Getting a puppy helped me process grief for my mum
When my mum died, I felt lonelier than I had ever felt before. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, I cried constantly and I watched so many episodes of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, I dyed my usually blonde hair brown…
In the months before my mum passed away, we spent all day every day together, watching TV, chatting, drinking tea – and then suddenly one morning that all stopped.
I was left feeling bereft and in pain, my days were no longer filled with persistent chatter about Emmerdale but rather a silence. I couldn’t even face having the TV on.
Then the day after my mum’s funeral, my dad bundled me into the car and said ‘come on Monster, we’re getting a dog’.
As a family, we’d always had dogs (black labradors to be specific) but when Storm died at the ripe old age of 17, we were all so devastated, the thought of ‘replacing him’ didn’t compute.
But it was clear we needed another ppersonality in the house to try and fill sosome of the void left by my mum.
When I first laid eyes on Shadow, I was in love. He was the timidest of the puppies in the pack, with big bright ey eyes and velvety ears.
It was the first ‘nice’ feeling I had fe felt since my mum died.
When we brought him home, I felt e euphoric – he was so small and soft, h he would lie in my arms for hours.
But that night I started to feel guilty aabout the amount of joy he brought. HHe wasn’t a substitute for my mum.
Several teary hours later, I realised a ppuppy was the perfect tonic for grief. Shadow was something pure and happy (and also impossibly cute). The healing ppower of animals is a real thing.