I made a memorial for Missy at FindAGrave.com. Here is Missy’s page http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12827322
Missy was a beautiful and extremely cute dog! My heart goes out to you. I hope you’re feeling better soon, and remember that Missy loved you and had a great life with you. That’s what’s important.
Understand that you provided love, comfort, companionship and fun for as long as you could. Your dog and cat did the same for you.
Take it to the animal shelter. As a gift from your dog. It’s tough. But they will understand. And love you and your dog for doing so.
It was very hard to get a new dog after our girl died until I realized that I was not replacing her. That can’t be done. And you shouldn’t try to. When the time is right, and you can care for an animal again, you will.
From much personal experience over 58 years, immediately is not too soon to replace your lost pet.
Each pet has a distinct personality, and just like people you will form a unique attachments to each of them, and them to you. You will not forget your previous pets that have passed on, but you will be comforted and uplifted by your new current partners who are there to comfort and entertain you.
For all the things that pets do for humans, I have no time for those people who say that pets will not be in heaven.
People always tell me I am crazy for feeling that way and they use the Bible to argue their point.
I stumbled across a couple of passages in the Bible to support my own point.
Ecclesiastes 3:18-20
“As for men, God tests them so that they see that they are like animals. Man’s fate is like that of the animals, the same fate awaits them both: all have the same breath. Man has no advantage over the animal…All go to the same place, all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the **spirit of man ** rises upward and if the **spirit of the animal ** goes down into the earth”?
Later on in the same book, Ecclesiastes 12:7
“and the dust returns to the ground it came from. And the spirit returns to God who gave it”.
Am I gonna see my pets in Heaven?
I think so. Solomon thinks so, and according to tradition he was a fairly intelligent person.
So I keep my pets to comfort me daily and they reward me with a richer life because of it.
I would never be without a pet to carry me through the day.
That was beautiful. And I agree with you 100% .
A friend of mine who’s a Catholic priest whose golden retriever died a few months ago reported that he doesn’t want to go to any heaven that his pets can’t go to. I agree with him completely.
And one more comment about getting another pet, to expand on what cardinarky said – when our last dog died, we knew we couldn’t even try to replace her, so we deliberately adopted new pets who were as different from her as we could find. She was a sweet, calm older female, and we adopted two young, energetic males. It only took a few hours of their company to realize that we’d never make comparisons of them to her – they’re totally different – and so it was easy to just learn to love them the way they are. And today, we can’t imagine ever not having had them. (Although for a few weeks there, until we’d gotten them trained a bit better, we did have our doubts!)
Missy was a lovely little dog – what a sweet face! I understand why you miss her so much.
Take Mellivora capensis’ advice, It really does help, though rereading it has me in tears even though it’s been a couple of years.