Grieving Misoy, the most wonderful dog of my life…

It’s been 83 days since Misoy died. Or maybe I shall better say that it’s since his soul just left his physical body.

Everything happened so fast, I will never understand exactly what happened. From running and playing with Caramelo, he didn’t want to get up and only ate from my hand. He got up only some time after I gave him one anti-inflammatory pill (I thought it was just a typical crisis of his arthritis, something that was happening once or twice every year, since 2020) and he was walking very slowly as he was also drinking water very slowly, which was strange because normally Misoy was drinking many liters of water altogether. The following day things got worse though. He wouldn’t even open his mouth to take the anti-iflammatory pill. When we rushed at the vet clinic in Chalkida, an X-ray only showed that he wasn’t able to digest his food. We lost a lot of time by coming back home from that clinic (where they actually didn’t help him, as they only injected him for possible inflammation and the vet didn’t tell us that we should rush to Athens go see immediately a vet neurologist…) and by spending time at home looking at him not being well, unable to stand up, us being so confused, and me personally in total denial ..until we decided to go to a vet hospital in Athens (in which I don’t want to ever again go) where we had to put pressure in order for them to let us see him before leaving.

I still struggle with the guilt of just booking an appointment with his chiropractor (the earlier possible was 2 days after he woke up unwell) instead of rushing him to a hospital on the same day. Nevertheless, what happened to him had a neurologic cause so if we were to find what was it, and save him, we would all probably suffer for a long time after…And Misoy was a dog who never suffered, he was a imperious and he lived 12 full years, happy, active and globetrotting. It wouldn’t have been easy for me either to have to lift him (he weighted 40kg) in order to go up and down the 3-4 stairs for X amount of time. And it wouldn’t make any sense for him to stay alive without the ability to play with Caramelo, a life without the ability of running from the one side of the field to the either, barking to whoever was passing by… His time had come. I would have prefer a death from a heart attack for him though, like my frist dog’s sudden death after a dog walk, rather than what he went through for 2,5 days.

Τhese 83 days have been extremely hard for me though.

For Caramelo as well. Caramelo was seeing Misoy as his father actually as he was a puppy when he came in our lives while Misoy was 3 years old so he taught him how dogs play, from him Caramelo mimicked the behaviour to keep away from water (I am sure that he would enter the sea and swim with me if it wasn’t for Misoy disliking water) and overall Misoy was his only dog companion, since Roady died in 2016, and especially since we left my hometown because there, it was also the neighbor’s dog who was joining their pack, Komis.

Caramelo got colitis the very next day after we burried Misoy, and it happened to him 35 days later too, while in between he went through gastritis once. He needed twice antibiotics for the diarrohea to stop, which at the end caused him neurologic side effects (an incident that looked like a stroke so we rushed him at another vet hospital for a neurologist to check on him).

Caramelo was eating slowly his food, slower than normally for more than a month. Tsifki, the cat of our family, who had a very special bond with Misoy, was also (and still is) very lethargic and in the beginning she was eating less food while in general she became very vocal, looking around for him. All these are symptoms of how pets grieve, based on scientific publications.

Caramelo isn’t feeling well, again, since last night, but the xrays and the ultrasound foudnd nothing but…gas in his stomach. He doesn’t want to eat and he is lethargic.

Misoy was diagnosed with Degenerative Mitral Vavle Disease and atrial fibrillation (which I now think that he had since at least 2019), 6 months before he died, which are conditions that we found accidentally, a day that I took him at the vet for his ear which was causing him some pain. He had no symptoms whatsoever…Nor did I see a difference after he go the treatment that the cardiologist recommended. I gave my last savings to 3 different cardiologists, the 1st one prescribed 6 different pills for the rest of his life, 5 of which were for humans (!) but since one of them created an edema on his leg, Ι directly stopped giving it to him. The 2nd cardiologist agreed with the treatment that the first one has recommended but the 3rd one believed that just the one veterinary pill was enough, along with one of the other 5 which I decided to not give though, and instead of it I was giving a tincture (Hawthorn) after an online consultation with an integrative vet cardiologist in the States. I was also giving him medicinal mushrooms and as it seemed, he was doing pretty well with all that. Cardiologists were giving him 6 months to 1,5 year and as a result I was experiencing painful anticipatory grief for the first couple of months but little by little I stopped experiencing this and I started enjoying at its fullest each day with him, as I knew that each day with him, from that moment, was a gift.

And as I already mentioned, Misoy did NOT die from a heart issue.

Two years ago, when Misoy was already 10 years old, many people were telling me that these giant dogs don’t live longer than 10 years but I was wishing that the plantbased diet would do the miracle, as it did happen indeed! They say that vegan diets extend dogs’ longevity for about 9 months and I believe that Misoy is a good representative of this since he didn’t eat animal products from 2017 onwards. In addition to that, thanks to golden paste that I was making for him, and giving it to him daily since 2020 (while sometimes at the same time I was giving him nettle, plant based glucosamine and Boswellia Serrata too), he never needed the expensive injections that most people do to their dogs to treat arthritis pain (Librela), what all mainstream vets recommend. An injection that, for its production, Guinea pigs are killed. An injection that, as I recently learned from a lovely British vet nutritionist, is only effective in 48% of the dogs and only for the first two shots (whoever starts doing it to their dog, they never stop it until they die…in a monthly basis).

(If you want to learn more about the benefits of plant based diets for pets, check here)

During these 12 years, as long as Misoy’s age was allowing it, he has also been a blood donor (in Greece there is no blood bank for dogs) and he saved the lives of 2 dogs while we also tried to help a 3rd one but this one didn’t surive despite the blood donations, sadly.

All these years, he only got sick once, in 2018, right after we moved to North Evia from Lefkada, probably after drinking dirty water from the ground because I didn’t remember to give him water first thing upon our arrival… I was thinking that I was losing him back then. Back then I had to go to Thessaloniki, get trained with Caramelo who already was at a training center, and it was very stressful to leave back Misoy sick…but we were lucky because a good friend went to stay with him and with Tsifki, who took very good care of him while I was away.

Other than that, Misoy lived a carefree life, here and there (the main photo of this post is in Bilbao, infront of the Atlantic Ocean to where we went by car), offering offering looks of admiration everywhere because of his special beauty (the mix breeds who don’t look like anyone else in the world, that is, you can’t find anyone like of them, they have this uniqueness), because of his height (he almost reached my waist), because of his volume but mainly because of his kindness. While he was huge, he was essentially a gentle giant.

When we were walking in areas surrounded by people (not very often since 2018), people were always stopping to admire him and give him pats and he enjoyed it so much. He was nice with everyone, and he loved meeting new dogs. He was also very tender with cats. Licking them and being so gentle with kitties. The kindness and the gentleness of this dog….there are no words to express it. One could only experience it. He was only making people release oxytocin!

He spent the first 8 months of his life wondering in the streets, along with other stray dogs, and funnily, after I brought him home, he was digging holes to leave go find them and when he was coming back, he was brigning his buddies with him. Maybe he wanted me to adopt them too…And when he was away, he was going to look for food in the rubbish, even if I had fed him!! Some habbits it’s never easy to quit I guess…

Misoy offered me a carefree life for 11 years. When I left the citylife in 2018 and started living in remote mountainous villages in Greece, people were asking “aren’t you afraid where you are living?” and my reply was “have you seen my dogs?” so, it’s not that I haven’t acknowleged this but it’s different to know something in a cognitive way than to experience the insecurity that emerges after losing such a dog. Especially when you live alone in the middle of nowhere, literally speaking.

This is the curse of being a woman, because of patriarchy and misogyny. Misoy kept me safe when I wanted to go alone (in terms of human company) to hike in the mountains, get lost in the woods, and go swim during the winter. No one would come near me when I had him with me. With Caramelo I can’t do that (Caramelo sadly doesn’t make me feel safe, he stresses me out instead. He is a reactive dog who has cost me so much money, literally, and my mental health. It’s extremely hard to be the sole guardian of a reactive dog), because if he sees any animal he gets so agitated that if I, for example, am in the sea swimming, and he is let’s tied with his leash on a tree, I get agitated too, and I have to run out from the sea. Similarly, in the woods, if he sees any free wild animals or goats which unfortunately in Greece they are everywhere, again it will not be manageable. So gone are the days when I enjoyed walks in nature alone….with only a peaceful dog for company. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have such issues….(and I carry experience from the age of 10 years old – when 9 men took me on the run with the intention of harming me, but I was saved at the last minute because this happened in a street where a friend was living and I rung the bell and she opened the door. The danger is real.)

So Misoy was grounding us on and giving me strength, along with Tsifki of course who with her purring is calming me. To help you understand the situation and put it in perspective, after a stressful walk with Caramelo during which I had to be vigilant, I would go out with Misoy and relax.And in every new place that I was going to live, I first was walking around with Misoy to scan the area and then I would walk Caramelo, so I had to firstly make sure that the area has no stray or unattended dogs etc. But where I chose to live for the last 3 years, the 3 of us were going out, with no fear of any encounter that could trigger Caramelo because there is not even a stray cat around us within a 2 km radius. I basically chose this location for Caramelo. So I was trying to find people with dogs around to go meet them with Misoy because he LOVED socializing with other dogs.

With the 2 of them together, in 2018 we must have run 200 km while I was training for a trail run race, in Epirus. It was probably the best year of my life. Alone with 2 dogs and 1 cat, in beautiful Epirus and then in Lefkada, with closure of this year in northern Evia.

I miss the way Misoy was expressing his love for me. I often think how impressed was a vet dermatoligst who saw us in 2019, from his tenderness. He had this way, of pushing his head towards my belly and rub it there.

He didn’t just do that only to me of course, but to other people too, friends of mine, because that’s what Misoy was, he was giving out love generously and selflessly. I miss the “helicopter tail” I used to see swirling behind the gate here every time I came home. I miss his thunderous bark that made me feel safe. He barked at everyone who passed by, at people far from here, at hunters and shepherds, at wild animals….even at my partner’s car…until he realized it was him.

I miss the way he used to play with Caramelo on a daily basis. It was the happiest moment of the day for me. I will never forget the first time I heard them chasing each other. I was at home in Kifissia and for a moment I thought I had horses outside the house, when I heard their footsteps running! I have taken hundreds of videos of my dogs playing. And now I watch them with tears in my eyes… because I know that because of his behavior, Caramelo is doomed to die without getting a new dog companion…so he can’t experience this again. But anyway, he’s getting dangerously old too, he doesn’t bring balls to play with anymore…he’s lost the spark he had and he whines all the time. We got him a new ball and he liked it indeed but he isn’t interested in it a lot…like he was in the past with the old ones. Only the first day day that we brought it to him and a couple of other times…

Every day I think of the image of Caramelo behind the door, when we returned from the vet in Chalkida, on Misoy’s last day here. It was there that it hit me “fuck, what is he going to do alone now?” It struck me like a thunderbolt. …. A new anxiety was born with the loss of Misoy: don’t leave the “little one” alone too much. I deliberately, I never wanted to have a dog alone, I always at least had two of them so they have each other… However, I often think that I will eventually die first and then Caramelo. Because already having kept such a dog in my life with so many problems that has so many demands has knocked me out financially and psychologically. I’ve been looking for years for a person willing to share the custody of this dog with me, but in vain, this dog bites everyone, sooner or later. And then there’s the trauma and the lack of trust… Since Misoy died, I am living between my partner’s house (where at least there he doesn’t attack him) and mine, which I can’t leave completely because my partner’s house is not safe for my cat who is a free spirit and lives in and out because there are stray sick cats hanging around and there is a central road nearby… So I often go to my partner’s house with Caramelo for overnight stays so that he can climb on a couch, or even on the bed, since in the tiny house he has lost these 2 luxuries….but also because it relaxes me too, not having to turn on the stove every day, and also, I admit that the house got smaller after Misoy died. Someone will say, but “the big dog is out of the picture, how did the house shrink?”, and yet, the tiny house and the field outside, I can’t stand this place anymore – without Misoy. I can’t go to the vegetable garden without crying, because Misoy always followed me wherever I went, at a slow steady pace, and always sat discreetly a few feet away, watching me…

Every day when I look out the door and he’s no longer here, as he sat watching over the house and us, I die a little bit too. Every time a vehicle drives by and his bark doesn’t follow, I feel the emptiness. And inside the house it’s so quiet, it drives me crazy. You could hear Misoy’s breathing you see … or the growl he made at Caramelo when they both begged for food from me while I was eating… The other day I posted a video a friend sent me, in which you can hear his barking. I put it on the speaker so I could hear his bark loudly… Caramelo jumped out of his box and was looking for him, wagging his tail. This made me cry so much.

I have problems with my menstrual cycle too, since Misoy died. I didn’t get my perio for a long time, and when it came it wasn’t as usual. I did some hormonal blood tests and they showed that I am probably going into early menopause…

I already had hormonal issues from last year, because of the chronic stress from living off the grid in the midst of climate collapse and because of the responsibilities of the single custody of a dog like Caramelo, with so many special needs, and because I was already experiencing ecological grief and climate stress but also, most importantly, I have been mourning my dream of setting up an farm sanctuary here (the reason I got a land of 10 acres). Because it is not wise to start an farm sanctuary while the climate is collapsing. We may still be able to save animals from slaughter and exploitation, but we can’t save them from the climate collapse. Hundreds of sheltered animals are dying in floods, wildfires or from heat strokes. I can’t bear witness to that. I have been to too many evacuations of houses where many dogs resided, during wildfires…so I know the stress well.

And so with Misoy dying, the dream of him guarding sheep and goats that are NOT to be exploited died once and for all. It was a delight to watch Misoy face these animals, whimpering in anguish because he wanted to go near them. He would have been the perfect co-caretaker. But the arrival of Caramelo into our lives put a pause on that dream. How can you save animals if one of your dogs wants to kill them?

We grieve in isolation, all by ourselves, while grieving is a collective process

I recently listened to a podcast of a Greek thanatologist who explained that grieving is a collective process and yet people nowadays grieve by themselves, isolated. And this is wrong. It takes a village to grieve…

So the worst thing for me right now is that I am grieving alone. Just like I mourned my mother 16 years ago. Because just like back then, when I was very social, and my fellow student friends rushed to attend her funeral, then everyone went back to their lives and no one except my partner at the time and his family stood by me, so now, the few friends who came to honour his death (for whom I am of course grateful, alas), they all then went back to their lives and business as usual.

Just because I have a partner, it doesn’t mean that I’m not alone. It just means that I’m not completely alone. I remember back when my mother died, how I was shocked and disgusted by what a  “friend” said to my partner at the time: “does Elisa need to see a psychologist?” as if it’s pathologic to mourn one’s mother, let alone at the age of 22!!!!

Nowadays, our society has ended up having us to pay a mental health specialist, just to find a person to listen to us actively, to find someone who knows how to make hold space for our grief. But the point is one, that the individualistic world we live in is turning us to psychologists and psychiatrists at a time when most of us can’t even afford them. It is a luxury that few can access.

I am currently reading the book The wild edge of sorrow: The sacred work for grief, by Francis Weller these days (a gift from one of the 2 people who are trying to be close to me even from afar these days but guess what, they sympathize as both of these people recently lost a dog and both of these people have lost a parent like me, how sad that the only one who will stand by you is the someone who has been through the same experience) and anyway, it says somewhere in this book about a community of Italian miners in America, in the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania in which scientists had wondered why people there didn’t suffer from heart issues and the reason was that they were living in community. So the existence of an authentic community protects people from developing health problems, and provides well-being and the healing of mind and body. This phenomenon is known as the Roseto effect [The “Roseto effect” has been cited as evidence for the positive effects of social cohesion and social support on coronary artery disease, and a review found some support for the influence of social support on coronary heart disease mortality (Greenwood et al., 1996)]. However, this was only happening during the years  30ies – 60ies. When the young people from the community started leaving in order to move to big cities and people in the community slowly started living in single-family homes (the nuclear family model that has alienated us in the West), people started developing heart disease there too, unlike in the first 30 years of the study when many families used to lived together in large houses…

As the book says, “The only thing that originally protected these people from heart disease was belonging”.

This sence of belonging is that I miss, like all the people who grieve and I am in contact with. The saddest part in my case is that even people from a grief circle that I joined last year for the ecological grief, were absent when Misoy died, even though I had expressed in our circe the anticipatory grief that I was experiencing already, a year before Misoy’s death. They just sent a message of sympathy and that was it. Imagine if they weren’t peers of a grief circle.

I have 0 support system around me, and very few romantic relationships last forever, especially if the partner with who you are related has to carry with you such a huge weight of grief and faces with you so many stressful events.

I am tired of having only one person able and eager to support me, when I need help. No matter how much he loves me, no matter how much he doesn’t complain, what we are living is unhealthy and it’s wearing us down. When he was gone of course, for 10 days, I was O.K. but I wasn’t eating well, I was dizzy, and generally, I was just surviving. Which is also perfectly normal in times of mourning, since as it’s written in the book that I mentioned above, in ancient Scandinavian communities, the grievers experienced a “period of life in the ashes” during which the people surrounding them recognized that this person had entered a world parallel to and separate from the daily lives of others during which others were engaged in gathering food, feeding their children, and tending fields. The community expected nothing from these people during this period which usually lasted a year or more. This person’s duty was only to mourn, to live in the ashes of the deceased and to consider this time as sacred. It was a time of reflection, a period of deep inner work to help digest and metabolize the loss of a loved one. There is wisdom behind the time given to the griever.

Jews also give a year to the griever. And until recently some people wore black or just a black armband on their arm for as long as they felt they were mourning and this gave others a message (which apparently asks silently for respect to their grief and therefore not to bother the griever for a chit chat, as mourning consumes all your energy).

On the contrary, when people are not allowed enough time to mourn and grieve, the wounds are closing much earlier, but without having been healed, remaining forever infected.

I have already read a book on grieving by the before mentioned Greek thanatologist and I also keep a grief diary that she has published, but no book can make up for the presence of people who will hold your hand and talk with you about the deceased (which of course, unfortunately, no one does, on the contrary, while grievers WANT to talk about the deceased…).

Something that really helped me a lot during the first weeks after Misoy’s death, was a yogic grief guide which includes 18 yin yoga classes – very therapeutic. Some classes I ‘ve taken them more than once.

Recently I went to pick up a parcel from a shop in the village where my parcels go and when the lady who has it asked me how I was doing and I replied that I was grieving, she replied “Still?” and I’m talking about a person who lives alone with a dog. A person to whom I spoke a few days after Misoy died, and she said at the time “I can’t imagine my life without my dog”. But my gaze struck her and she immediately realized what she had just said and…who she was addressing.

The truth is that when I lost Roady, I didn’t suffer as much, but I think the reason is that I had only spent 2.5 years with him and when he died the rest of the animals were left behind and they were all still very young. Now with Caramelo being so sad after Misoy’s passing, and him being already a dog who has lived way beyond what most vets would expect, due to his sensitive kidneys and thanks to homecooked WFPB diet…. it’s very much harder because I also experience anticipatory grief for Caramelo.

With Misoy I spent 11 years from my life (almost 1/3 of it), from which the last 6 were in an isolated setting so I really feel now that I am amputated. I’ve lost the joy of life because he was the joy of life. Every time I went to the sea or to the woods with him, no matter how much sadness I had in me about what was going on in the world or in my life, I could forget all about it thanks to him rubbing against the sand or against the leaves with such joy…he had a way of giving me moments of respite and pure joy while I struggled with depression.

Also, he was so tall that we used to catch him licking the tables, and he made us laughing so much, every time after we had food. He was a big beggar and very expressive. Misoy gifted us daily moments of laughter, security, love and other very beautiful moments throughout his life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I lost my mother and then my first cat, I now think in hindsight that I survived and moved on with my life because I moved out from where I had memories with them. I tried to do that now too but the universe had other ideas and threw a wrench in our plans so I remain here until further notice, penniless, empty and grieving. It was nice when we went away to northern Greece for a few days, two weeks after Misoy’s passing, thanks to my nice partner, but with a lot of anxiety again, as always, because of Caramelo who now, because of his age, can’t stay still in the car and needs a bunch of pills to stay calm so his back legs won’t bother him; but also because of Tsifki the cat who we couldn’t leave behind, who wanted to go out from the airbnb – as always-  but I was worried when she was late coming back. I was crying there too, of course, because I missed Misoy there too, since we stayed somewhere where we had been before with both dogs, and visited places that I wish Misoy had been with us….but either way, when you’re on a trip, the pain, lessens in a way.

I’m tired of been worried and stressed. I’m burnt out big time and I basically know now that there’s the term grief burnout so that’s basically what I’m experiencing now.

I just wish I hadn’t raised these animals on my own, and now I could go off to go on a trip with a one way ticket, only to come back when I felt like doing it.

A summer night’s dream.

But since I cannot experience this, I want whoever is close to me, practically or even in distance, online, not to wait for me to go through what I am experiencing somehow directly, and let me experience my grief. To not expect anything from me and to give me space and time, providing whatever care they can, whenever they can. Also, I don’t want to hear birthday wishes, since it will be my first birthday without Misoy (as if my partner knew this and took a picture of us last year, with the cake in my hands and Misoy wanting to eat it). Anyway, I was beginning to demystify birthdays anyway, since they don’t have much meaning, it’s a common day, just once again capitalism has made it a reason for consumption frenzy. Not that anyone remembers birthdays anymore if you’re not on fb…

Whether I will survive such a deep mourning, being unemployed, isolated and financially stretched ςηιλε having to visit a bunch of doctors to figure out what’s wrong with me, I don’t know and I really don’t care.

If only I could sleep now and never wake up again…. I know I’ll be reunited with my mother, my first cat, Sylvia, and Misoy, and I’ve lived a full life so far, here and there – I’ve had my fill of everything, everyone dies one day but few live and at least I’ve lived. I have no more dreams to chase, and the world as we knew it has long since collapsed. Yes, I’m suicidal and quite possibly these last lines will be erased one day, but that’s okay. We live in a time when 450,000,000 people are dying from depression (i.g. they suicide) which is the 2nd most common cause of death today, after heart issues, so I don’t mind writing something shocking, something that is still taboo for most people while it happens all the time. People need to be shaken up and understand that dabbling in sedatives and antidepressants is not the answer.

The solution is to create communities. That’s a longing I will die with.

“How can we get a look at the cinders side of things when the society is determined to create a world of shopping malls and entertainment complexes in which we are made to believe that there is no death, disfigurement, illness, insanity, lethargy, or misery? Disneyland means no ashes.” ~ Robert Bly

P.S. For anyone who has lost a pet and the people around them disenfranchise their grief, I recommend the podcast petloss journal hosted by a woman in Ireland who specializes in the Grief Recovery Method (counceling sessions on pet loss), which I hope when I will lose Caramelos I will be able to afford. This girl also has an instagram account (she lost her 2 dogs just before 2020, their deaths happened a week apart and she had just come out from a long term relationship). Also, there’s a related Facebook group where I found some comfort… That’s where a lady that I don’t know personally made the following picture for me. What she mentions about robins is inspired by my own related post in that when we just completed Misoy’s grave, a robin appeared, and ever since robins keep coming, and it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced visits by robins and yet we have been living here for 3 years already, and I’m very connected to nature. In England it is believed that a robin appears when your deceased loved one is near you… It is a phrase that goes back hundreds of years in British folklore and is rich in meaning. Every day a robin comes and stands at the gate, and chirps…I know it’s a sign from my Misoy….

** Misoy means tail in the language “Cree” by Native Americans who live in what is today called Canada.