The Dog After Your Soul Dog
- 19 hours ago
- 7 min read
The Dog After Your Soul Dog
If you're reading this, I know why and how you got here, because I was once standing right where you are. You're in the space your soul dog left. And somewhere in all that silence, a thought crept in that made your stomach turn. Maybe another dog. And almost before you finished thinking it, the guilt slams into you. Because how could you. How could you even dare to think it. It feels like cheating. Like forgetting. Like standing at their grave and shopping for a replacement.
I know. I thought all of it too.
I lost my soul dog, Justice. And for a long time, the idea of another dog felt like a betrayal I wasn't capable of. So if that's where you are, I'm not going to rush you out of it. I just need you to know you're not broken. You're not a monster or a bad person for the thought.
Let me tell you how it went for me, and maybe it can ease your mind.
Who he was
Justice wasn't just a dog. He was the dog. He was the one who got me through my teen years, when I was lost and alone and so broken I didn't think I could make it one more day. Until I had him. I know that sounds dramatic, but that's exactly how it felt.
I looked forward to coming home to him. He searched for me in every room. He needed me and loved me so completely, despite how imperfect and unlovable I felt. He was my Mr. Moo, who never knew his actual name because I had more nicknames for him than anyone could possibly imagine.
Justice was my everything.
I dreaded losing him from the day I took him home. It was something my husband teased me for a lot, because he was a puppy and I was already crying, worried about losing him. And when they say life goes by fast, damn, is it the truth.
You get so busy. You start building a family. You live so fully that when their face turns white, you don't even realize they're no longer the youthful puppy you brought home, but a tired, wise, and stoic old man who has watched every milestone of your life.
So when his health started to decline, and every vet I took him to said there's nothing we can see that's wrong with him, he's just at the top of his breed's age, it was a gut-punch. What do you mean my baby is old? What do you mean there's nothing you can do?
I was able to give him three more years after that, with the help of a vet who was willing to go the distance with me. Until there was nothing else I could do for him, and I knew we had reached the point where there was nothing left. So I had to make the horrible decision to say goodbye. And while I know it was the best decision I could have made for him, my heart wanted him to live forever.
The goodbye that broke me
When Justice crossed the rainbow bridge, I knew my heart was never going to recover. It's been a year now, and I still cry. I still mourn and miss him. There's not a single day I don't think about him. He's still the background photo on my phone and the profile picture on my socials. The artwork I made for him is littered across the main area of our home. There is still so much of him here.
This past year, I was surprised at how unwilling I was to heal. Healing felt like leaving him behind. Like if missing him ever got easier, it meant he mattered less. And he could never matter less. So I held onto the pain on purpose. Letting it go felt like letting go of the last thing I had left.
Eventually I realized that letting the pain go wouldn't change the fact that my life was different. I was different. The pain didn't get smaller or disappear when I loosened my grip on it. I just learned to live around it. It became part of me.
Guilt... nobody talks about it
When Justice started to slow down, I had this terrible dread, and worst of all, guilt. What if I got another dog and my boy resented me for bringing someone new home? What if I brought a new dog home and didn't love him as much, because he wasn't Justice? What if I looked at him and felt nothing?
I thought love worked like space. That Justice filled a room in my heart, and another dog would have to move into that room. Push him out. Take what was his. And I couldn't deal with that.
But that's not how it works. A new dog doesn't move into the room your soul dog left. He builds his own. The heart doesn't have a fixed number of seats. It's bigger than that. Loving another creature didn't take anything from Justice. Didn't shrink him. Didn't replace him. Didn't fill the hole like he was never here. The hole is still here. It's always going to be here.
I just found out I could keep the hole and love something new at the same time. In the same heart. And neither one cancels the other out. Just like when I brought my second daughter into the world. My love didn't shrink for my first. My heart doubled.
And here's the part of my story that doesn't fit the typical scenerio. My next dog didn't come after Justice. He came during.
Scout showed up on my Facebook feed and stopped me in my tracks. He reminded me a little of Justice as a puppy. Same coloring. Same wrinkly butterball. So impulsively, I applied to adopt him. There were hundreds of shares and comments from people who wanted him. I didn't think we'd hear back.
But almost immediately they reached out and said, we think you'd be the perfect family for Scout. So we drove almost two hours, Justice and Rosie and the girls, to the rescue center. The second I walked in and saw him, I cried. I just knew. He was meant for us. We introduced the girls and the pups, and everyone loved each other. It was honestly perfect.
We brought him home that night. And over the next few months, I kept my focus on Justice. By then I'd spent a year making him homemade food after his kidney disease diagnosis, doing water therapy for his failing legs, stretches, supplements, vet visits. Rosie had always been inseparable from him. I truly believe bringing her home four years ago helped Justice live as long as he did. She kept him young. And Scout fell in love with him immediately too. The three of them were attached at the hip.
Then Justice's mind started to go. Then his legs. Then the kidney disease. It was all a domino effect, and I was fighting it like fighting gravity. The guilt was heavy. But Scout coming when he did turned out to be a gift I didn't know I was giving my family.
If you're standing where I stood
I'm not going to hand you a checklist. Grief doesn't follow instructions. Neither does love. But here's what I wish someone had told me, straight, while I was drowning in it.
There's no timeline. Not three months. Not a year. Not "when you're ready," because you might never feel ready, and that's fine. Some people wait years. Some people find the next one before the grief has even let go. Or sometimes, like me, you find your next one before the chapter is even over. Nobody's doing it wrong.
The guilt isn't a verdict. Feeling like you're betraying them doesn't mean you are. It means you loved them so much it became a physical thing you carry in your chest. The guilt is just love with nowhere to go.
And loving again isn't leaving them behind. You carry your soul dog into every dog that comes after. They taught you how to love like that. The next one will know love because of your soul dog.
When Justice passed, I was thankful Scout was there. Not just to help my young girls move through life without him, but for Rosie too, who only ever knew Justice. She fell into such a depression, and I think it would have been so much worse without Scout. And somewhere deep down, I think I knew I needed something, someone, like Scout there for me too. Because life without Justice was the biggest fear I'd carried since I held him at nineteen.
He's still the heart
Justice is still my anchor. My heart on four legs. That didn't change when Scout came, or Rosie, or even my children and my husband. It's never going to change.
I always say my husband is the beat in my chest. He keeps me going. My children are the air in my lungs. They're what I live for. And Justice, he was my anchor. He kept me tethered to the earth and grounded me when life got too hard.
My pets have always been deeply rooted in who I am. They aren't objects I own or property I possess. They're my family. I raise them, feed them, care for them when they're sick, love them, comfort them, play with them. Just like I do my own children.
If you're somewhere in the middle of this, I'm glad you found your way here. Take all the time you need. Your soul dog isn't going anywhere. They live inside you now. And there's room for whatever comes next, when and if you're ready.
Tell me in the comments below, what was their name, and what made them special. I want to know.
Katrina
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