10/15/2026
Best Friends Don’t Have to Be Human
October 15, 2026
It’s hard for people who don’t share a love for animals to understand what it feels like to lose one. To them, it’s a dog, or a cat, or some other animal that lived in your house or wandered around your property. To us, it’s a member of the family. Someone who was there every day, who knew us, trusted us, depended on us, and loved us without asking for very much in return.
Today we lost Maddie. She was fifteen years old, and she had been with us almost her entire life.
I remember the day she came into our lives as though it were yesterday.
I was at Beach City Baseball Academy when a woman walked in carrying a pocketbook. Inside was the tiniest puppy I had ever seen. The woman said she had found her on the street and was looking for a little money to feed her. She wasn’t trying to sell the dog. She just wanted some help.
I took one look inside that pocketbook, reached in, and picked up this little creature. I knew immediately that I wasn’t giving her back.
I went to the ATM and withdrew $300, which was the most it would give me at the time. I handed the money to the woman and told her I would take care of the puppy from there. She seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement. I don’t think she was particularly attached to the dog, and I was already in love with her.
I had no idea what kind of dog she was. She had the markings of a Rottweiler, and I thought perhaps we had just adopted a dog that would eventually weigh a hundred pounds.
That evening we took her to the veterinarian, who informed us that our ferocious little Rottweiler was actually some kind of Chihuahua.
Fine by us.
She was so small she could fit inside a teacup. And that was the beginning of fifteen years with Maddie.
Somewhere along the way, she stopped being a dog we had rescued and became one of our children. I know that sounds strange to some people. How can you compare the love you have for an animal to the love you have for a child?
But that’s really the wrong question.
Love isn’t something you have a limited supply of. Loving an animal doesn’t take anything away from the people you love. It doesn’t make you love your children less, or your wife less, or anyone else less. If anything, I think it makes your heart a little bigger. There’s always room for one more.
And Maddie certainly found her room.
As she got older, Shelly took care of her and brought her to Beach City, where she could spend her days around people instead of sitting home getting old. We saw her frequently, and she remained part of our everyday lives.
Maddie had one particular passion in life, and that was food.
She didn’t just like food. She lived for it. She would nudge you, bark at you, and make whatever demands she thought necessary until you gave her something to eat. I used to think she would take food right out of the hands of a bear if she had the opportunity. And knowing Maddie, the bear probably would have surrendered it.
She was a little dog with an enormous personality.
A few months ago, she turned fifteen. We never knew her exact birthday, but we knew she was getting old.
Lately, you could see that life was becoming harder for her. She wasn’t walking very well. She wasn’t barking for food the way she always had. The little nudges and demands that had been such a part of her personality were becoming less frequent.
And when an animal who has spent fifteen years demanding food stops asking for it, you know something is changing.
Last night, her breathing became labored. She was struggling, and we did what we could to make her comfortable. Eventually she relaxed and fell asleep beside me.
I was relieved to see her resting.
Around one o’clock in the morning, I woke up and looked over at her. She seemed peaceful. Almost too peaceful.
I reached over and gently nudged her.
Her whole body moved together, in that terrible way I have come to recognize after years of caring for animals. I knew immediately.
Maddie was gone.
She had died right there beside me, quietly, in her sleep.
I suppose if you could choose how an animal leaves this world, you couldn’t ask for much more than that. She was warm, comfortable, and next to someone who loved her. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t frightened. She was home.
But knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I’ve lost a lot of animals over the years. When you live with as many as we do, you learn that death is part of the bargain. We’ve had seven or eight dogs living with us at a time, sometimes more, and every one of them becomes part of the family. Everyone has a personality, a place in our lives, and a way of making us smile.
And every time we lose one, it hurts.
This one hurts a little more.
Maybe because Maddie had been with us so long. Maybe because I can still see that tiny puppy in the woman’s pocketbook, and I can’t quite believe that fifteen years have passed between that afternoon and last night.
Or maybe because she was simply Maddie, and there will never be another one quite like her.
People sometimes ask why we keep taking in animals when we know we’re going to lose them. Their lives are so much shorter than ours. You fall in love with them, and before you know it, they’re old, and you’re facing another goodbye.
But I’ve never understood that way of looking at it.
Would I give up fifteen years with Maddie to avoid the sadness I feel today? Not for a second.
A few days of tears, or even a few weeks of sadness, can’t erase fifteen years of happiness. They can’t erase the mornings, the laughter, the companionship, or the thousands of little moments that made her part of our lives.
There’s a saying often attributed to Dr. Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
I’ve always liked that thought. Although I think it’s perfectly all right to do both.
I’m going to cry because Maddie is gone. I’m also going to smile when I remember her. I’ll remember that little face looking up from a pocketbook, the $300 I spent without a moment’s hesitation, and the dog who would have challenged a bear for something to eat.
Most of all, I’ll remember that for fifteen years, this little animal had a good life. She was loved, she was cared for, and she never had to wonder whether she belonged somewhere.
That’s what we try to give all the animals who come into our lives. We can’t promise them forever. Nobody can. But we can promise them that while they’re here, they’ll have a home, they’ll be safe, and they’ll be loved.
And when they’re gone, they’ll be missed.
We’re not going to stop taking in dogs. We’re not going to stop opening our home to animals that need one. And we’re certainly not going to stop crying when we lose them.
Because the sadness at the end is a very small price to pay for everything they give us along the way.
I wish Maddie were still here. I wish I could reach over and feel her little body beside me one more time. I wish I could hear her barking at me because she wanted something to eat.
But I wouldn’t change a thing about the day I reached into that woman’s pocketbook and took her home.
It was one of the best $300 investments I ever made.
Best friends don’t have to be human.
And sometimes the smallest ones leave the biggest empty spaces
