Opening the door and the heart to new puppy love

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2025 (283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Samson, our 12-year-old Maltese/Shih Tzu mix, died suddenly on Thanksgiving weekend, I thought my husband and I would wait until at least the spring to get another dog.

Maybe we’d travel as a couple, something we couldn’t really do with a sometimes incontinent diabetic senior dog who required insulin injections every 12 hours. We could take a break from the grind of care work. We could find a rhythm as a twosome.

But even in those blurry first weeks of grief, a fact became quickly, abundantly clear: we are dog people. No dog in the house made it feel like just that: a house. We didn’t want to wait until spring.

And so, we didn’t.

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As with Sammy, I first fell in love with her face.

She has a little black mask, like a raccoon. Like a bandit. Like a little Marcel Dzama drawing. I knew when I saw her photo that she was the Shih Tzu puppy for us.

When we’d talk, loosely and hypothetically, about our next dog, we knew that we wanted a Shih Tzu and that we wanted a girl because Sammy was — is — our boy. Sammy was half ‘Tzu and the breed appealed to us for many reasons (expressive eyes, playful, loyal, sturdy), and we knew we wanted to raise another dog from puppyhood.

The timeline, however, wasn’t ideal. She’d be ready to come home in November. That felt… fast. When I met her for the first time and held her small, warm potato body just as I had done with Samson over a decade earlier, I sobbed on the way home.

What would Samson think? Was I moving on too quickly? And worse, would I forget him?

Timelines after pet loss, I’ve learned, are incredibly individual. Some people get a new companion right away, some never do. I understand the latter: having just been through the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, I can see why some people can’t bear to go through it ever again.

But someone important to me said something so wise, so clear, that it knocked me out. “Think of it as two holes in your heart. One is for Samson, and it can never be filled because that’s where he lives now. The other is for furry family, and that you can fill.”

And so, we did.

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Phoebe was born on Sept. 11, which I do not love, but our little Chinese lion dog was also born in the Year of the Dragon, which I do love — because so was Samson. Our dragons will never meet, but it feels like a nice cosmic bond. A sign that it is right and she is right.

She is so different from him. She has grown, before our eyes, into six pounds (and counting) of pure, unadulterated mischief. She likes to stalk her toys and pounce on them. She is a scavenger who picks up everything and anything, and then hides it in the soft folds of her mouth to chew on later. She developed an appetite for frozen rabbit poop (a.k.a. Outside Kibble), blessedly interrupted by snowfall. She chases cars.

She is an absolute menace, but she’s also so cuddly and is very, very friendly with all people and dogs, which Sammy was decidedly not.

She’s already got nicknames: Pheebs, P-heebie, Phoebe Jeebies, Ol’ Flat Face. And she already has “bits.” Samson had a fictitious podcast called Laps of Luxury, in which he would sit on the laps of famous women and “interview” them. Phoebe has her own podcast called PhoebeOMG, which is mostly gossip and embarrassing moments.

I had a Baby Guy, and now I have a Baby Girl. I am so lucky. My heart has room for both of them. And I know another horrible day awaits me in the future. But that’s the cost of loving them.

One thing I hope to do differently this time is not to spend too much time imagining that day. When Samson was alive, I would work myself into a lather thinking and worrying about his death. The anticipatory grief didn’t prepare me for anything. It just took time and energy away from enjoying him while he was here.

And I shouldn’t have worried that I would forget him. I miss him every day. Phoebe is not a replacement for Samson but, for a black-and-white girl, she has sure brought a lot of colour back into our lives.

The grief, though — that doesn’t go away. I don’t think you actually ever get to set it down. But it does get easier to carry.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com