Our Dog Mourns Sumner's Loss, Too: Millie's Mourning Process

We lost our beloved boxer Sumner on Monday, and I think it’s finally starting to hit our second dog Millie.

I thought that she would be able to sense that the end was near. Sumner was clearly unwell the morning he left us, but instead of staying with him in his bed, she avoided him. Did she understand his discomfort, opting to give him breathing room? Or was she afraid of what was happening?

There’s no question that she adored him. I have dozens of photos of her nestled up to him in bed. Her favorite resting place was right in between his front paws, so he had no place to put his head but on top of her little body. Even though Sumner was old and didn’t like to play the way she did, Millie acted like he was the coolest, most interesting big brother ever.

She was oblivious the day he left us, but now I’m seeing her slow realization that he’s just not here. The rituals that defined her life for the past months with us aren’t the same. He’s not there in the morning when she wakes. She goes out to the yard alone. She eats her breakfast and that’s it – big brother’s bowl isn’t there to clean up. He’s not there to greet us when we come home at the end of the day. (He always stopped to breathe her in when we arrived, as if “reading” the scents of the other dogs she had met during the day. His illness kept him home in his final months, so I think he appreciated keeping up with his acquaintances this way.) Now that the weather is cooler, she doesn’t have his warm body to use as her personal heater.

Regulars in the store have said that she seems depressed. I see it too. She’s content to just curl up in her bed and sleep the day away instead of pestering me to play. I wish I could explain it all to her. That he might be gone, but he’s still with us. That the new little quirks she’s exhibiting (reacting to the same “scratchie spot” that used to get his leg going, and as of last night, making her bed, something only he did) will keep him alive.

She’s mourning the loss of her best friend, just like us.