Yesterday I suffered a loss unlike anything I have ever experienced before. My childhood dog died. His name was Scout and he had been my best friend ever since my parents brought him home. He wasn’t the first family dog that had passed away and he sure won’t be the last, but he was my first very own dog, which made this loss the most difficult one of all.

It all started when I watched the movie, Shiloh, as a little girl. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I recommend it. Right away the beagle in the film stole my heart and I knew I wanted that breed. On my 8th birthday my parents promised me a beagle as my present and a couple months later they delivered on that promise. I remember bringing him home a week before Christmas and putting him in a small cardboard box by the fire. I had never been so happy.

Scout was perfect in every way, at least in my eyes. He acted like your typical dog, chewing up every shoe he came into contact with, begging for food under the dinner table, and getting into the trash when no one was around. He had such a big personality though. We used to play hide and seek for hours and he learned to open doors on his own. He was always on the edge of the people to try to save us from the scary water. He would hike the red rock mountains with me. He was more of a people’s dog than a dog’s dog. He was my dog.

He was also my best friend. For 15 years he was there to greet me when I walked in the house. He watched me grow up. I introduced him to friends and boyfriends. He always wanted to be included. I cried to him while I cuddled him over things that wouldn’t matter in the future. I shared my food and beers with him. Boy, did that dog love his beer.

Then I watched him grow up. Not just grow up, but get old. Little growths started appearing around his body. Like moles, except some of them way bigger. One of them engulfed four of his bottom teeth. He started to lose muscle in his back legs, and while he still loved to go on walks he would trip at least a couple of times, falling on the sidewalk. Then he didn’t love to go on walks anymore and he couldn’t hold his bladder to make it to the backyard half the time. Our usual morning consisted of cleaning up an accident Scout had made in the middle of the night. He lost a lot of weight. We even bought him a sweater to keep him warm during the winter. He had lived a good life, and to me he still seemed like he was living the good life. He was still so excited to see us when we got home. Even though it was hard for him to walk, he still loved to walk around and be included in everything. He still ate his food everyday.

I left my house for the night and I saw him peacefully sleeping in the living room. I went over and gave him a kiss goodbye and that was the last time I’d ever see him alive. I had no idea, he had seemed fine to me, but I am so grateful that I had stopped those extra couple of seconds to say goodnight to him. The next goodbye kiss I gave him was right before I took his body to the vet.

It’s hard coming home to a quiet house where no one runs up to greet me. It’s weird not having to clean a pile of poop up first thing in the morning. I know he’s in a good spot now and he’s excited to see all the adventures I have yet to go on. I wish he could still be here for them but I gave him a great life and he gave me a friendship I could never duplicate. You were a good boy, Scout.

While I dealt with this heartbreaking experience, other awful things were taking place in my family. The day before this happened, my aunt had had a really bad headache. For some miracle reason, she went to the hospital to get it checked out. Turns out it was a brain aneurysm. People die from those, and usually unexpectedly so we were so grateful they had caught it in time to perform surgery and have it taken care of. She is still recovering and will be in the hospital for over a week. She is not out of the woods yet, but surgery did go smoothly. The same day we found out about the brain aneurysm, my other aunt had fallen face first into the floor and wound up in the emergency room with chipped teeth and a busted lip and chin. Thankfully it wasn’t any worse than that.

Life gets really rough sometimes. It’ll keep throwing you punch after punch until you feel like you can’t take anymore. That’s how these last couple days felt for me, but after the amazing outpouring of love received from friends and family, I know positive things are coming. So finally I have my first post. It’s not about traveling or fitness, but about life. It may be one of the only ones that isn’t about gaining something in life, but instead of losing something, or rather, someone. The cliche “life is short” statement, has never rang more true to me. Always appreciate the ones in your life and never skip a goodbye, even if it’s a quick one.