Bear
We lost Bear very suddenly on Thursday. He filled our lives with love and drool for almost 11 years; his barks and snores filling the quiet in betweens, and now he’s not here anymore. I had another piece drafted to post this weekend, but in light of the absolute shit week it’s been on this side of the computer it didn’t feel right. So in the drafts it will sit for another while, and this one will simply be a meandering, memory filled ode to my boy.
We got Bear in November of 2014. We met him when he was only 4 weeks old, the only one in his litter to get his (Chocolate Lab) mom’s sharp eyes and his (Bernese Mountain Dog) dad’s fur and eyebrows. He had short little legs, smiled at us as he tumbled around, and snuggled into our arms perfectly. We picked him up two weeks later, and he came home sitting on my lap, where he stayed (on and off) until just three days ago.
We had lost our previous dog, Radar, just a month before getting Bear. Radar was my childhood dog – the runt of her litter, and cautious of everyone except us. I remember the day we brought her home, I was at a playdate and my parents and sister went ‘just to look’ and picked me up later with dog in tow. My best friend Lexi and I both hopped in the car and we played with Radar for the rest of the day, drawing pictures of her family and putting them up on the walls when a thunderstorm that evening frightened her. She was a staple of our house, and though we wondered how we would get another dog, the house felt unbearably empty without her. So, not long after, I found Bear (on Kijiji of all places!) and he became ours.
Everyone loved Bear. His deep gaze and penchant for lying between the kitchen island and whatever stool was occupied, so your feet were warmed on his back, endeared him to even those wary of big dogs. When he was little, people thought he was a Rottweiler mix, and his bark was deep, loud, and could easily have been scary for anyone who didn’t know him. But the truth is that he was an angel; a big softie who would run into the dog park and immediately roll over on his back submissively to show the other dogs he was just happy to be there. He was so tiny at first that my dad once pulled him out of a gofer hole, and in those first few weeks he would often fall asleep in our arms or on my lap. Once I watched him wake up from a nap in my mom’s office, where he spent most of the first few weeks of his life. He got up from his bed, tumbled forward to his water dish — which was only 2 feet away — and fell asleep again before he even got there. He was gentle and silly and always wanted to be close to us. We worried that he would be sad when we had to go out and leave him, so we picked up Tedde, his half sister, a month later. We wanted them to always have each other, and they did.
While Tedde is pure love and joy and chaos incarnate, Bear was gentle, sensitive and anxious. It was often joked about around our house that not only was he my emotional support dog, but I was his emotional support human. He liked to sleep in my bed and, in the last year as he got older and the stairs became slightly more daunting, I would often lie on the couch in the dark with him before going up to bed. And still, sometimes, he would follow. His snoring helped me sleep, and waking up in the early dawn hours to see him puppy dreaming and kicking the air made me feel like everything was alright. On his last night with us I slept on the floor beside him in the kitchen, lying awake and listening to his breathing. It feels awful and cruel that the days of feeling his weight on me as he curls up and snores, making me unable to move until he decides it’s time to wake up, are over. I burst into tears every few minutes now. We all do.
I don’t want to talk at length about the last couple of days of his time with us, because they are heartbreaking and I’d rather think about all the good, but saying that losing him came out of nowhere is an understatement. A month ago our girl Tedde was in the hospital and we thought we were about to lose her. We spent days going to and from the doggie-ICU and encouraging her to eat. She had scans and went through surgery and had a feeding tube. She went from the dog that was always zooming around, overjoyed and begging for attention to not even wagging her tail for a week. Finally she did eat, and she did wag her tail, and she began to recover like a champ. We worried about Bear when she was in the hospital, because they’ve hardly ever been apart. He’s always been the perfect big brother to her pestering little sister. He always wagged his tail when Tedde got attention and she would defend him at the park if some dog decided to pick on Bear. One of our neighbours said that Bear stuck around long enough to make sure she was ok, and would be there for us, and that does feel like a very Bear thing to do.
One of Bear’s favourite places in the whole world was a cabin in rural Quebec. We went just two weeks after Tedde’s surgery, about a month ago, and I’m so thankful we did. We’ve been to Quebec countless times over the years. Spring, summer and fall, we would bring the dogs and they would be overjoyed. Once, we opened the back of the car and before we knew it Bear leapt out and raced down a cliff-like-hill and into the lake. They got to roam around in lakes and woods and see mountains and changing fall colours. Looking back, I am so happy we chose to take the time and go this summer. We of course had no idea it would be Bear’s last time there, and I find myself looking back on the photos and thinking back on the days with enormous gratitude. He swam every day and cuddled with me on the couch and saw some of his favourite people and ate pizza crusts and dirt. It’s hard to think of him not getting to be there anymore. It will be incredibly hard the next time we go to not just sob every minute.
Loving a dog is both the easiest thing in the world and one of the hardest. It is time consuming and yet you never get enough time. It is rewarding and heartbreaking, choosing to receive that big, unconditional love and choosing to be broken apart in the end. Bear made it so easy to love him from the second we saw him, so of course it was shattering in the end to say goodbye. I’ve been driving around a lot in the last couple of days, blasting music and crying. Neko Case’s Magpie to the Morning has been shuffled in there several times, and one line always gets right in between my ribs and straight to my heart. He laughed under his breath because you thought you could outrun sorrow. It’s harsh but it is how it all goes, I’m afraid. There will never be enough time for any of it, and that’s just how it is. It is frightening and awful, feeling such sorrow and pain when we lose something we love so dearly. It would be so much easier to never let yourself feel so much in the first place, but then of course, what would the point of it all be? It’s terrifying to open yourself up, because if you open yourself to love you are also susceptible to pain. But hurting so much is the price we pay for loving so deeply. The pain means that we gave it our all, that the love was, and is, real. Because like energy, I think love can’t be destroyed. The love we have for those around us never leaves us – it can morph, and change, and grow and stretch and crack, sure, but when we lose someone that love doesn’t just disappear. It’s still here, and it always will be, and that makes me feel a little better about it all I suppose.
Bear was the sweetest boy. His ears were velvet and his paws smelled like Smartfood cheesy popcorn. He was my roommate and crooked tooth twin. My soul dog, who every time I looked at him would already be looking at me. He had the most perfect golden brown eyes and brown all through his black coat so it shimmered in the sun. He had a tiny tuft of white on his chest, often buried underneath thicker, darker hair, and a speck on his nose and spots on his gums. If he ever accidentally stepped on your foot, he noticed right away and never put his full weight down. He had white fur on the end of his chin that grew to grey in the past few years. If he really loved you, he would press his head against your shin and wrap a paw around your leg. He would growl in a way that seemed like he was talking. He had tiny round brown eyebrows. He would put his mouth around your arm if he was excited to see you – he wouldn’t press down or bite, he’d just hold your hand. He was scared of thunderstorms and fireworks but not of the vacuum, and he was excellent at catching popcorn midair. He loved swimming and digging and running and sleeping. He loved drinking coffee. He made everyone feel like they had a special connection with him, and they all did, because he was just that kind of dog. My friend rerouted a trip and drove from Vermont to give me a hug when I told her. Another friend drove across town to deliver flowers and bread. Neighbours dropped off flowers and cried for him. A contractor who has worked at our house and along the street cried when he heard. He was magic, and there will never be another boy as big and lionhearted and sweet and goofy and loud and as good as him.
