"We Were Meant For Each Other"

Kara and Tallulah's Story

Hello Nancy and Ken,

Thank you for providing solace to grieving pet owners like myself through The Pet Loss Companion podcast. I've been listening to episodes for the last three days to find some measure of comfort. I'd like to share the story of my sweet Luly dog, partly to commemorate her and partly in hopes that someone who has lost their dog in a similarly tragic way will know that they are not alone in this immeasurable grief.

In April of 2023 my son and I lost our beloved cat Pilgrim. We had found her on the street when my son was not even a year old so the two of them grew up together. He had never known life without his Pilgs (her story could be an entirely other podcast!) At 16, we had to put her down due to kidney failure. It was incredibly sad, but we found an angel of a vet who came to our house to euthanize her. It was gentle and loving and gave us closure with our beautiful cat. Of course we cried and cried and I still miss her. But it's incredible how we still feel her presence in our lives, like she is still with us.

Fast forward a couple weeks. I'd been wanting a dog for some time; I like to hike in the White Mountains of NH alone, and was looking for a four-legged hiking companion. I hadn't owned a dog in 10 years, and it felt like when I had finished grieving for Pilgrim that maybe we could welcome a dog into our home. I browsed on Petfinder looking to adopt a rescue a month or three down the road. And then I found a photo of this adorable pup with floppy ears. She was a mostly black dog and I'd read that black dogs are harder to place in homes. She was currently at a shelter in the south of the U.S., and the shelter arranged a Zoom call for me to virtually meet her. She stole my heart instantly. She would tilt her head to one side when I spoke to her...did I mention the floppy ears? A week later, I picked her up at a designated stop, and we bonded instantly. Love at first sight. Tallulah (Lu) would follow me around the house everywhere, she wanted to be next to me at all times when she first arrived. And that's what I wanted, too. 

So for a far too short year and a half we had an incredibly happy life. She was just the right amount of naughty to be hilarious, but also incredibly sweet. We lived on a boarding school campus, and she was surrounded by students and other dogs, so she developed into a very social little creature. She was also an excellent hiking companion; I could hike with her off-leash because she had perfect recall (the result of carrying hot dogs on many many hikes when she first came to me. Just the word "hot dog" and she would quickly run to me.) We spent hours hiking the campus trails, Lu always with the biggest stick she could carry in her mouth. She never bothered other hikers, never bothered other dogs that we'd encounter unless they expressed interest first. She was perfect. I have of course a thousand stories I could tell, about her warm brown eyes and funny little eyebrows, about how when she slept pressed up against my legs my insomnia would disappear, about how she'd greet me each day with her tail wagging so fiercely that her back end would dance off the floor, with a toy in her mouth to share with me. She was my perfect dog. I always said that we were meant for each other. When my son left me with an empty nest, we both knew it would be okay because I had Lu to be my companion.

Please note that the following section is graphic. It's my attempt to exorcise this scene from my head. It plays through a thousand times a day.

On October 9th I arrived home on a perfect autumn day. She greeted me in the above