Oliver’s Big Heart, Lasting Lessons

A big-hearted rescue sprinted out a front door and into Angela’s arms, and from that moment Oliver seemed to collect memories the way dogs collect sand: everywhere, all at once. We trade muddy dog-park chaos, driftwood trophies, and keys lost to the Atlantic for something deeper—how rituals stitch love into the everyday, and how those same rituals become lifelines when we face the unthinkable.

To Purchase the book, click on the link -> Furry Mortals: The Oliver Project

We walk through two very different goodbyes. Zack, the blue-eyed border collie who chose dignity to the last step, padding into the rainbow room on his own terms. Oliver’s path was harder. That fracture sparked Angela’s book, The Furry Mortals: The Oliver Project—part memoir, part field guide for compassionate endings and honest grief.

Along the way we share practical tools.  Most of all, we lean into radical self-awareness: decisions made with love are valid, whether you can stay in the room or need to step out. And because love rarely ends where a life does, we talk about Zander finding his spark again when Oswald—a black lab mix who literally ran into their path—joined the family, with Murphy the snowshoe cat grooming her pack as if to seal the bond.

If you’ve ever loved a pet and wrestled with the clock, this conversation offers language, courage, and a way forward. Listen, share it with someone who needs steady ground, and if it helps you breathe a little easier, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the ritual that keeps your pet close.

1. Purchase the Book that inspired the Podcast
2. Want to share your pets story on a future podcast?  
   1. Send us a message: SUBSCRIBE
3. All new, the first ever Pet Journal - start logging your memories with your Pet
   1. Click -> Pet Journal

Transcript

Welcome & Angela’s Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Every Paw Print, Every Story. I am your host, Dan Popovic. For those new listeners that haven't yet to experience this podcast or listen to some of the previous uh episodes or shows, uh, this is a weekly conversation space where people honor pets they've lost, celebrate the joy pets bring, and support one another through pet grief. Each episode centers on a guest memory, the ritual that keeps those pets present in daily life, and the lessons of love and loss that pets teach us. The goal with this podcast is to inspire, to guide, and support each other. And I'm excited today to introduce to everybody listening to this show uh Angela, who is in Texas. Angela and I just briefly met at LinkedIn, got connected in LinkedIn, got her book called The Furry Mortals, The Oliver Project. And again, for you listeners, the details of where to find her book, where to get her book are listed in the information section of this podcast. But gosh, Angela, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Oh, thanks for having me. It's um I can I can talk pets all day long. So, you know, the stories I have to tell and share, we will um dive into those hopefully. And and it's been a pleasure getting to know you and learn about your book and your podcast. So I'm excited.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Awesome. Thank you. So that's that's a perfect tee up. Since I mentioned the book, I've I've got the book. I'm actually holding up the computer even though we can't see it. Um started reading it. So gosh, yeah, let's share with the audience a little bit about Oliver.

Meeting Oliver And Rescue Beginnings

SPEAKER_03 1:42

I mean, how did how did Oliver how did how did the reunion how did you guys become family?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Ah, so um all of my pets are rescue pets. So I've I've had I've had quite a few. And Oliver's no different. He um he was a feral litter at a farm out in East Texas, West Texas, West Texas. And um a friend of mine owns a goat farm out there, and they foster dogs. And Oliver was her second foster to bring in, and she sent me a picture of him, and that was it. I was like, okay, we have to do a meet and greet. Well, the meet and greet was him bounding out the front door into my arms and knocking me over. So so much for a meet and greet. It was a yes, I'm taking him home. Yeah, because I had a border colleague at the time, Zach, and so he had to meet him as well. It was kind of one of those things, but everybody took to Oliver immediately. And uh um, yeah, so we were we were the second foster of this place, and I think they're now up to almost 400 dogs, they fostered. Wow, okay, so yep, so but we were number two. Um, his sister got adopted right before Oliver. We looked at his sister as well, we thought about Charlotte, but she went to another family and we stayed close with them as well. And the funny thing, Charlotte, not funny, but the the the um ironic thing is that Charlotte and Oliver died within a week of each other.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

So um, but him coming, you know, he he I always call Oliver my big teddy bear. He was just a big, lovable, 80-pound um bear, teddy bear. And he he loved everyone, he loved to give hugs, kisses. He was just the most easy-going, laid-back dog you've ever met in your life. Um so he he he was great.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

You and you can kind of see that on on your book covering the listener will keep plugging the book cover or the book on this, but yes, yeah, that that face. He's got that kind of that gentle look. And then, of course, oh yeah, you've got the gray, a little bit of the gray, the gray mustache.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, he didn't so he came, he's a black lab Catahula leopard dog mix.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Holy cow.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

So he came with all that gray on him.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Um, he never really got a frosted face. Where his sister Charlotte, she did, but Oliver never really got the frosted face, which um which which was surprising, but he always looked kind of the same with this gray on his face and and all over him. Uh he didn't change too much over the years.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

So now, how how old was he when you got him?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Six months old.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

Oh wow, okay. So the you know, put puppy hood.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Um yes, oh yes, and he'd been feral that entire six months because they couldn't bring him into the foster thing until his sister got adopted, and then once she did, then he could come. So he spent a summer in Texas in the in the heat being a feral dog.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

So any of that um kind of carry forward with him, or was he just pretty no?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Nope. No, the only thing that carried forward was it. I remember the night we brought him home, we uh had a friend over to meet him immediately because we were so excited, and I had made chicken corn chowder, and I wasn't really thinking, and we were kind of sitting around at a lower table eating, getting ready to eat, and I sat it on the table, and the next thing I know, Oliver's face is in the bowl, you know, because I just wasn't our border colleague Zach. We he

Zach’s Life, Health Battles, And Dignity

SPEAKER_02 5:25

never would go after the food or anything like that, and I just hadn't thought about the fact that he'd been feral for so long and I put food down. Of course, his head will be in the bowl. Right. So and my friend initially it immediately said, Okay, that's your bowl, not mine. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

So and then uh the border cut, so they got along uh Oliver and your border cottage. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Yep. Oliver and Zach were the best of friends.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Best of friends, yeah. Uh is is Zach still with us?

SPEAKER_02 5:53

No, we lost him before we lost Oliver. Uh uh Zach was 17. He's in the book as well. His story's in here.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Um Zach was uh Zach is one of my stories of what we did right at the end, right? Um, I have stories in the book of what of which of not only ours but other people's stories of of what they did right or or or didn't do right at the end, or how they feel they didn't do right, right? I never think that anybody makes a wrong decision. Yeah, I just feel that Zach, we chose when to do it, how to do it, and we knew exactly what time to do it. So it worked. Uh his was the perfect story, if you ask me.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Um, but so let's let's talk about or expand on that a little and what when you say perfect story, yeah. What in sharing with this audience? So, yeah, it's always the tough decisions, and what and what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

It is so um Zach had been a wonder child his entire life, 17 years old. He um he had survived, he was the only one of a litter of seven that survived Parvo.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Um so he was a Parvo puppy. And then right after we got Oliver, we got Oliver when he was 11. Um, right after we got Oliver, uh, he got a spontaneous pneumothorax in his chest and had to have it cracked open, part of his lung taken out, recovered fine, but then he got Mursa in there as well. Okay, they cleaned that out, he survived that, and he lived another six years, you know. He was just this fighter, this fighter.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

But he got um where he got degenerative spinal disease when he got later in life, um, and it caused him to not be able to walk or to stand up or things like that. And he was so proud. He was the proudest dog you'd ever meet. He had a lot of pride. So although we had, you know, we did everything we could, the incontinence, of course, you know, you do everything you can, and then you decide, okay. Um in my book, I call these the trilogy of the soul. What of Zach is not there now, right? And that's kind of what we were looking for. He couldn't get up and chase things like he loved to, he couldn't do certain things that were his markers of him being him.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

He would he would kind of lay there and look to us for help, but he was so proud he didn't really want to ask for it. So he would try, but he couldn't.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

So we made the decision before it was too late, before he was in severe pain or or just couldn't, you know, function at all to go ahead and say goodbye. And he actually walked himself into the the the vet's office into the rainbow room there, and we said goodbye to him there. And it was just the fact that he could walk himself in with his little proud self, you know. I still see him doing that. And and it was um, it was hard, but it was the right, it was not only the right decision, but the right time. You know, so often we're either a lot of times we think we're too early or we are too late. And for this one, he was it was the right time. So that's why I call that one the right decision.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yeah, no, that it's well, like you said, it's never easy, it's always hard, but yeah, that's that's that sounds right, and you know, lived a good, good long life. Um what were what were some of the like just the the the happy, the fun routines that you know you even remember today that you used to do with Zach that would that just brings a smile to your face?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Zach was crazy. So uh he was a smooth border collie with blue eyes, and um, yeah, he was just gorgeous and everybody loved him. He was not a dog though. He really he loved his brother Oliver very much, but he hated all other dogs. We would go to we have a lot of pubs here in Houston that have um dog parks attached to them, uh-huh. And we would go to these, and Oliver would be in the middle playing with all the other dogs because Oliver loved everybody, and Zach would be sitting with the humans on the bench. He would not do it. He's like, I am so not getting out there. Are you crazy? So um, we always laughed that he was human, he was not a dog, and uh that's funny. Oh, yeah, he just he just didn't like that. He loved cats, he loved cats so much. When we would take him into Petsmart, if there were cats for adoption, he'd go up to every cage wagging his tail, crying, and the poor cats are terrified, you know. And he's like, I've gotta see every cat. He loved cats, but he did not like dogs.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

So well, that's that's fascinating to hear that. But then how he took to Oliver.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Yeah, he did. And and the first day he did not, but we didn't know that he was sick with his pneumothorax at that point. Um, and so once he had his surgery, and then from then on, especially so Zach lost his hearing too. Um probably about four years before he passed away, he he lost his hearing, and he really leaned on Oliver, right? Oliver became his kind of uh his ears to be with him. So yeah, they they bonded a lot over the years together, the two of them.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

And then so Zach, you you felt was was right, but obviously it sounds like obviously Oliver wasn't right.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah, so Oliver the choice of euthanasia that we chose was correct. Choosing to say goodbye that day was right. Um, but how the situation came about was not. Um it really wasn't how it came about, it was the aftermath of it that drove me to write this book. Um so Oliver, when he was so he passed away at 13 when he was um I forget what age he was, he had a um a mass in his spleen, a two-pound mass. And that's a big mass, right? So uh yeah, so when the vet found it, she freaked out, of course. Not freaked out, it our vet has is our vet we have in Massachusetts very empathetic, and she got very upset when she felt it and and said we need to get surgery. So we brought him back to Texas to take him to the specialty hospital here that we like, and they removed the mass, and there was no cancer, right? None found, they took it out, it was benign. They did scans to make sure there was no cancer anywhere around it, you know, nothing weird going on. Um, he also had a nosebleed at that time, which if you've never had a dog have a nosebleed, you're lucky.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I have not.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Oh my gosh. When their nose bleeds, it tickles their nose. And when a dog's nose gets tickled, they sneeze.

unknown 12:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah. And so take my 80-pound

Joyful Routines And Dog Park Stories

SPEAKER_02 12:50

boy and give him a bleeding nose and have him sneezing everywhere. It was atrocious. It was just it was crazy. So they also checked his sinuses to make sure there were no things in there. So um, we got a clean bill of health. He was healthy, he didn't have cancer, he came home, he healed. Um and then we noticed, you know, we noticed him slowing down and breathing a little heavy and limping. But I and I just wrote an article on this. Um, but we kind of wrote it off. We wrote it off to, oh, that's just him getting older, you know, as we all do, because we kind of want that to be the answer, right? We want it to just be that they're getting older. Um, so we took him one day, he was just breathing so heavy, we we didn't like it. It was very labored. So we took him to the same emergency clinic, uh, same hospital here for pets, and we took him in and they did the first initial round of exams and said, Oh, you know, it's probably just some fluid or something, or he has, you know, a cold and we'll we'll get it taken care of, and we're gonna take him in the back. Okay, so we left and we came back. And when we came back, the veterinarian, she was fabulous, she took us into a room and showed us the x-ray, and his lungs were I'm gonna cry now. His lungs were filled with cancer. Oh, and this isn't even a year and a half after we were told there's no cancer, right? So it was kind of to me, it was very shocking.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

And come to find out his limp that he had was actually osteosarcoma, so it was bone cancer, and that had just metastasized to his lungs.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

And everybody knew about his limp, the vet, everybody, they all knew, but we never checked for it. We never thought about doing those early detections. Like, um, I don't know if you're familiar with the organization called Moose's March, but they give out free early cancer screening tests. And yeah, it they're fabulous. And I can't recommend it more because if we had done a scan, I don't know if we would have done anything different, right? I don't know what the answer would be to that, but I wish I had known. Right. Because instead it was just this shock.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

So yeah, all of a sudden, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah. So then I had about 60 minutes to to clear my mind if I could, and say goodbye to my best friend, you know? So um they moved us into another room. Um, they brought him in and they had him in with IVs and an oxygen mask over his face, and he's terrified, right? And I'm like, okay, take the oxygen mask off. At least I got it that far. I should have done, I wish I had slowed it down and had them take everything off, put them on the soap with me, and and had that time, but I didn't because I was freaked out. You know, you get this diagnosis, and you're just like, What oh my god! So so we're there, and the vet came in and she again was fabulous, and she's crying, and the previous vet technician couldn't come back in because she was crying too much. So, you know, I'm saying goodbye, and I've been in every room with every pet that I've ever had, and I I'm whispering him, I'm talking to him, and once he's gone, you know, spending a little extra time, and then another vet technician comes in. Um, you know, you ring a bell when you're ready, and so I ring the bell, and she came in and she starts just pulling wires out. I'm not even gone yet. I'm like, okay, and I I turned to her and I said, Okay, so what's gonna happen now? And she points to him and she says, Well, we're going to take care of it. Not him, not Oliver, it. I'm like, Do you even know my name? Do you know my pet's name? Do you know his sex? Do you know anything about this story except for right now you have to deal with getting him to where he needs to go, you know? Um so I I'm flabbergasted at that. And then she points to a door and says, You can go out that that door, and that door, instead of going back through the back, led to the busy um entryway, right? Um so now I'm upset, I'm going out, I'm seeing all these people coming in with their pets or leaving with their happy pets or different things like that, and here I am, just a mess.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

We can kind of relate a little bit there with with that story and in yeah, in Marley's past, she had yeah, probably a half dozen, if not more, needles.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Uh yeah, it was just I was uh you know, I was just they could have waited till I was gone to start and to learn to and this woman had headphones on, didn't even care anything about it, right? She was just there to do the after part. Right. The the empathy was not there, nothing's there. And so and then I come back to pick him up. So we have we've had all of our pets cremated. Um I have a I have two shelves in my in my closet with with all their urns. But but they so I go to pick up the urn at the same place, and they leave me waiting out front in the busy entry area where all the pets are coming and going and coming and going. And I'm like, you should have put me in a room. And it took a little while for them to get him. And the woman comes out from the back with him, and he's in, of course, in a bag with his urn and and the memorial products, you know, the paw print, the hair clipping, that kind of stuff. And she shakes the bag and says, Wow, he was a big boy. I'm like, I almost fainted in the rate in the waiting area.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

And and she did it twice. I'm like, you stop shaking him. And two, we're not talking about him in

Beach Rituals, Water Love, And Laughter

SPEAKER_02 18:45

any way, and she's smiling and laughing about it. I'm like, okay, I don't know if you're trying to lighten my mood, but it's not gonna work right because I'm devastated. And two, this is not how you handle this. So at that point, after being devastated, knowing the cancer diagnosis, having to say goodbye, and all of that, I was like, no, we're we're writing a book to have this not happen again.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Help help support and guide others, yeah. Yes, yeah, amazing. Um, well, let's talk a little about the the you know the rituals, like the fun stuff with with Oliver that um what what were some just some crazy fun stories with him that Oliver was a I don't know if you take your dogs to the dog park.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Do you ever do that? Um or have you?

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Or yeah, you know, we we have, but yeah, not not a lot for various reasons.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Oh yeah, and we we don't anymore because of different issues that had happened, or different, you know, diff just the different things that happened at the dog park. But with Oliver, we we did go to the dog park quite a bit, and we would walk around. I remember when we would take Zach there, we'd walk around and we'd see these dogs get in the mud and just roll around and be like, Oh, thank God that's not my dog, right? Until we got Oliver. Then we became those people that everybody said, Oh, thank God that's not my dog. So um he was a water dog, he loved the water, he loved the mud. Catahulas are bred for hunting hogs and the um so they can go through the mud much easier whose paws get stuck, and so he would just fly through these mud, just just swampy, muddy, wet areas. And and luckily he liked a bath, so I never worried about it, but um, I could just see other people's faces like, oh, that's terrifying. Yeah, he he loved it.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

So uh that's that's uh that's awesome. I'm actually envious because ours, um, yeah, we never had really good luck with water and Marley or even Marshall. Um I mean, what about did did you take him on any kind of like beach trips with the ocean?

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Oh yeah, yeah. So we in we live on a we live on a beach up in Massachusetts. Okay. So rituals with Ollie up there, you know, he couldn't wait to get in the water. I remember when we first bought our house up there, I we had made a bunch of keys to give to family, and I had them in my pocket, uh, all the extras, because we were gonna go see family right after we took him to the beach. And I decided I'm going to rough house with him, you know, and the waves and stuff and kind of play around forgetting those keys are in my pocket. Well, those keys are still out there in the ocean, so yeah, yeah. But he oh, he loved he loved the beach. He didn't care about the waves, not any of it. He just loved to be in the water. He would chase balls for hours, and he would find his favorite piece of driftwood, as big as possible, right? And carry that around on that beach. And then when he got older, he had horrible hip dysplasia.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Um, even as a puppy, he could never jump in the car. So when he had the hip dysplasia, we would instead of um playing on the beach, we we'd walk him down to the beach, and then we by then Zach had passed away, and we had Xander now. And Xander is also well, he's a Texas healer, is what they call him. He's three herding dogs and one. But so he has a lot of energy. So we would take both of them down to the beach, and I'd put out a big sand cloud uh towel, and Oliver and I would sit on that and watch Xander and watch the people go by and watch the waves. And I would take him out to play in the water some and he'd play around and then he'd be tired. So we'd come back and lay down. And uh he loved it. He'd watch the sunsets, we watched the sunsets together. It was it was great.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

That's all did he ever um ours had a tendency to um maybe she was just bored and she's eating the sand. He didn't did he ever do that?

SPEAKER_02 23:01

No, no, he was never a sand eater, he never dug in it either.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Yeah, yeah, a lot of dogs do, but no, not not he was never a digger anyway, so he just loved the water. Um another another kind of sad but funny story. Oliver was not shy to anything that was smelly. If it was the smellier the better, right? Yeah, it's he he was all dog. He was we he we adored him, but Zach, my other dog, my border collie, if it smelled, he wouldn't go in 10 feet of it. He's like, oh no, no. So we're on the beach and we're walking, and Oliver's never been able to run fast because his hips were never very good.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

And he's he's fairly young at this point, you know. He's not, he's not, he's probably nine. And we're going on the beach, and all of a sudden he starts booking it. And I'm like, Where are you going this fast? Like, how

The Diagnosis Shock And Final Moments

SPEAKER_02 23:58

fast are you going? And I'm running after him trying to to see what he's going towards because we he had fabulous recall. I could have stopped him in a heartbeat, but he was just going so fast. I'm like, what are you doing? What is so interesting? Well, there was a dead seal on the beach. Oh, goodness, and he had decided he was gonna go try and roll on it. And I'm like, oh my so I I dove and I caught his harness just seconds before he started to do it. And I'm like, okay, we are not doing that.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

So that had to have been funny for onlookers to watch and see. Oh, that's a great one.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Oh, yes. Oh, I'm sure all people were laughing, but they're like, What's up there? I'm like, uh, you don't want to know.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

And then so uh, so Xan, so Xander is who we have today.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

We have Xander and Oswald and Murphy the cat.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Oswald and Murphy the cat. Um the the did you inherit the names, or I'm I'm always curious of of how pets get it.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

No, so um we've always loved Zs and names. Um so we've had we've had Zach, Xander, and Oswald. The name we named, so Oliver brought Oswald to us. Um, and the way we named Oswald was in honor of Oliver and Zach.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

So we wanted something with an O Z at the front. So we decided with Oswald that that would be it, and uh to honor both of them and have that in his as his name.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

So hang on, you said Oliver brought Oswald to you all?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah, he um one, he has Oliver's personality, it's crazy. But we were walking Xander, it'd been a year after we lost Oliver, and uh we were walking Xander. Xander was depressed horribly uh that year because Xander just he that was his best friend, right? And we were like, we're not ready, you know, like everybody does, you know, you're kind of waiting to see, and we kind of talked about it, but we weren't quite ready yet. And we said two things we don't want another big dog, and we don't want another black dog, because we had like all black dogs. We thought, let's try something different. Never put rules on anything, I'll tell you. And um we decided to take a different direction to walk Xander that day, a direction we never go, ever. And we come around the corner and in the distance, we're like, what is this ruckus up here? What's going on? And we're like, is that cats? What is that? The little black things we see running around. We get a little closer, and it's a gentleman trying to walk seven eight-week-old puppies on leashes.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Holy cow!

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yeah, well, Oswald broke free and came running to us, okay, right? Yep. So we're like, okay, who's this little guy?

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Um, and like I said, we never go that direction. And Oswald was the only puppy that ran to us, and it was like, okay, this is we're taking him home. Um they it they were a litter of puppies that had been dumped at an industrial park out in Kingwood, Texas. And um, this gentleman's son called him and said, Hey dad, there's these puppies out here, and the dad does rescue work and he took them home. And so he was trying to walk them on weed.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

One of them breaks away and finds you. That's yeah. I don't the the hairs in the back of my neck went up on that one.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

That's really yes, yeah, because we never go that direction either. It was weird because we're like, uh, we'll just do that today, all right. And and the odds of running into this pack of puppies and having one come to us, it was just so yeah, we know Oliver's Cinema Way. We were very depressed. Uh Xander was very depressed. He and Oswald are best friends. Um, Xander became his old self again once we brought Oswald home. Um, so we just we always say Oliver Cinema Way.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

We'll definitely have to um we're getting close to the the end of this we'll definitely have to bring you back in to talk more about Xander, Oswald, and Murphy. Um do they all get along though?

SPEAKER_02 28:13

I mean you've got two Oh fabulously, fabulously, yes. And we you know, you never know when you bring a puppy in the house, you know how it's gonna go. And just this morning, Murphy was actually our cat was actually licking his ear and and marking his face. So yeah, they're all best friends, they do great.

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Now, how now how big are Xander and Oswald?

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Um, so Oswald is five and a half months and he's already 46 pounds. Yeah, we didn't want a black dog, he's a black lab mix, and we didn't want a big dog. Oliver's like, I've got different plans for you. Oh, yeah. So um, and Xander is a Texas healer, which is an Australian Shepherd blue healer, border collie mix.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

So but he's not a black dog.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

He is black with a white chest, yep.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Oh, okay. When you said blue healer, I was okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah, his mama, his mom was a blue healer. Um, we have pictures of her, but he has the markings of a border collie. You would think he was a border collie.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

That's funny. And then what kind of cat is Murphy?

SPEAKER_02 29:20

She's a snowshoe. Uh she's a rescue as well, but uh our vet thinks she's purebred snowshoe because snowshoes, the markings are non-dominant, so if they're not, they'd go away. Um, and she's polydactyl, so she has 26 toes.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

Oh holy cow!

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Yeah, she's uh she's almost at the record, she's just too short of the record.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

So um wow, interesting. Yeah, all right. So we'll definitely bring you back to talk more about those three. Um, and gosh, I know you've hit on a lot of this. Um, I guess, and hopefully readers, listeners will uh I said readers, listeners will pick up your book. Um, again, for the listeners on the show, there will be a link in the information section of the podcast to pick it up. But um yeah, just just with your experiences, and I go, I know, you know, once folks kind of pick the book up and read it, but I mean what I guess, yeah, what advice would you just give someone who's maybe grieving right now or or experiencing kind of an older pet?

SPEAKER_02 30:38

My big focus and and what I try to drive home is um what I call radical self-awareness. Okay, it you no matter what, you're gonna have these thoughts of guilt and shame about any choices you make at this point. And afterwards, while you're grieving, you're going to second guess yourself constantly.

Aftercare Missteps And Writing The Book

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

And so what I try to do, and what I try to spell out in the book is that whatever decision you make, if made with love for your pet, is the right one because it's based on your heart, and no one has the right to guilt you or shame you any other direction, right? If I have a lot of friends who can't be in the room with their pet when their pet passes away, and I have other people fuss at them about it. Oh, you have to be there. I'm like, your grief, your healing cannot start if the trauma of what you've gone through is is bigger than you, right? Right. So you have to be honest with yourself with everything that you choose. Um, and you have to be honest with your vets, what your line in the sand is, what comfort level you want for your pets, what decision you want to make for how you say goodbye to your pets, right? And all of that shapes what your grief will be like after. Um and I think the the biggest thing that I'm trying to put across is there's no shame in any decision that you make.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Right? You you've got to just it you made it with your heart. These these animals are our hearts. I mean, they're with us more than our families are, our family members. You know, kids grow up, we lose people, people move on. But our pets are here 24-7. We talk to them, we love them, they need our care all the time, and their loss leaves a huge hole. So to bring guilt and shame with you into that loss is detrimental to healing from it. So I just try to drive home the point. Here's all the information that's out here, but your decision is your decision. What you do, you have to make that decision. And there's no shame in any of them.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

So amazing. Yeah, no. Um completely agree. And and thank you, thank you for that, that advice. Thank you for sharing that. Um, and I'm, you know, just getting started with your book. So look forward to continuing to read, read through it, learn from this, as I hope listeners of the show do as well. Um, don't go anywhere just yet, but um with that, that um will wrap us up for this episode. And um again, thank you, Angela. I appreciate it. Um I appreciate your you know opportunity and bringing you on the show and and hearing and and learning and you know, again, how we can all support each other.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Um, it's been great being here. I love talking.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Hang on one second.