Losing Larry, my first childhood dog

14 years with him, eight without, and how his absence colors my love for Scout

It’s now been more than eight years since my childhood dog died. Larry gave me many things in his fourteen laps around the sun, chief among them the raw heartbreak of first loss. Until he left us I’d never said goodbye to anyone—human or canine—I loved so much.

Today it is almost hard to imagine that love. Not because I didn’t adore him; I still do. Not because the memories have faded completely; they never will. Not because it was forced; children don’t lie about their affection for creatures who help raise them. But because my connection with Scout is even deeper.

How can I recall losing Larry—crying for weeks afterward out of nowhere, in the middle of class; wearing his collar like a bracelet until it lost his smell; worrying incessantly about my father in the wake of our shared grief—and not despair thinking it will be so much worse when Scout goes?

Larry was my first dog at all. Scout is my first dog all my own. I am intimately more aware of who she is and what she needs than I was able to be with my childhood pets—and while that will never invalidate my love for them, it does color my expectations for the ever-approaching worst day of my life: The one where my sweet, sensitive cattle dog will join her predecessors in a place that isn’t here. That isn’t with me.

I still miss Larry. It’s easier not living in my parents’ house—I’m not swept up by spatial memories and unconscious associations—and it’s easier over time. But I still look at the fleece blanket my grandmother made me, the one that used to be our elderly Bichon’s favorite, and imagine him curled there. (I tear up when Scout seamlessly takes his place in that image.) I still think of him insisting on his own lawn chair every time we had a backyard fire. (Another similarity Scout shares.) I still remember the tone of his whine, lying on the couch looking toward the door, waiting for Dad to come home. I think of how snuggly he was… and how growly… and how I owe him so much. How it’s funny my relationship with Scout feels more intense yet never could exist in the first place without the foundation he helped lay.

How his loss will always exist, in and around me, and that somehow feels right.