This week, I said goodbye to Chloe, my thirteen-year-old labradoodle. She was mine from the day she arrived as a puppy, and for the last four and a half years she has been ours, shared with my partner. I want to write about her, and about what she is teaching me now: that we can love completely, feel the full weight of sadness, and keep living fully.
Chloe came into my life because my ex-husband wanted a dog. He said it would get me ready for children. That marriage taught me a great deal. It came at a high price, but it was what I needed to go through to become the person I am today. I prepared for her arrival the way I prepare for everything: I read five books and watched every Cesar Millan video I could get my hands on. There was a dog called Chloe on the show, and I liked the name. I had considered Chewy, until someone said "oh, Chewbacca!" and that ruined it for me. Chloe just felt right. Together, she and I went through moving countries, a divorce and Covid. I lived alone during Covid, but I never felt lonely, because I had her by my side.
She was a master communicator without ever saying a word. Every night, as I finished brushing my teeth, she would lift her head, waiting for me to come into the bedroom and brush hers. If I forgot, she gave me a look: you're forgetting something, my teeth. Thirty to sixty minutes before feeding time, she would start asking for food, sometimes with a long stare. And whether I had been at the gym for an hour or in central London all day, she wagged her tail so happily when I came home. We had a chair that fit just the two of us, where she curled up next to me while I read or meditated. When we moved and the chair didn't fit into the new house, she simply moved to the sofa. It's a small one that only really fits two people, and she would happily take one half while my partner and I squeezed into the other. We all knew she was the princess of the house. My partner jokes that he has now moved up the totem pole. He always knew he was sharing me with her, and that she had got there first. Wherever I was, she was close by, a loving presence at my side.
She taught me to let go of perfection, to loosen up and live a little. I used to be very uptight about shoes in the house and dirt, and when she was a puppy I washed her paws after every walk. With her, I learned to relax a little more each year. By her last weeks, I didn't care that there were diarrhoea stains on my duvet because the wipes had run out. Being with her mattered far more. She also taught me never to complain. She had arthritis for years, and on Tuesday we found out she had cancer. Through all of it, right to the end, she kept wagging her tail. She never felt sorry for herself.
Near the end, I asked her to give me a sign when it was time, and she did. One day she was perky; the next she was exhausted and barely eating. She'd had diarrhoea for almost two weeks, and we realised it wasn't something medication was going to fix. It was the cancer. She was struggling to stand, partly from the arthritis, but partly because the cancer was growing near her legs. On the day we let her go, she rallied. She walked for a bit and wanted to eat again. She threw it up half an hour later, but it was lovely to see her want to eat. I was grateful for that rally, and I also knew it was time. I wanted to let her go before she suffered more, while she was still as much Chloe as possible. And she was. I had worried the needle would stop her from eating, but she was far too busy chomping on a treat to notice. That was how her head rested for the last time.
So now, the grief. I am sad, and I'm letting myself be sad. I put everything on hold for a few days to spend all my time with her and then to let her go. But resilience, I'm learning, isn't about choosing between the love and the sadness and getting on with life. It's holding all of it at once. Not being a robot, and not being so sad that I can't get out of bed to seize the day and do the work I love. Chloe lived fully and in the moment right up to her last breath. That is what she would want from me. And it is how I want to honour her, and life itself.
It's a love story that is hard to describe unless you have had one with an animal, and I know not everyone will understand it. But the gift lives on in me for as long as I have breath in my body. I used to tell her all the time: thank you for loving me, thank you for letting me love you.
Thank you, Chloe.
