It is the fate of every dog parent that they will sooner or later (hopefully later) come to realize just how much their dog has been a blessing in their life.
If you are lucky, you will come to this realization in the midst of your daily walks together, while you feed them, or even when cleaning up after your dog’s less gracious moments of explosive diarrhea (#truestory).
Then there is the other more difficult ways to realize your dog’s life is a blessing.
Perhaps, you learned this leason by being witness to your dog’s body and will to live be eaten away in a slow burn by an unseen fiend — which is what is happening for me.
This is the story of how Georgy, a fourteen year old Black Miniature Schnauzer, taught me five of the most important lessons in my life.
But first, a little bit of context...
Soulmates are Real
On a fateful day during the summer of 2006, I found myself driving back to New Mexico with the new puppy I had purchased because I was looking to fill a void in my psyche left behind by brutal heartbreak.
This little dog is Georgy, a fourteen-year-old, twenty-pound Miniature Schnauzer with thick, shiny, wavy, black hair. Or at least that is what he looked like for the better part of the last fourteen years. Today, he looks a little bit more like a giant radioactive rat (and I say this with a smile on my face and all the love I did not know I could feel in my heart).
The day I picked him up, I looked down into the kennel where he sat in the very back. He was scared, and having just left the safety of the world he knew for a new an uncertain future, he had been crying for some time.
But, in the split second that our eyes locked with one another, he stopped crying, and we both just knew.
“This little guy and I… we’re meant to be together.”
This is why I believe that people who don’t believe that “soulmates” exist have never met one of their own or had a similar experience.
What happened in that moment was that, in a nutshell, I saw the future.
I recognized his soul and I just knew that this tiny dog I had in front of me was to be an integral part of my development as a human being. I knew then as I know now, that the fourteen years we walked through this world together, are to go down in my memory as some of the best years of my life because he was there with me.
Yeah… I’m like the crazy Schnauzer lady.
I like to think that our bond is something that goes beyond his biological need for survival as a domesticated animal entirely dependent on me to survive. I truly and whole-heartedly know that in that moment when we first met, our souls recognized one another from “beyond the veil”.
A Dog’s Will to Live
Perhaps nothing speaks to the bond that we have quite like the journey he’s had.
Georgy has survived two near-death experiences, including being mauled by a much larger dog, and anaphylactic shock that led to cardiac arrest; he has also been bitten by a poisonous snake, and had spinal surgery for a herniated disk that to this day makes it painful for him to walk.
When it comes to odds, believe it or not, only approximately 5% of dogs who experience cardiac arrest survive. Similarly, when he was mauled by that other dog ten years ago, the veterinarians who treated him considered it a miracle that he survived the attack.
They called him “the miracle dog”.
So when his veterinarian delivered the news in early November of 2019 — Cutaneous Lymphoma, only 5% of dog cancers, incurable, chemo, with its $7,000 price tag, only stops it temporarily; well, I was utterly heartbroken to say the least.
Here was the death sentence of the being whose unconditional love I had taken for granted.
With that, “my love is leaving me” sort of became my mantra for some time.
Since then, I’ve cried because I’m sad. I’ve cried because I’m grateful. I’ve cried because he’s dying, and I’ve cried because he’s alive.
With the deep grief that I have come to know and experience through this whole ordeal have also come the following five life lessons that have changed my life for the better.
1. Deeper, Greater Gratitude
Before this whole cancer diagnosis situation, I thought I knew what gratitude was.
Gratitude has become a buzz word in the personal development and spirituality niches. You cannot go a hundred steps without coming across an Instagram influencer wearing a tight and scandalous bikini as she tells you about how grateful she is for her amazing life.
Unfortunately, there are few experiences in life that teach you about gratitude quite as profoundly as loosing that something or someone you love.
When that happens, gratitude is no longer a concept of the mind. Gratitude then goes beyond what you think you’re grateful for.
When you are truly grateful, that list of things you are grateful for that you should be writing down every morning according to every “spiritual” Youtube guru and their mom’s list of “ten spiritual principles you must apply to your daily life” — that list takes on a whole new meaning.
What I am experiencing now is a deeper, greater sense of gratitude. This is felt gratitude, the kind that makes your soul cry with joy and dissolves your mind of any preconceived notion you might have about anything.
Every moment spent in Georgy’s company, now that he’s still around three months post diagnosis, is a gift. This is especially true not knowing if he’ll be around tomorrow.
2. Time is an Illusion
That said, my relationship to time has also changed.
Before the diagnosis I went through a couple of months where I struggled to keep up with the pace of life around me. When all I wanted was to move with the urgency of a sloth crossing the street, life around me demanded the opposite.
Before I knew it, yet another year had gone by.
The thing about learning a loved one is dying is that you start appreciating more the little bit of time you do have together. It forces you to be mindful and to slow down and smell the roses, if you will.
Above all, with time on my side, I realized I get to spend another day with Georgy. As a result, everything has sort of slowed down for me despite life continuing to move at unrelenting and furious speed.
3. A Renewed Focus on What Truly Matters
I was born under the auspicious transit of Venus through the sign of Pisces, where she is exalted. And while this transit might manifest in a variety of ways, for me it manifests in a love for art and all things beautiful.
That said, Georgy’s cancer is not beautiful.
Without going into too much detail, he has ulcerated sores throughout his body. Some of them ooze and bleed slightly from time to time.
While I would not allow him on the bed with me for the longest time since the sores started oozing, I eventually gave in.
What are a couple of dirty blankets compared to not having my dearest friend near me after all?
When it comes down to it, the laundry bill will be under $5 but Georgy’s life is priceless.
I also realized that I did not care as much about other neuroses that I engage in in my daily life — things like the pointless inner-squabble with my noisy upstairs neighbors, or obsessing over my most recent love interest.
It all stopped mattering so much in favor for the desire for the inner-peace and mindfulness required to make the most out of our time together.
4. Everything in Life is Temporary
Knowing that Georgy could die any day now, I have become fearful that everything that is good in my life, everything that I hold dear and near to my heart, will one day too be taken from me.
In the end, everything in life is temporary.
When you go through your daily life watching your best friend’s body deteriorate and there is not a single thing you can do about it other than offer your full unconditional love, you realize just how pointless trying to exert control is.
With that said, the realization comes that I have a choice at every moment to decide how I experience my life.
Will I choose gratitude or will I choose fear? After all, this too shall pass.
5. Georgy’s Cancer is Beautiful
Cancer has gotten a bad rap.
And to be fair, why wouldn’t it? It cuts lives short, it destroys bodies, and empties our pockets of our hard-earned money.
But if we take a second and allow ourselves to look at cancer as a gift, as a sort of cursed blessing, we might just see the life that is born anew from the devastation that cancer leaves in its wake.
Had cancer not broken my heart open, would I have access to the depths of love and gratitude that I now feel? This is ultimately what makes Georgy’s cancer beautiful.
Do I want Georgy to die because he has cancer? Absolutely not.
But when it’s all said and done, all I know is that I would do it all over again in a heartbeat if it means more time with Georgy.
Back in 2006, I might have purchased a puppy in an attempt to fill a void. Today, I know better, but must admit I am a better person because Georgy has walked alongside me throughout the last fourteen years.
With that comes the realization that the time we have in the company of our loved ones is borrowed time.
This begs that we commit to ask ourselves every single day: “How will we choose to experience the time that we do have?”
