Walking Through This With Them

Grief after losing a dog, and how our companion animals move through it with us

I haven’t shared much about Loki yet, and I’m not ready to tell all of it.

But I can’t just not say anything.

The last couple of weeks have been really fucking hard. It started with my sweet dog Loki having a limp. And then it just… wasn’t that anymore.

ICU. Waiting. Hoping. Trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense.

That morning, I went there still believing I could bring him home. Like maybe I could convince them they were wrong. That this wasn’t what it looked like.

But when I got there, I knew.

I couldn’t keep putting him through it.

I loosened my grip… and I let him go.

---

After I said goodbye, I went for a walk.

I can see him everywhere.

In the grass. In the palmettos. Running the trail, hopping, head and ears up high, his tongue flopping, that big, open smile. The joy he felt being free, free in the forest.

He was always the first to greet me in the mornings, trotting down the hill, shoving his snout between my legs. We called it the parking lot. But it was more like a hug. That was his way of asking for scratches down his shoulders and back. He loved back scratches.

The barking… God, the barking. He barked at every bird. He barked all night. It became white noise. It became part of the rhythm of this place.

I’m not going to pretend it didn’t get to me sometimes. There were days it was a lot. Days I wanted quiet. But I would catch myself, soften, and remind myself, one day you’re going to miss this.

And now that day is here.

---

Since he’s been gone, everything feels… off.

Arya knew right away. She looked for him, listened for him, then looked at me. There was a question in her eyes I couldn’t answer.

Baldr… that part is harder.

Loki wasn’t just another dog in the pack. He was Baldr’s brother. His littermate. They came into this world together.

When we were loading Loki into the truck, Baldr was behind me, crying. He didn’t understand where his brother was going. I turned around, held his face, and told him, it’s okay, he’ll be back. I promise.

I didn’t keep that promise.

---

Now when we walk, everything has shifted.

Arya and Baldr used to stay on the perimeter, moving wide, doing their job, watching for anything that didn’t belong. Loki stayed with me. With us. With the smaller dogs.

He held the center.

Now they all stay close.

They follow the trails he made through the palmettos. They stop where he used to stop. They look for him.

Arya scans the horizon and cries. Baldr stays near me in a way he didn’t before.

At night, they’ve both been coming inside and sleeping in my room.

The whole rhythm of the house has changed.

---

The quiet is what gets me the most.

There used to always be sound. Movement. Barking. Life filling every corner of this place.

Now there’s space where he once was.

At night, when everything settles, I notice it the most. The absence of his voice. The absence of that constant presence I didn’t realize had become a kind of comfort.

It’s not just that he’s gone.

It’s that the space he held is still here… and empty.

It’s loud in a different way now.

---

There’s a picture I took of him that morning, before we left.
I thought we were just going in for X-rays.

He’s sitting at the edge of the pond, belly pressed into the cool mud, exactly where he loved to be. Watching. Listening. Just… being.

I remember looking at it and thinking the lighting was off. That it was too gray. Not quite right.

I almost didn’t keep it.

Now it’s perfect.

I didn’t know when I took it that it would be the last time he sat there. The last time he watched the water, the last time he rested in that place that felt like his.

And now when I walk out there, the lilies are blooming.

Bright yellow, opening up across the surface of the water.

I find myself looking at them and feeling him.

---

Loki wasn’t just part of this place.

He was part of the structure of it. A steady presence woven into the rhythm of the land, the animals, the space we all share.

I think of this home as its own kind of living organism. Every being, every movement, every relationship part of a larger system that breathes together.

Loki was a major artery in that system.

And now there is a space where that current used to move.

I feel that.

I miss him in ways I don’t even have words for. The weight of his head, the sound of his bark, the way he moved through the world like he belonged exactly where he was.

I want to wrap my arms around him again.

And at the same time…

I can still feel him here.

Not in a way that replaces him. Not in a way that makes this hurt any less. But in a way that reminds me that what he was doesn’t just disappear.

His energy still moves through this place. Through the land, through the animals, through me.

The system is different now. It has shifted. It is learning how to move without him in the way it used to.

And I think… maybe we are too.

There’s no clean way through this.

No way to make it make sense.

Just this strange, sacred space where grief and love exist together.

Where something can be gone, and still here.