The Love Left Behind: My Story of Losing Hopper

There was a torrential downpour of pain on a June afternoon when I first met Hopper. I was 25, in a relationship I didn’t want to be in, in a mountain of debt and searching for a light in the darkness. He needed a home and I fell in love with him the second I laid eyes on him. After a grueling 18-hour round-trip journey across the country and back, he’d finally found his forever home. Hopper’s love was a constant – it was always felt deeply, despite being invisible. He loved his people wholeheartedly, despite his awful past. He had seen me through many breakups, breakdowns and laid by my side during chronic illness flare-ups and through a pregnancy loss, comforting me and trying to take my pain away. He had an obsession with water, no matter the source. The shower was turned on? He’d take himself inside. The bath was running?Was the bath running? He’d put his paws on it and watch the water flow. We joked he may have been a fish in a previous life. He was a bundle of chaos and love all wrapped into one. He introduced me to a love I didn’t think was possible, and taught me to love myself by simply loving me in an undying way.

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My worst nightmare first came true on a Friday night. We’d noticed his lymph nodes were larger than normal. I tried not to panic but rushed him to a vet appointment the next morning. Blood tests were done, but the vets weren’t concerned at all, despite my rising panic. A few days later, more lymph nodes across his body has swollen. We rushed him back and he was taken in for scans and other procedures to try and figure out what was happening. That day, the worst news was given to me – Lymphoma, at only 3 years old. A very rare diagnosis given his age and breed. I kept myself composed until I got into the car and then I just let the tears flow. The next few weeks were ups and downs – not knowing what to expect was the worst part. Would I wake up and he’d be in pain or struggling to breathe? I did everything I could in those weeks to try and make him as comfortable as possible, wishing there was a cure, but knowing sooner or later I’d have to make the decision to say goodbye. I cooked fresh meals for him every day, invested in every supplement possible that might help prolong our time, administered countless medications like I was a qualified pharmacist, and tried to give him every bit of love inside me, despite feeling like parts of my soul were breaking every day. 

Anticipatory grief is what it's defined as – knowing you’ll have to say goodbye and grieving before you even need to, expecting the worst to happen at any moment. It was like a ravenous animal eating into my soul.

Many nights, I simply started crying out of nowhere and didn’t stop until I’d exhausted myself. I didn’t know what to do or what I was going to do when he was no longer there. How was I meant to go on when my reason for living was no longer here? Countless questions swirled in my mind: why him and why now, so suddenly? How much longer did we have together? Would I get everything done with him in time to say goodbye? Had I done enough? Had I caused this? Was this karma for something I’d done?

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Suddenly, the bad days started to outweigh the good and I knew it would soon be time to say goodbye. He’d had 3 bad nights in a row of being unsettled and obviously in pain, and I’d decided now was the time. It’s the greatest gift we can give to an animal we love so deeply, to allow them to go peacefully and no longer be in pain. I was also making the decision for me – I had spent all of my time caring for Hopper during his illness and I felt everything in my life slipping away. The call was made to a lovely in-home vet, who agreed to come that afternoon. We ordered a McDonald's, with a very special Happy Meal and sat on the floor in our living room and fed it to him. Every treat he could possibly want was fed to him, to make sure he got a last taste of everything he enjoyed before he went. 

Minutes before the vet arrived, a torrential downpour of rain suddenly happened again, after a long period of drought weather and continued on as we said goodbye. Once his sedation had settled in, we let his older sister into the room to say goodbye, and she barked at him to try and wake him up, as if to say, why are you so quiet? There’s a stranger in the house. 3 years to the day I had bought Hopper home, at around the same time we’d first laid eyes on each other, he took his last breath with my head against his. That night I didn’t move anything; everything was left the way it had been when we’d parted ways – his bed in the middle of the room, the wrapper from the chocolate we fed him before he passed still on the fireplace. On waking the next morning, I broke down. He wasn’t there to greet me with good morning. I didn’t need to get up and prepare his special meals. I didn’t need to administer his medication or clean up his accidents.

That day and the days that followed were the hardest of my life; however, knowing and loving Hopper was such a privilege.

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Eden is an animal lover who has dedicated most of her adult life to volunteering for animal charities, writing from personal experience of pet loss and anticipatory grief. My three-legged rescue dog, Hopper, brought an extraordinary amount of love and laughter into my life before we lost him far too soon. Through writing about Hopper and my own grief, I hope to help make others feel less alone in theirs.