Two Dogs Two Griefs

It was a difficult year. Her doctor diagnosed her with dementia caregiver burnout, while she was also experiencing workplace stress. And Toby, an elderly dog with colitis, became lame and then was dying. He died alone with her in her room.

Debra lost two beloved canine companions in less than six years. Farley was the first and Toby was the second. The way she grieved the death of each one was so different, and she needed to understand why. She immersed herself in researching pet loss, death and dying, and grief and the bereavement process. She gave herself two years to complete her research and then write a book about what she had learned.

Then, she unexpectedly won a book publishing package with the publisher she had originally intended to use. Being an early riser, she was the first person who correctly answered a trivia question. The catch? She had to submit a manuscript within a month to claim the prize. The problem? She didn't have a manuscript, and she had never written a book before.

It would be a daunting task. Her first thought was, "There is no way I can do this." Her second thought was, "What have I got to lose?" The worst-case scenario was she wouldn't complete a manuscript and submit it by the deadline.

With her original book idea a year off from completion, she put it on the back burner and started a new book. She was up for the challenge and ready to do this. She hit the ground running at a snail's pace. She was still dealing with some cognitive deficits, caused by prolonged stress that affected her brain functioning.

For the first two weeks, she wrote nothing of use. This was not because of a lack of trying. She couldn't pull things together in her mind. There was no outline, and her thoughts and ideas were fragmented. And then two weeks into writing, early on a Friday evening, her creative brain kicked in.

The memories of her relationship with each dog, and the experiences they shared flooded her mind. Her pen couldn't write fast enough to record her thoughts and feelings. She wrote about what each dog had taught her through the different stages of their lives, and how she learned to read their behavior and body language.

She wrote of their lives and their deaths, and how she grieved each. She applied the new knowledge and understanding she gained from her research to her own experiences. She learned there were different griefs she had experienced with the loss of each pet. In this book, she also shares some things she found that helped her to move through the grieving process.

This is Debra's first published book. It is short, parsimonious, and jam-packed with as much detail as she could muster in two weeks. It's the book she never intended to write, and the one she was meant to write.