As I wrote about love and death my dog also came to my mind. It is scientifically proven that when you have a pet you get to love him as a family member and you suffer his or her death just as much. There is evidence that interacting with pets does reduce people’s stress, provided the pet is behaving properly. Good interactions do have quite a profound effect, causing changes in oxytocin and in beta endorphins. Those are actual changes going on in the body of somebody who is stroking a friendly dog. As time goes by, you start to love your pet unconditionally and when it dies you become devastated.
Personally, I’ve been through this and it has been one of the happiest but at the same time saddest journeys of my life. When I was 7 my mom decided to grant me the wish of having a shit-zu puppy. When we went to choose the one I wanted, there was a little girl puppy that came to me and when I looked at her I knew that needed to be my dog so I decided to name her “Mia”. As the years went by, she became my best and most loyal friend; I loved her more than anything in the world. She was my company in my happiest and saddest moments and I just knew I could not live without her, she definitely brought out the best in me. When I turned 19, Mia turned 12 and she started getting sick until we found out she had cancer. My whole family suffered this news as if it was a family member because for us, she was. We then needed to put her to sleep and I can say this moment when I saw her close her beautiful eyes forever, was the saddest moment of my life. The thought of losing my best friend and never seeing her again was devastating. After this, I needed to go to the psychologist because I just couldn’t accept it. With time, I got better because I learned to be happy with the memories and not so sad with the loss.
This experience made me feel really connected to the movie “Marley and Me”. This movie is about a family that moves to Florida and adopt Marley, a yellow Labrador puppy. As Marley grows up he becomes a mischievous handful, but even though he was destroying everything, they get to love him a lot because he brought out the best in the family. As the years went by, he became their best friend, but he then becomes old and they needed to put him to sleep. This scene where they were devastated to see how they made their dog sleep forever, made me cry for hours because this was exactly how I felt when Mia died. The things the dad said at the process where exactly the things I thought about when I was going through this… “I love you more than anything, I don’t know exactly where we go from here, but I want you to remember you’re a great dog Marley. You thought me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.”
As you can see, a dog or pet can really mean the world to a person and you can get to love him as much as a family member. Pets have a way of making you a better person and they teach you things like: seizing the moment, living each day with joy no matter what, appreciating the little things, and following your heart. In other words, a dog doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb, give him his heart and he’ll give you his. This is what makes their love the purest of them all.
Marley & Me [Video file]. (n.d.).
Brulliard, K. (2017, November 03). Why do we love pets? An expert explains. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/03/pets-arent-wonder-drugs-heres-why-we-love-them-anyway/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.925c62e88d11
Bon voyage 