from Portland to Newark. As we were driving home, she was sitting on my wife's lap, but then she walked over to me as I was driving and got into my lap. The rest, my friends, is history. I loved her so much.</p>
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<p>Throughout our marriage, we've always had Springer Spaniels, and my wife would always say they were the perfect breed for me. They were so very hopeful. You see, there's a difference between hope and optimism. With hope, you take action to create the future that you wish for, that you hope for. So Hope had the perfect name for the perfect breed for me.</p>
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<p>Nearly two years ago, at the age of 14, during the evening of election day 2024 Hope developed something called bloat, which is rare to get with a dog Hope's size. The condition is life-threatening, and without immediate surgery, emergency surgery, dogs will pass away from it because it twists the GI tract So that rainy night, I drove her up to the emergency vet.</p>
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<p>The vet told me what was involved, and she said, "Hey, this is an expensive surgery. Hope is an old girl. Do you really wanna do the surgery?" And I told her, "Hope doesn't die tonight Of course, that sentence had a lot in it. I wasn't just talking about hope. I was talking about a lot of things. In a lot of ways, we were hopeful.</p>
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<p>But I was like, "Hope is not passing away now." I wasn't ready. And somehow that girl pulled through I wasn't ready back then to lose her, and even though her body was tired and it was her time, last week I wasn't ready to lose her either. I'm not really sure when or where I heard this or actually read this Someone shared, "Dogs don't break our hearts by mistake.</p>
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<p>They break them by design And all this year, my heart has been slowly breaking until we had to make the tough decision to compassionately put her down. Then my heart really broke And before I go on, I should say that we're a household of animal lovers. We love cats and we love dogs, although I tend to be more of a dog person than a cat person.</p>
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<p>But last month we also lost-- Actually, my youngest lost one of her cats suddenly, and that sudden loss has a different type of pain, but still a significant amount of pain Hope's decline was gradual through our difficult winter and just her age. That gradual decline also hurts. And we, as lovers of animals, when we bring them into our household, into our family, know that we will most likely outlive them.</p>
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<p>Now, cats are a little bit different. I think maybe their love could be conditional. Who knows? I don't know. That's a little bit of our joke in our household. Again, we love cats But with Hope, with all of our dogs, they don't calculate love. They're not keeping score. Now, I will say with Springer Spaniels, that song that says, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with," definitely comes to mind.</p>
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<p>I do believe if a complete stranger had a big steak, they might love that complete stranger. But Hopey girl She didn't measure it. She just showed up loving. She was so gentle and patient. Again, she was the type of dog that would meet people who would proclaim, "I don't like dogs," and she would win them over.</p>
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<p>And they're like, "Oh, I didn't realize a dog could be as good as Hope." And a few of them actually now have dogs in their house, which years ago I never thought that would happen. I'm talking about some of our friends. We perfectly imperfect humans as we are, and I'm including myself in what I'm about to say next, it's pretty easy for us to put conditions on our love, and we have a tendency of keeping score.</p>
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<p>I'll open up if you open up. I'll meet you halfway if you meet me halfway. Last week, I took out the recycling. Now it's your turn Often we have a playbook that actually prevents us from truly connecting with other perfectly imperfect humans. Hope never had a playbook. She just showed up loving with presence And as you know, I use Kintsugi here as a metaphor.</p>
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<p>And I feel our Kintsugi wisdom can be helpful in moments of loss, moments of grief. Maybe it's just me, but Kintsugi teaches us that as we try to build or create a meaningful life, it doesn't come trying to pretend that we're not hurting or we have never had moments where we feel the suffering of something breaking, like our hearts.</p>
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<p>A meaningful life comes from loving without the armor, without the protection It comes from showing up fully Like Hope did. Some of my favorite memories with her were during our evening walks. We would go down to the field, and she would flush the geese, and when she circled back, she had this big grin on her face as she's panting due to her chase.</p>
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<p>Or how she rode shotgun in our RV as I cycled across America from Astoria, Oregon, to Washington, D.C. in 2022, and my wife drove our RV that we called Maisie. She had the windows down, and the air would flap her gorgeous ears, and she would snuggle up in our RV bed. Cruise America claimed it was a queen-size bed.</p>
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<p>It wasn't a queen-size bed, but Hopey was right there, and it was nearly impossible to get out of bed based on which side of the bed my wife and I prefer. Hope was right there in the center, and I found myself getting up at least once each night because between 4:00 and 9:00 I was really drinking a lot.</p>
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<p>So I knew each night I had to get up, and she was just right there She was simply just being right there. She's not there now I wanted to be there</p>
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<p>Grief is a funny thing It surprises all of us. We never know how it's going to feel until we're going through it. And we all grieve in our own way. My daughters are grieving Hope's loss in their way. My wife is carrying her loss in her way, and I'm getting through this in my way. There's no right way and there's no timeline.</p>
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<p>So if you're going through something, if you're grieving, be true to who you are. Offer yourself some grace. Don't think you're going too slowly or going too quickly. Don't let anyone else judge you for the grief you are dealing with right now. Don't let anyone say, "You should get over it. Move on. Let it go."</p>
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<p>Grief hurts. It is an emotion that makes up a meaningful life. So often we try to cling on to all the good emotions, and we try to push away all the bad ones. It's natural. We're human, after all. But the way to get to who you're becoming, the way to create a meaningful life, is to open up and feel all the feels, as the kids would say.</p>
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<p>Feel all the emotions. Each emotion is teaching us something. Even this month of May, it's been some very high emotional pinnacles, some great speaking engagements for me professionally. People seem to enjoy the new series, A Perfectly Imperfect Union, that I'm presenting, and I started this month. So there are so many wonderful highs.</p>
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<p>We celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary. We celebrated Mother's Day, and I think, actually, I know my wife is an awesome sauce mom. But we've also had emotional valleys, like losing Hope. That's the deepest one. That's the one that hurts the most. But this whole month of May, it's all of life. Life be lifing, as they say.</p>
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<p>This is how we live a meaningful life, by opening up and not clinging to anything in particular. Some people might say, "Michael, like, come on, Hope was just a dog." And if you feel that way, please call. I'd love to share more with you about Hope. Or I might just smile and nod and say, "Yeah, maybe you're right."</p>
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<p>But inside I'll be thinking, "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You don't know me. You don't really know what I'm feeling, and I don't know how you're feeling." No one does. That's why I think it's pretty funny when someone says, "Oh my God, I know exactly how you're feeling." Uh, oh my God, no, you don't.</p>
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<p>You don't. The only person that knows how they're feeling is the person experiencing the feelings. The grief we feel for an animal isn't smaller than, say, a human or any other form of grief. For most of us, the grief we feel is some of the purest grief or most honest grief that we'll ever carry. It's funny, as I'm recording this, our other puppy, Story...</p>
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<p>Actually, she's no longer a puppy. She is three years old. Just popped in to where I do my recordings. She can tell. She can tell that Mom and Dad are hurting, that Mom and Dad are, are sad. And the interesting thing is, is that the bond that we have with Story and the one that we had with Hope and all the other animals that have been part of our home, the bond that we created with them was never built on words It was built on simply being there.</p>
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<p>From the sound that Hope's paws would make on our wood floors, or how she would nestle into you and just put the weight of her head on your lap and look up, almost saying, but obviously not saying, um, "You can pet me now." Or how she would pace when she just knew it was time for dinner. I've definitely wondered sometimes if dogs secretly know how to read a clock.</p>
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<p>And when all of that is gone, life feels a bit more empty. You lose a way of being in life as you go through the grief. One of the truths, or maybe it's a mantra I live by, is that tomorrow is never promised to anyone. For us humans, for all creatures, and even the ones that share our homes.</p>
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<p>And since tomorrow is never promised, how essential it is to make sure the people in your life know that you love them. It's a way to make sure that we don't take life and those around us for granted. Hope's life was much shorter than I wanted it to be, but she lived 16 years, which is pretty long for a Springer Spaniel.</p>
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<p>She gave us 10 years of unconditional love, and in my book, that's pretty extraordinary I could go on and on, but I don't wanna make this episode too terribly long. This is already longer than most of the episodes I share with you. So I'll share these last two points. Wherever you happen to be, if you're dealing with grief, whether you're in the middle of it right now like I am, or you're carrying an older loss, or you're afraid of a loss that is coming.</p>
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<p>I want you to know that you are not alone in all of this. Some say grief is love that doesn't know where to go yet, but it will find its way. Slowly, perhaps, but it will find its way. And our Kintsugi spirit isn't one that pretends we don't have moments when we feel like we're breaking. I know it's popular out there in the internet to say that you're not broken.</p>
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<p>I translate that as "we are all worthy." That said, we all go through traumatic events. 70% of us will. Actually, 90% of us will. 70% of us will go through more than one event. I can confidently say I'm in the 70% group. And when we go through something, when we're hurting, we can find a way to heal, to come back together. These moments do shape us in a way.</p>
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<p>When we welcome all the different emotions, all the different emotions shape us in some form or fashion As I mentioned earlier, they lead to us creating a meaningful life, one where we're not clinging to things or pushing the unpleasant away, but rather we open up to all of it. So again, if you're going through something, I hope you offer yourself grace as you do.</p>
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<p>And as I mentioned upfront, when I told Hope's vet when she had bloat and needed an emergency surgery, when I said, "We're doing the surgery because Hope, Hope's not dying tonight," unfortunately, Hope in her physical form has passed, but her spirit lives on. Her energy lives on So I remain hopeful. And with hope, we take action.</p>
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<p>We don't just fall into despair. No, that's not what we do. We remain hopeful even though it's hard to find signs, but they're there. And we can start by how we show up for one another, how we connect and listen to each other, how we extend grace to one another. We can take action that helps others believe in hope It almost reminds me of all those people who said, "I don't like dogs," or maybe in today's world, "I don't feel hope," until they met Hope, and then they fell in love with dogs.</p>
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<p>And if we can show up with Hope's spirit and energy, then maybe all those people who don't feel hope can start to feel hope, and that creates a positive ripple effect.</p>
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<p>So I've gone on long enough. If you're still with me, thanks for listening. I'm gonna go grab a few Kleenexes, and I also wanna thank you for listening and being part of our Peloton. I hope you'll listen to our new series, A Perfectly Imperfect Union, where I'm interviewing everyday Americans like you who are making a positive ripple in the world, and I've been asking them for their reflections as America turns 250.</p>
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<p>So I hope you'll check it out. And a little note here as we finish up. It's dinner time here in our household, at least for our animals. As I mentioned, Story came up as I was recording this because she's feeling the feel. She knows that Mom and Dad are a little bit off, but right now it's dinner time here for her.</p>
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<p>As soon as she heard her food being prepared, she bolted out of this room. So I guess she has maybe a condition on her love. It's whoever's going to feed her next. But, you know, I find that funny. I'm not sure if you do. All right. Time to, uh, move on to our next thing. Until our next episode, let's remember to celebrate our scars as golden symbols of our strength and resilience.</p>
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<p>And don't forget to have fun storming the castle.</p>
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<p>And if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, michaelobrienshift.com, and sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect. And join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient, and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.</p>
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<p>Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this, and we've got you</p>