I watched my dog, Niki, have another epileptic seizure.  She’d suffered from grande mal seizures since she was three months old and now, at the age of three, a rabies vaccination had made them continuous.  I was barely a teenager and Niki had been my constant companion, my confidant, and my best friend since I had convinced my parents to let me bring the four-week-old pup home from a pet store.  Suddenly, I had to make the most difficult decision of my young life.  I told my dad to call the vet, and I jumped on my bike to escape the scene.

When I returned, Niki was gone, and with her a large section of my innocence.  Although animals in my home had died before, I had yet to have parted with something so precious to me, such an integral part of my very soul.  My mom took me aside and said that Niki had died very quickly.  The vet had inserted the needle during a seizure, and she had simply become peaceful.

I grieved hard for my friend.  In my sadness, all I wanted to do was take my dog for a walk....

Shortly after that experience, I had to say goodbye to my equine soul mate.  Arch was a half-Arab, Palomino stallion.  I had helped to halter break him and was with him every moment possible.  When his owner decided it was time to saddle break Arch, I felt intensely privileged to be the first on his back.  My smile was no doubt visible to the heavens as we walked him out to the paddock.  Once there, Arch, being a young stallion with an excess of energy, proceeded to knock over his owner and take me for a rodeo ride.  But at the age of fourteen, I found the excitement exhilarating and rode him to a standstill.

Arch had to be sold.  My family lived in Vancouver and having a horse to board was out of the question.  So with a very heavy heart and a never-kept promise that I would someday find and buy him, I watched Arch leave my life.  The grief was unresolved.  I checked every palomino I saw, hoping it was my old friend.  There was no body.  There was no finality.  Although my brain knows that he could not be alive, my heart still wonders. 

They saying is that the only thing that stays constant is change.  Grief is a major component of that change.  Every loss we encounter through life is dealt with by grieving.  Even changes that we view as positive, such as marriage, or going on to the next level horse, involve loss: loss of being single, loss of riding that first horse.  How we approach that loss and encompass the ability to move on, depends on how well we have learned to grieve.

As my life continued and I acquired and lost many animals obtained through my years of working at Vancouver’s Children’s Zoo, I became more and more adept at grieving.  I stayed with my animals when it was absolutely necessary to euthanize them; I buried or cremated their bodies with appropriate ceremony.

Years later, that skill was severely tested when I found myself miscarrying four wanted babies.  But the ultimate trial arrived when our twin sons were born.  My husband and I were with them for their very short lives and peaceful deaths.  Although nothing can prepare one for the loss of a child, I did have enough knowledge to know how to deal with the situation, and did not allow my fears to hold me back from doing what my heart wanted to do, while the opportunity was available.  So we took photos, locks of hair and held their little bodies for hours.

Having horses gives us an ideal situation to teach our children, and ourselves about responsibility for another life, unconditional love, empathy, and grief.  Whether the horse leaves our lives through death or a necessary parting to another home, the loss can be very real.  Yet the intensity of the feeling usually depends on the relationship involved.  When a mare has a stillborn foal at a breeding facility, there will most likely be feelings of sadness, mainly at the loss of potential as well as financial investment.  But when a mare’s foal is born dead at a family’s home, one whose investment has been mostly emotional, the feelings can be devastating.

When a friend has suffered a loss, we often have difficulty dealing with it ourselves.  So we tend to stay away for fear that we might say the wrong thing.  Or we trivialize the loss by telling them to try and keep looking at “the bright side”.  Sometimes we will say such things as, “Well, it’s not like it was a person or anything.”  Or, “At least you can get another one.”  Or, “Don’t be so sad.  After all, your pony has a good home, and you have a much better horse now.”  Saying such things often makes the bereaved person feel that they must be wrong for feeling the way they do.  In fact, there is no right or wrong way to feel, no expected timeline, no stages that one needs to go through.  Whichever way that person is handling the situation is exactly how it needs to be handled.

Allow your friend, your child, or yourself, to just be.  Don’t give advice; simply listen.  Be there with a shoulder to cry on and understand that grief may also bring with it some physical conditions such as lack of appetite, listlessness, fatigue, back pain, insomnia; the list goes on.  It is difficult to continue “life as usual” since life is not as usual and never will be again.  That is not to say that happiness is now a fleeting improbability.  But this existence has changed directions again, and that needs to be acknowledged before we can grow with the experience.  Be honest with yourself, and with your children.  Do not place adult methods of dealing with situations on children; they have their own.  Kids are amazingly able to cope with death if allowed to do so.  We tend to try to protect our kids from what we adults consider the ugly parts of life.  But remember, anytime we try to protect another human being from anything other than physical harm, we are denying them the opportunity for growth.  We cannot keep grief from them, nor should we try.  But we can help them learn the skills they’ll need to manage.  We can do that by opening ourselves to different ways of thinking and feeling, by understanding that their reaction belongs to them alone and must be respected, by reading some of the many books now available on death and grief, and by thinking the situation through before it happens.

There are of course, exceptions to every rule.  Advice and gentle encouragement might be warranted when it is clear that the grieving person is not taking care of him/herself.  As well, whenever guilt (an intensely destructive emotion that most of us look for when a loved one dies) is involved, sometimes reiterating facts that help alleviate that are a good idea.  And, when a major grief takes place, it is helpful to know that the first year is full of rather unclear thinking.  Counsellors encourage grieving people to not make any important decisions during that time.

Often it helps the grieving person to connect with another who has gone through a similar experience.  It’s nice to know that, even though they now feel that the Earth must be nearing the end, others have gone through something similar and have come out the other side; changed, but alive and whole.

Each time we start a new relationship we must accept that grief will be a part of it.  The ending will come through a parting of life’s paths, the death of us, or the death of the other party.  But that doesn’t stop us from marrying, from having children, or from adopting an animal.

When in the middle of grief, sometimes it is hard to recall why we put ourselves at risk for this pain.  But then our spouse gazes into our eyes in that way that makes our stomach flip, our kids bring us a bouquet of dandelions, and our horse reaches over the fence to nuzzle our face.  Suddenly it’s all in focus….