Zelda | Dead Pets

Kates tells us about a very special dog named Zelda. 

Dead Pets is a podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures that have changed ours.

For more information www.deadpetspodcast.com.

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pet grief, pet stories, pet loss 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Dead Pets, the podcast about pet grief that celebrates the lives of the creatures who have changed ours. To everyone who has been listening and sharing Dead Pets with your friends, thank you so so much. We are growing, and it's really exciting for me to see this project that is so so special to me is resonating with other people in the way that I hoped it would. We have a brand new website up, www.deadpetspodcast.com. It's looking really good, and there you can find our episode archives, more information about the podcast, and you can sign up for the upcoming Dead Pets newsletter, which is a place where I will be sharing thoughts and reflections and revelations from all the conversations I get to have with people about their beloved pets, about their lives, and about their deaths. I will also be sharing my own grief journey, mourning the loss of my 19-year-old cat Dodge, who died a month ago. If you sign up for the Dead Pets newsletter, you'll get access to all of this. You will also get 30% off at Dead Pets merch, which will be coming later this year. If you haven't already, don't forget to follow Dead Pets on TikTok. There you can find videos of some of the pets that we have featured. I'm working on other content like ways that you can memorialize your pet, information on the stages of grief, and reviews on books about pet grief. On today's episode, Kate tells us about a very, very special girl named Zelda.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Zelda was my second husky that I've ever had. Second dog as like an adult, officially. She was absolutely majestic. So beautiful. She had white fur, and then she had the very typical saddleback kind of a pattern that huskies have. The thing that kind of put her apart from everything is she had two party eyes. So she had one brown eye with a little bit of blue in it, and one blue with a little bit of brown, which was very unique. You see a lot of the duochromia on a lot of Huskies and other dogs, but that was just something that absolutely set her apart. Growing up, she kind of looked like a little toasted marshmallow. That's what I always tell people, is just like the perfect amount of roast. She was very fluffy, super soft. I mean, you wouldn't have even expected it. Looking at her, you're like, oh my goodness, she was just such a little cutie pie that she just became this absolutely regal majestic dog. Everybody talked about her, just how beautiful she was. Our first dog, her name is Koji. She's also a husky. She was the first dog I ever got with my now husband. We had been dating for like two years and we were just insane, both like, let's get a dog. And I'm sure a lot of people would be like, it is so crazy for your first dog with somebody to be a Siberian husky just because they're so energetic and chaotic, and people always call them like the two-year-old that bullies you. That's Koji, a thousand percent. Super stubborn, has her boundaries, and we just loved it. We were like, this dog is awesome. You know, I'm an avid runner, so I was out with her all the time. About a year and a half or so into it, we were like, Well, let's let's just get another one. You know, if the landlord is upset about it, we can talk with them, but we had a conversation right away, and the landlord said, Yeah, go for it. You know, we we trust you guys. We love dogs, so we want that to kind of be something in your house too. And we began searching for a second dog. We knew that it probably had to be a younger dog, and so we had kind of searched a couple of shelters and then looked online, and actually she was on Facebook. Um, which is like it's crazy to think about, but I saw her and I'm like, man, she is so cute. A little fluff ball, just a sweet, gentle girl. She was like 14 weeks, so a little bit older, but still kind of a puppy, that puppy energy and everything. We got all of our stuff together. I was in contact with the person and we drove out through this beautiful Wisconsin day. It was through the countryside, just not a cloud in the sky. And when we met her, she was like just so nice and so different, just calm, gentle, non-chaotic. I would say the only chaotic thing she did was knocked over a metal chair, and it kind of spooked her a little bit. We signed papers and got her into the car and she fell asleep just in the back seat. Which again, I'm like, I'm so used to Koji how she was. She was just tearing around, didn't want to be in anybody's arms, you know, she wanted to be put down. But Zelda was just super gentle and fell asleep pretty much immediately. When we had gotten Koji, I remember I was like, I cannot tell my parents this. They're gonna be so disappointed at me for making this decision. So we just basically like, you know, didn't tell them for a month. And I remember when I told my mom she was so upset. She was like, Why are you doing this? Like, you guys have not been together so long. What if something happens? All the typical like good parent worries. But then with Zelda, I was like, Oh, I I gotta, you know, I can't hold this off. I gotta tell her. And so we pulled over to a gas station and my husband's gassing up. And I call her and I'm like, hey mom, how's it going? And she goes, Yeah, you know, what are you up to? It's going good here. And like, well, you're gonna absolutely hate me for what I'm doing right now. She was like, Oh no. And you could tell, she just knew. She's like, You're either like going on a trip and not telling me, or you're getting a new dog. Like, what is going on? So I told her, I'm like, yep, it's exactly that. And, you know, the typical parent just kind of disappointed. But then she was curious and like, tell me more about, you know, who are they? You know, what are they? Are they another husky? And it went really smooth from there on out. I remember when we got her home, we had to introduce them. You of course have to do it on like very, very neutral territory. I went and got Koji, and my husband had Zelda. We let Koji out, and she scared Zelda so bad that she climbed under the car. And so we were like, oh no. But you know, once we got her out, it was like they smelled each other and they just became best friends. It was just the sweetest thing for Koji, being this very, you know, I want it my way. You know, I don't like other people all that much. I don't like other dogs sometimes so much. To have that bond, I was like, this is insane. And they went everywhere together. You know, that night it was like Koji's traipsing through a room, and there's Zelda just kind of following behind her and laying on her, and you know, we'd be on the couch, and it's like Zelda is laying on top of Koji and Koji doesn't even care. So it's just really special. The world aligned, and it just felt like everything was right in the world. People joke in the Husky community that if you have a Husky, the best toy you can get them is another Husky, and I mean it was confirmed. And like this is exactly it. She just needed a buddy to kind of open her up, and that was exactly what I think we all needed at the time. I had just graduated from college, so it was in 2017-ish. At the time, it was people are gonna think this is ridiculous, but we had this lower rental and it was 800 square feet, so nothing. I mean, very, very small for two big dogs, but we were just like, this is the best because we spend all our time outside. We were still pretty young. It just was kind of an odd, like, okay, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do two dogs. This is gonna be our life now. And they pretty much became our whole world. It was just being outdoors, running outside, negative 20 degrees, or in the summer swimming. It was just a great, great time to just have lower responsibility. I mean, now it's been it's been a while that you know that responsibility kind of gains and there's more things that happen, but with that time, it was just very simple. I always tell people, I'm like, maybe this is super bad advice, but you learn so much about your partner with putting them in situations where they have to care for something outside of themselves. With my husband Zach, watching him be super sweet or like being a little stern sometimes with training, like sometimes you gotta be stern, and how we'd partner with, hey, you know, you take care of these responsibilities, and I'll make sure that they're exercised and have food. It just was a very, very eye-opening experience, and I don't think we would have had that same bond had it not been for both those dogs. Like, they are just the connecting thread to pretty much every piece of our relationship. With Zelda, like we'd be out walking, and our neighbors just wanted to talk all about her. That neighborhood, it went from not knowing anybody to you're walking her down the street and there are cars pulling over sometimes to be like, what a beautiful dog, or I see you outside all the time, and then you know, you're talking with them, you they kind of live in the same area, so you're building up that network of people that just they know the dogs. If anything happens, they know where to go. And I'm not a super social person. I I try not to go out of my way to bother people, but she really forced me out of my comfort zone to be able to connect with people that I'm not sure we would have connected with at the time. Koji, she's a little bit different. She's a a black dog, a little more intimidating. So that didn't happen as much. I think it kind of maybe had the opposite effect where people are like, oh, that's a scary dog. It became I was the crazy husky lady, like, oh, there she is out in you know, negative 20 temperatures, walking and running those dogs again. But it established that kind of community. Even when I'm out and about, there are people that remember me being over there that are like, oh my gosh, like how are the dogs? And you know, what have you been up to? So it's I think really having any kind of pet is the ultimate bonding experience with people. It makes you more social, it's you outside, more talking with people. So that completely, completely changed my whole life. Koji went from scared to go to the vet, and we started doing like, hey, we'll bring Zelda with, and the vet would just schedule out a block of, all right, everybody gets their vaccines, you know, if we're taking care of everybody at the same time. And I remember vet kind of leaning in and he was like, I feel that Zelda gives Koji the confidence to be in here. And I think this is how we should schedule our vet appointments from here on out. And it's just stuck with me. Bringing Koji out of this kind of destructive and goofy and opinionated dog into this just very compassionate and sweet, and you know, she just loved Zelda so much that was her buddy. You know, it changed her whole demeanor in life too. She had this calming effect on people and other dogs too. My husband and I will talk all the time about dog park experiences. Most of the time, I feel like dog park experiences can be a little harder, stressful, just depending on the dog. But you'd bring Zelda in there, and it was like she lowered the temperature. She'd be running around and she would have Koji biting her neck, and like, of course, it's WWE match between the two of them sometimes in the dog park, but she'd have 10, 15 dogs following her. They'd all just want to be playing with her. Like, she just was so calm and chill all the time. I just loved it about her. She calmed me down. I mean, it she's just got this very, very kind of old world presence. Just I felt like she had existed before in some other other plane. She had this thing that she did. We called it rowing her boat. It's where you put your paws up to the to the sky or on the ground and it makes like a rowing motion. And so what we would do is we would sing row row row your boat because it was kind of at that pacing. And she would turn and look at us and stop, and then we would stop, and then she would go back to it and we'd continue, and she just had this pattern. She just thinks she kind of knew it was silly, but I loved it. And that is one of those things. I have so many videos of her rowing her boat that I I just love. She would stop and smell flowers, which I've literally never seen dogs do. Like my my other one, she rolls into flowers. She'll stop and she'll smell them, and then she tumbles into them and crushes them. And with Zelda, she would very, very gently walk up to a flower and just put her snoop down to it and just take a nice deep breath. I mean, it was daisies and all of these tulips that would populate in our neighborhood and these purple flowers that she would just she would just stop, and it was like she was forcing me to stop too, just very gently. Never did anything, never tried to eat them, just very calmly smelled flowers.

unknown 13:55

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

I have so many pictures of her, and we have so many pictures of her doing that. She was extremely thoughtful. She was terrified of bridges. So she would get to any kind of a bridge. It could be like a little footbridge, it could be a long bridge, and she would just fall over completely, and she would refuse to go. What's hilarious about this is we kind of lived on an island. I mean, it's not like a tropical island, just like an island everywhere to and from is just bridges. And so every single day I'd be trying to leave the island, and I'd have to scoop that 60-pound dog up and run over one way, put her down, then she'd be good. She'd be all set. But she got terrified of them for no reason. It was just like she just did not like to go over. We've always had a theory that maybe it's the sound underneath the bridge, or could be like the feeling of just being up higher. That was like one of the goofiest traits about her. My younger brother, we always called him Uncle Mark, um, to her. So she had this very special bond with him. Um, you know, I think that sometimes it's like dogs or cats or any pet. They have like their preferred people that are in their intermediate family, but then I think sometimes they also have a person or two outside that they're like, Wow, this person gets me. And um, my younger brother Mark just got her. And we would go for walks all the time. He would come over with my mom and we'd go out. And man, the way that that dog, she would drop in front of him and she wouldn't even look at me. She would just look at him, and he would scoop her up and have her head on his shoulder, and she'd be looking over at me like, Why don't you, you know, treat me like this when I get carried over? This guy is complimenting me. This guy's telling me he loves me. Why don't you do that? She was a ham. I just absolutely blasted with personality, and so all of those things, it's like, I those are just essential Zelda traits. I'm like, I just I miss them. I miss them all the time. But she was just special like that. We had this like cute little family in our neighborhood that moved in, and it was a mom, and she had several kids and varying ages. When they moved in and they'd see me going down the street, at first they were like, Oh, who is this? You know, who oh, we love Huskies. I introduced Zelda to them, and then it became like a regular reoccurring thing. These kids would come running out to her, and she, of course, she'd kind of plop over. A couple of them would get on her level, they'd kiss her head, you know, they'd kiss her ears, and the youngest one would play on top of her. I didn't ever have to be nervous about her. I knew that she would be good, you know. If she didn't like what was happening, she'd move, but she just kind of leaned into it, and I remember this little girl just being like, I love you so much, Zelda. Just so sweet. She was never really around kids up until that point. They were calm, she was calm, everybody was good, and they loved her. I mean, she was just like a little mascot for that neighborhood. She had this dog that we called her boyfriend. His name was Finn. He was a little Sheltie, and he lived down the street from us. And I remember when his owners got him, she was like in love. I mean, she was just wanted to walk by. There were so many times where we'd be out and Finn would be in his front yard, and she would spot him from down the block, and she would be just pulling me towards him, and there were so many times where they'd get together and they're just wiggling, playing with each other, wiggling, jumping around. They just loved each other. That I just thought it was so funny. I'm like, this is just a ridiculous thing that this dog has just decided this dog is awesome. I just want to be around him all the time. She loved Finn. Finn was her Finn was her guy. The biggest thing that happened within Zelda's life with us was COVID. I was working in an office and we were sent home to basically work from home until we would be called back. I feel like I learned more about Koji and Zelda in that time frame than I did in the years before and even the years after. Learning about, okay, she loves this tennis ball. I'd be on a call and she'd be bringing me tennis balls, and I'd be like rolling them around. With my husband, she knew that she ate at four o'clock. And so starting at three, she would rally herself up to go ask for kibble pretty much every 20 minutes until he would get up. It was learning more about them, and I felt like we grew up a lot within our pet care and everything, too. Is that, you know, when you're starting off, like we had two dogs, and I had my first job out of college when I had gotten Koji, and when I had gotten Zelda, I was transitioning into a second job that I had had. We were learning, okay, you know, we have to save X amount of money and be prepared for this, this, and this. And so there was a lot of growing up in their care, too, of being like, all right, this is what we have to do, you know, this is how we have to budget, this is all the stuff that we need to make sure that they're successful. With Koji, we just kind of jumped into it, and with Zelda, there's a little bit more planning, a little bit more, you know, okay, we've done this, we've seen this, this is what we have to prepare for. She started getting sick in about 2022, and it required a ton of vet care. We were going and doing blood tests pretty much every week, and those blood tests became other tests, and so making sure that we were saving up enough money to be able to afford that. I also was very fortunate growing up that the dogs that we had and animals that we had lasted well into their old age. I guess I didn't realize, I think sometimes when a pet gets sick, just the emotional, how do I take care of this and how do I take care of myself? There was a lot of growth with that too. It's just how how do I manage this very, very traumatic thing that's happening, and how do I manage myself with this too? We had had her for about two years or so. All of a sudden, she just had stopped eating. And of course, that's when all the alarm bells start going off, and well, are they still snacking? And like, then you're checking all of their what's their temperature like, you know, what what kind of stuff sounds good to them? How do their gums look? And just something was not sitting right with me. And I think sometimes people are like, well, huskies can be picky with how they eat, and I always like to warn people that you know, if something isn't right, that it's probably best to call the vet and get them in. I called our vet and I got her in pretty much immediately, and it was during the time of COVID, where I'm sure everybody's familiar with you drove to your vet, you called them, they came out, they took the dog in or cat in, and then they called you and they were all done. And I remember being in the car, and the vet called, and she was like, Well, she looks good, like she's good weight, her everything, her color looks good, her stance looks good. There's no really indication that that anything is wrong. And I said, For me, you know, I'm around her all The time, can we run anything additional to kind of see what's going on inside? And she was like, Yeah, you know, we can just we'll run a blood test. I'm not super concerned though. They ran a blood test and they sent her home because those blood tests kind of take a few hours. And we get home and she calls and she says, There's something off with this blood work. And she said, I, you know, I'm not comfortable right now prescribing anything, but I think what we should do is see if there's a change. If you come back in a few days, we test it again. You know, maybe she's eating more, but there's something, her body is fighting something. So I was hand cooking for her, cooking twice a day. I don't cook chicken or turkey or anything, and so that was new for me. I'm like sitting on the floor cutting up chicken, putting potato, like carrots, uh literally everything that any kind of site had recommended and that the vet had recommended, and she just was not eating. And I was holding it in my hand, she'd take little bites and then she would just put her head down. They did another few rounds of blood tests, and I remember this vet calling me, and I was sitting on the floor, and she was like, I cannot solve this. Uh, there's something, there's something going on. I am not an expert in this. I think you're gonna have to try to find help elsewhere. I cried. I remember I was like, I'm in this by myself. There is nobody coming to save us right now, and you know, we're gonna have to get this solved. I have a few friends that have have vet kind of care in their previous life, and some people had said I would get a second opinion. I would try to find a vet there that can look at her and test for more things. And we were very lucky enough that there was a vet there that basically took her, and I was like, whatever test needs to get run, let's try it, let's do it. They checked for tick-borne illness, they checked for leptospirosis, everything was coming back negative. Then they ran a UTI and like a urinary analysis for it, and she had a UTI, very minor, but she was like, at least this is something we can kind of treat and and test. And at this time she had started eating a little bit more, and her blood work was kind of going in a better direction. We treated her, we tested her one more time for her blood work, and everything pretty much had returned to normal, which was super weird. Even the vet had said she's like, Well, I'm just gonna say for now, whatever she was fighting, she was able to get over it. What you guys need to do is monitor and let me know if anything changes. We were like, Well, you know, if something happened, obviously her body fought it. We had good Zelda for another like year and a half-ish or two years, and she kind of was normal and she'd have moments where she'd be a little tired, but nothing kind of concerning. And then in February of 2022, she stopped eating again. I panicked. I'm like, right away, she's not eating. You know, we had actually switched vets at the time um to somebody who could manage Huskies a little bit better, and um, who could handle the bigger kind of dogs, and we got her in and they ran blood tests, and it was the same, like literally the same exact result that we had gotten two years prior through all of this. We had so many blood tests that I was printing them off, and I'm like, I'm not a vet expert, but I'm like calling my mom who was a nurse, and I'm like, what does this mean? And even for us, it was it was tough, it was tough to look at. So now we have this new result, and this vet kind of said similar. She's like, This is really odd. I've not seen anything like this. Let's get something on the calendar and partner on this and get another blood test result in a month or so. And she sent us home with this, it's kind of like an appetite stimulant called entice. And so she said, give entice to her and let's see if we can get her eating, and then let's retest. I was cooking again twice a day, hand feeding. Something didn't feel right. She'd have days where she'd feel a little better and she'd eat some, and then other days where she was kind of picking at food a little bit here and there. She was kind of a I don't want to say she was overweight, but she was like a little I think after the first round, I'm like, we gotta beef this girl up a little bit. She'd have tired moments. You know, I'd be in contact with the vet just letting him know, like, yep, she ate a little bit today. Um, but then it was March 20th, and I remember it like very distinctly, because it was three days before my birthday. I took Koji out for a run. I was mostly just trying to walk Zelda, and if she wanted to run, then we do a little bit here and there. But I took Koji out and came back. It was super sunny out, just a perfect day, and I looked over at Zelda. She was walking to the door and she was yellow. And it's easier to tell with a little white dog, kind of when that's happening. And of course, like you Google, and the first thing that pops up is liver failure or kidney failure. I called the emergency vet and I let them know what was going on. They got us in. And when she walked in, it was it felt like almost like the first time that we had brought her in for this. But they looked at her and they're like, she's a healthy weight, her heart sounds good, everything looks good, but there's obviously something happening. They sat in the room with us and we were all talking, and they said, What our advice is is to get her in at your current vet tomorrow, have them run blood tests, and then they can refer to us with those blood tests. I remember asking them like, should I should I leave her here? Like, I uh where is she gonna be the safest? And they basically had said, like, if you sit here and wait for us to do a blood test, it could be all day. Make you should make sure she's comfortable at home. That day, we went actually through Starbucks to get her a puppuccino because she always loved that. I remember taking this picture of her that day, and she's just sitting in the sun, and she just looks so tired, and she ate like some of it, but it was she just was not interested. I have a tendency to kind of jump to the worst possible thing that can be happening, and I was like trying my best just to cling on to the little bit of hope of like, well, you know, maybe she'll rally, or they say that she's good. And the next day she got in, they did blood tests, and our vet had said, what I think that we should put her on is like an antibiotic and a steroid. Like, oh, okay, well, now we're treating something. Hopefully that will make her feel better. We got home, and at this time, like she was kind of tired, and so I had kind of picked her up outside after giving her her medicine and let her go potty, and then I remember we had this back porch. I scooped her up and I put her on the back porch with me, and she just kind of like laid into me, and we just kind of sat there for a bit, and I just remember being like, you know, that with the universe, don't take this dog. If anything's gonna happen, like I don't think I could live without this dog. I got inside, and I'm just like, I gotta cling to the little bit of hope that I have that this medicine's gonna make her feel better. She'll be hopefully even better tomorrow. I went to bed that night and got up the next day, and she was under the bed. She liked to sleep next to me, and so it was kind of odd that she was just under the bed hanging out there. I called her name and she kind of moved her head, kind of came out a little bit, but she was just so tired. She was barely moving, and I was like, something is not right, but she's on medication, she should be all good. And I gave her her next round and I scooped her up and I put her by my husband and I said, I have to go to work. You know, I please text me to update me on what goes on with her today. You know, I I just I feel like something is not right. Um, and so I got my car, I got to work. Again, it was the day before my birthday, so I brought in snacks, I put them all down in my cubicle. I was there for two minutes, and my phone rang. My husband was like, Kate, she's not responsive, she's breathing, but I I think we need to get her in right now. I like literally put everything down. I like ran to my boss. I'm like, I have to go. I can't explain what's happening. And um, I got in the car, drove there, it was pouring rain. Basically, he got Zelda in, they took her back, brought out a cart and wheeled her back, and she just was not responding to anything. They took us to a room and we sat there. I distinctly remember looking at the floor, and it was this kind of ravel design, and it was moving. And I remember just being like, I am so distraught right now and tired, and like, I don't know, is this trauma going on in my brain or what is going on? But the the vet walked in and this emergency vet had said, This is not looking good at all. Um, I'm very sorry to say, but I think what we need to do is a blood transfusion and then some kind of exploratory surgery. He says, My, you know, I it's gonna cost about anywhere from six to eight K, and that's just for these procedures. I'm gonna let you guys kind of decide what you want to do. I called my mom, of course, like right away. You know, she's always my my number one for that, and I'm like, mom, I mean this is this is gonna be a six to eight K surgery, and she said, You're gonna do whatever you can to make sure that that dog survives this. I gave him my credit card, and I'm like, I will just accept whatever whatever's gonna happen with this. Basically, I'd asked, like, you know, if we go through with this, what is her likelihood of surviving this? And they gave her a 50%. We left and we went home. I just walked in the door, and I remember the vet saying this too before we had left. There was a female vet that was taking care of her, and she said, if you don't hear from us, consider it good news. And I walked in the door. Basically, my phone rang like immediately, and she was like, I'm really sorry to say Zelda's not gonna survive this, and I think you need to think about saying your goodbyes. I started to cry. I paused and she said, Do you have somebody that you can call to come get you? Because I I'm very concerned about you trying to get here. And I said, I'm gonna call my mom, and she said, Good. Because your number one focus should be getting here safely. That's what Zelda would have wanted. And she said, She has been suffering from this for a really long time. Probably since she was small. It appears to be some immune response that her body has been putting her through for a really long time. So don't feel like you could have done anything differently. You did everything within your power. Just remember that when you're trying to get here, okay? It was just this very guttural. I was screaming, I mean, I was hyperventilating, I was I could not get a grip. I was inconsolable. We ended up calling my mom, and she had asked, is it okay if your brothers come they want to say goodbye to? I said, That's absolutely fine. I want them there. They came and got us, and we got there. They walked us back to this back room. It was beautifully lit. It had warm lighting. We kind of sat around and told stories about her, and we all kind of stood around her and we all put our hands on her. The vet came in. I got down on Zelda's level, and I said, Zelda, there's gonna be a bridge where you're heading, and I hope you know that it's okay. If you're too scared to go over, you can wait for me there. I'll be there as soon as I can. But just know that I love you so much, and that I'll always be thinking about you. We all just held her and she passed on. It was just the hardest thing, and I was so thankful that at the time my now husband and my mom and my brothers who loved her so much, it was just such a special thing to share in. But it was literally the hardest day I think I've ever experienced. There's a lot of conversation with euthanasia and what the experience is like. Um, I found it very, very peaceful. Even in that setting, it was very calm. I felt like at peace as as much as I could be with it.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Tell me what it was like to live without her at first.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

So when we when we got home, you know, we all all we had was a harness. And, you know, Koji didn't know what was going on, and I brought the harness in and we let her sniff it. She laid by it and refused to to move away from it for a bit. It literally felt like and I I I think a lot of people relate, but just absolutely blinding. You just you lose track of time, you lose track of what day it is, what time it is. There were things with her that were all left over. She had containers of food I had cooked that were sitting in the fridge that I could not bear to throw away for a very long time. She had medication that actually we we still have. I still can't manage to give it up. We've moved houses and everything, and it's still sitting in my cabinet. The thing that was hard was just seeing Koji try to adjust to everything. I took her everywhere. It was the hardest like two-month to three-month time frame that I've ever experienced. I am very grateful I had this best friend. She came over and she brought a dog bed for Koji, and she brought all of these snacks for my husband and I, and she just sat with us and just cried with us. I was a mess, and my husband was a mess, and she just was just allowed us to be, and she loved her so much too that she had memories she was sharing and sending pictures and everything. She just knew exactly we needed at the time and was able to provide that. There was just outpouring support. People brought us food. When we got that six to eight K quote, we started a GoFundMe to be able to help with paying and offset. I posted it and people were donating, and then she passed away, and people were like, Well, you know, how about you flip it to take care of her cremation and things like that? I was trying to think like what could be the biggest impact because Zelda was such a huge force. What could be something we could do in her memory and her honor? We actually found this Humane Society nearby that you can donate a tree in their honor, and they put a plaque out. And so it was like a thousand dollars. I had people reaching out from high school that I had not heard from in 15 years that were like donating money and saying, like, hey, whatever you need. We had people that were making artwork of her. I have pieces of art on my wall. Um, but we were able to do all of this stuff just through support. You know, we raised that a thousand dollars, we donated it. It made sure that there were other pets out there like Zelda that, you know, had their expenses covered, and now she has this beautiful plaque that's right there when people walk in. And we put a quote on it that just said, we would always choose you. Everybody, when I think they get a pet, they're like, I'm gonna have you for 19 years, or if you had every piece of information, you know, knowing that Zelda would have had this immune disorder, knowing that we'd have to go through all of this, would we do it again? And I can't foresee a timeline where we wouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

When you think of her now, what do you think of? What first comes to your mind when you think of Zelda?

SPEAKER_00 39:58

I feel like she's made me a better grief person. When you experience a loss, I think you become a lot more gentle to other people going through the same experience. And I just think of how gentle she was with other people and other animals, and I feel like that comes off when I'm kind of helping somebody out that has dealt with an extreme grief incidents. I think gentleness, compassion, a lot of the cases with her. I feel also a lot of joy looking back at her. She just was the absolute best, and I am so fortunate to have had such a wonderful dog.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Where else does she live on around you guys?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

We planted lupine in the front of our house. The reason for that is a couple of couple of reasons, but her boyfriend Finn in front of his house every year they had lupine that came back. And so that would be her next step is she would say hi to Finn, and then she would check out the lupine. And I know lupine is like very toxic. She never ate it, she never licked it. She just would always kind of take a second and look at it. There is this wonderful um phanatologist. Her name is Colin Perry, and she studies all of this, like basically connections with planting flowers and grief, and how there's symbolism in like what flowers you choose and how important it is to have something to like care for and take care of once you've lost something. Lupine, I didn't realize they are hugely symbolic of resilience. Zelda being rallying, coming back, and having the life that she lived, I would describe her as super resilient just given the circumstances. The lupine also, they they thrive in soil that sometimes isn't optimal and they enrich the environments that they're in. I I needed to have lupine. It was like that week, I'm like, I have to find lupine to put somewhere at our new house. And so my mom and I found this lupine, and every year it it dies, but it comes back and it's bigger and it's more beautiful, and um it is just like the best representation of her living on. I look at it every single, every single summer day. I'm like, this is just the coolest representation of her. After Zelda had passed, and my friend was over, and my husband and I were sitting there, um, he saw a notification about these puppies that were born on my birthday. And I said, absolutely not. I was like, no, no, I cannot do that. I, you know, I ideally like I'm like in three years we'll adopt a dog that's eight years old, and she'll be Zelda's Asian, we'll care for that. Um, but he was like, I think that this is a sign. And my friend's like, I think that this is, I think this is a sign. So we adopted Aurora, who's born on my birthday. You know, she feels like almost the most clear representation of Zelda kind of carrying on, is that she's not like Zelda at all. She's uh precocious and rambunctious and goofy, but she is also very much like her in that she's sweet and she is a little snuggle bug, and she's very kind in how she acts towards people, and I think people get nervous about oh, is this dog gonna replace my dog? And I'm like, No, but you will get the dog that you need. You might not get the dog you you want, but you will get the dog or animal that you need, and that's how their legacy carries on is loving. More animals and getting to know more people and being able to talk about them with people.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

If we do get to meet our pets on that rainbow bridge and you get to see Zelda again, what is the first thing that you will say to her?

SPEAKER_00 44:12

I feel like I'm gonna have a I'm gonna have a lot to say to her. I, you know, I miss her every day, and I'd probably say I know you were only a part of our lives for a very short period of time, but just know I spent the rest of mine loving you just as much that I can't wait to spend the rest of forever with you.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and share with your friends. If you have a dead pet that you'd like to share, please send an email to deadpetsofficial at gmail.com. Dead Pets is a wild media industries production. It is written and hosted by me, Elise Wilde. Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. Anatola Franz.