Pawprints on my heart ❤️🐾

Furever ♥️🐾

This is my FB post earlier. Edited for this blog post.

I can’t remember when you weren’t there
When I didn’t care
For anyone but you
I swear
We’ve been through everything there is
Can’t imagine anything we’ve missed
Can’t imagine anything the two of us can’t do
Through the years, you’ve never let me down
You’ve turned my life around
The sweetest days I’ve found,
I’ve found with you
Through the years, I’ve never been afraid
I’ve loved the life we’ve made
And I’m so glad I stayed
Right here with you
Through the years ♥️

Look at that happy face!! I got to see and kiss that face day after day, year after year for so long. ♥️ This is us in March 2020 when he was around 13 years old and still going strong. Today at sixteen years old, we said our last goodbye. I held onto him, and he held onto me with his legs and rested his head against me as I told him I love him and always will. I never knew such pain or how my body was strong enough to endure. (Actually I have because I have lost many before, but each one is new and unique/challenging in its own way, and this is one of the more challenging ones, I have a few like that, who make it especially painful to say goodbye, they are equally sad at the core, and I love them equally no matter how long I have known them, but various aspects/layers/factors/nuances just make some more difficult). I am so so honored and thankful I got to know and love him and for as long as I did.

My furever love 🐾♥️💔♥️🐾

I’m sending all my love to his family who were kind enough to let me be part of their family as his nanny, all those years, and to let him have his last walk ever on Earth, with me.

We also met a kind stranger recently with his dog experiencing the same situation soon who loved him and said unfortunately we all have to cross the rainbow bridge at some point. I found it comforting how he expressed sadness but also acceptance, it’s just the way it is but still so heartbreaking. We saw him again today in our park. ♥️

This is our last goodbye picture this morning. I held him during his last hour. I’m honored that his family let me.

🐾❤️

I have been disoriented with grief and keep rereading this checking for grammar/spelling/autocorrect errors, but just can’t seem to register anything, so not sure if it’s full of mistakes or anything.

This is the worst pain I ever experienced in this life. I know it’s going to heal even though it won’t go away, heal to where it won’t constantly be this heavy anymore and will eventually become more mellow and not constantly throbbing, the worst of it will come in waves and creep up on occasion then go back to the more mellow bearable kind (I know because I have loved and lost many through the years). But at this moment, I cannot imagine ever getting to that point as this pain now is all encompassing every second, throbbing relentlessly. I have never experienced grief or pain of any kind worse than this. Nothing has ever weighed more heavy on my body. I cannot even stand up straight.

I lost not just my boy, but our whole everyday routine, all the places and routines that were just “ours,” and that part of this life of mine is over. I can never walk those streets again without a bittersweetness. Our park that was just “ours” will bring me pain along with joy.

But I am so so thankful for our years together and love we shared. ♥️🐾

♥️🐾

This experience isn’t something I am experiencing as bad or negative, just neutral, just part of living. But it’s so so so painful.

Sending love to all who are in pain of any kind ♥️

Xoxo Kim

I’ll think of Summer days again…and dream of you ♥️💔♥️🐾☀️

♥️

“Trees swayin’ in the summer breeze
Showin’ off their silver leaves
As we walked by
… Soft kisses on a summer’s day
Laughing all our cares away
Just you and I
… Sweet sleepy warmth of summer nights
Gazing at the distant lights
In the starry sky
… They say that all good things must end someday
Autumn leaves must fall
But don’t you know
That it hurts me so
To say goodbye to you
… Wish you didn’t have to go
No, no, no, no,
And when the rain
Beats against my window pane
I’ll think of summer days again
And dream of you” 💔♥️💔♥️

This is the cutest thing. 😍

Tomorrow morning we say our last goodbye to our sweet boy. 💔♥️ He is sixteen years old and has been declining for a while now. We were sitting in the park together that we have walked for many years night and morning, through all the changing seasons. I was holding him against me with my head resting on his, never wanting to let him go. I looked down and saw his little legs resting here on my coffee cup and found it adorable. 🥰♥️ I’m so glad I got the opportunity to have this picture. My whole body is so heavy with grief, and every inch of it is throbbing in physical pain, head to toe, I never felt grief so physically like this. I can hardly stand and am like a zombie and disoriented for much of the days. I don’t even know or care what’s going on around me. Gutted is the word that keeps coming to mind. But I felt the love and joy sitting here together in the gentle Spring breeze in our favorite park. ♥️🐾 And I know he felt it too.

I love you my baby, furever and for always, xoxo 😘

Sending love…

Xoxo Kim ♥️

Saying goodbye to a furever friend ♥️💔🐾

This is my FB post a few days ago. I am gutted. This is absolutely the most painful experience, and I have been struggling so hard. I’m dying inside. I know it’s just the way it has to be. They don’t live forever. But the pain is overwhelming and shattering.

(Picture is a throwback to May 2020 – he is not much of a kisser, but this is a capture of a rare kiss! 🥰)

“This is the time to remember
Because it will not last forever
These are the days to hold onto
’cause we won’t
Although we’ll want to
This is the time
The time is gonna change
I know we got to move somehow
But I don’t want to lose you now” ♥️

My baby, I love you, furever & for always. Best friends for seven years. Never a day apart.

All our mornings spent in Schuylkill River Park, sipping iced lattes in the grass, and our evening walks along the Schuylkill River Trail under the moonlight, watching the city lights twinkle on the river, sometimes listening to Oldies as we walked, then stopping by Fitler Square on the way home, seeing all the holiday displays all Fall & Winter, stopping at Bacchus Market for a free treat (he took me there every morning when I first met him because he knew they gave free treats to dogs who stopped in, I never knew that!), walking all the way to Rittenhouse Square, stopping in the garden to smell all the flowers, getting caught in the rain, running through the Winter snow together, basking in the Summer sunshine, rolling around in the Fall leaves, watching all the Spring flowers blooming around us, sitting on the steps together in the warm evening air watching all the other humans and doggies walk by, stopping to chat with strangers, getting endless compliments on all the cuteness, always getting asked “Is that a fox??”, making me run around the kitchen table to get his leash on because he loved to play games (this annoyed everyone who walked him 😆), running around Rite Aid parking lot all those years before it closed up, sneaking onto the grass that we weren’t allowed (because he insisted, and who can say no to foxface?), trying not to get caught….all the side streets and routines that were just “ours.” Listening to the clapping and the cheering every night at 7:00pm, all those days when the streets were desolate and the city was like a ghosttown or going up in flames, and the world was falling to pieces around us and everything was uncertain, human friends and other animal friends coming & going. But there was my one constant, by my side, little paws tapping on the ground beside me all the way, never ever leaving. Day after day, year after year.

I will never forget.

Saying goodbye is the absolute worst. The most difficult thing in life. It’s pain that is unmatched. It takes my breath away and threatens to bring me to the floor or ground wherever I’m standing. 💔♥️ It’s heavy. One of the heaviest things I have ever had to carry. It’s an impending loss I can’t bear to fathom. I am gutted.

I’m honored I got to be his nanny for seven years and have his love and that his family invited me to come and say goodbye on his last day next week because they know the love we shared for so many years. They know I’m grieving with them. His mom said she feels less alone knowing that.

He was always one of the “special” ones. Any humans who have loved and lost many pets through the years will probably know what that means. We love them all, and all the losses are shattering, but just once or once in a blue moon, a special one comes along who it’s even more difficult to say goodbye to. A furry soulmate. ♥️

As someone who has always had multiple pets of my own and has worked with ones for seven years who I love wholeheartedly as my own, this pain isn’t new. It’s the same old pain. But each loss is different and challenging in its own unique way, and this is definitely one of the more difficult ones. Each experience with grief or any experience has various aspects and layers, and for whatever reason some losses can be more painful. And this one seems unbearable.

“I can’t remember when you weren’t there
When I didn’t care
For anyone but you
I swear
We’ve been through everything there is
Can’t imagine anything we’ve missed
Can’t imagine anything the two of us can’t do
Through the years, you’ve never let me down
You’ve turned my life around
The sweetest days I’ve found,
I’ve found with you
Through the years, I’ve never been afraid
I’ve loved the life we’ve made
And I’m so glad I stayed
Right here with you
Through the years” ♥️

I love you my baby. I always will. I can’t remember life before you and can’t bear to imagine it without you. ♥️💔

Sending love to all in need.

Xoxo Kim