"Meet Katherine! After 8 years in corporate retail, she's back to what she loves: writing. A lover of all things furry, Katherine lives with her human family and Harold, her 17 year old doggy. Katherine's daughter thinks this is the coolest job a mom could have."
That’s my Small Pet Select biography. On our team page.
Two and a half years later, my biography is different. I still live with my human family (plus one baby girl), and have since welcomed a cat (Luke), two rabbits (Justice and Bill), and a fish (Sam), into the fam. But probably the most emotional piece to my new biography is that Harold isn’t with me.
I adopted Harold when he was just a tiny puppy. I remember it like it was yesterday. I drove my teal green 1996 Pontiac Sunfire into the Pizza Hut parking lot in Princeton, Illinois to get him. Harold’s dad couldn’t afford to keep him, and good on him for saying so and loving him enough to know it. That was my freshman year in high school, 19 years ago.
I’m going to admit now that I really didn’t think about what adopting a dog meant, though. I still had at least four years to go living at home, and I didn’t even bother to tell my parents I was bringing this dog into their house. Bad idea. But kids are kids. And I was definitely a kid.
I hid him under a blanket walking into my parent’s house for the first time trying to get him into my room without mom and dad seeing. I was scared. He lasted about two hours before the barking started. And my bedroom door opened. It was mom. Great.
“What is that?” “What did you do?”
“Sorry.” That’s all I said. That’s all I knew what to say. To all of us, though, he turned out not to be a “sorry” at all.
My parents were livid with me. I’ll never forget it. And it was well deserved. They eventually came around. But even before they came around, Harold and I became two peas in a pod. We really did from day one.
High school was kind of a whirlwind. It’s hard to remember all of the details when you’re in your mid-thirties, but the details I do remember were when I was with Harold.
I didn’t leave my house (other than for school) if Harold wasn’t with me. We went to fishing. We went hiking. We went to the movies. (This is actually not a joke. I did take him to the movies and hid him (again, under a blanket). He started barking, and in my “oh shoot, what do I do moment,” I just started barking and pretending like it was me. I got some weird looks.) We went on the train. We went swimming. We four-wheeled. We climbed to the roof to look at stars. I taught him so many tricks. And he loved doing them to make me smile.
When I was happy, he was happy. When I was sad, he laid by me and licked my face. He just knew me. He always knew me.
And that was high school. Basically, it was me and my dog.
So then I graduated high school. And was off to college. I chose a college close enough to my parent's home so that I could be close to him, and chose my schedule to fit all of my classes in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so that I could take the train home Wednesday night and stay until Sunday night to be with him. Again, this is a true story. I did it for FOUR STRAIGHT YEARS! It was hard to do. I had lots of classes on those days with rarely any breaks. But I didn’t care. Not a bit. Not even one bit. (Coffee helped, though, I have to admit.)
And then I graduated college.
Real life, now.
Harold helped me get through my first Humboldt Park, Chicago apartment that was on the third floor, with no elevator, no air conditioning, and massive amounts of cockroaches. If you know anything about Chicago (specifically Humboldt Park) in the summer, with no air conditioning? …This is not a fun place to be. But, I was fresh out of college and didn’t really have a choice. It’s what I could afford.
And then a job opportunity presented itself in Nebraska. So Harold and I… moved to Nebraska.
We didn’t know anyone, but it didn’t matter. I loved my job and I loved my dog. Nebraska’s where I got married and had my daughter, Clara. Harold was her number one fan from the day we brought her home. It was so cool to watch the two of them bond. He never lost love for me, he just gained love for her. It was something I’d never, ever seen before. Just magical.
And then another job opportunity presented itself in Pennsylvania. So we all… moved to Pennsylvania.
That was 2015. He was kind of getting a little grey, but so dapper, still.
Work kind of took over. Corporate retail does that. I spent less time with Harold because I was gone more than I’d ever been. It made me sad when I thought about it, but I didn’t really have time to think about it too often. I spent three years going through the motions of getting ready in the morning, getting Clara to daycare, spending 10 hours at my job, and picking her up at the last minute possible because I was finishing a project that I can’t even remember now. Then making dinner, and finally spending time with my Harold. I’m really not proud of that. I put work before everything.
Then, in 2017, my dad got really sick. And I was going back and forth between Illinois (where he was) and Pennsylvania (where we were). Constantly. Harold came every time. Whether I had to make the nine hour trek at 8 am or at midnight, when his doctor, or my cousin, or my sister would call saying “please come home, he needs you,” my dog was by my side. Always in the passenger seat. He was my right hand man during this chapter. (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sneak Harold into the nursing home to visit, but I did bring pictures for dad, and also snuck in McDonald’s cheeseburgers… dad loved Harold. And he loved McDonald’s cheeseburgers.)
Dad died in October of 2017, a few months after my last visit with him, and Harold was my only outlet. So non-judgmental. So loving. He knew I was grieving in a way that I couldn’t describe and didn’t have the energy to describe, anyway.
The next few years are cloudy to me. But what wasn’t cloudy was that my relationship with my dog grew. I left corporate after realizing that my family comes before anything.
I’ll never forgot when I stumbled across Small Pet Select, and when I clicked on “job opportunities,” the first sentence in the giant header said: “We are not corporate big brother.” Done. Sold. And the first thing they wanted after bringing me on board was a picture of me and my dog to add to the team page. Done. Sold. X2.
Today
Harold starting getting really sick a few months ago. He was in pain. He wasn’t eating. He had dementia. He was uncomfortable. He just didn’t know who he was anymore. I saw it in his eyes. I knew him better than I know the back of my hand. I cried a lot. Like, lots of days. Lots of nights. Lots of tears. Eventually, I decided to put him down. I rescheduled the appointment twice because I wasn’t ready. But I finally realized that the decision to euthanize really wasn’t about ME being ready, it’s about OUR ANIMALS being ready. I had to read a lot of books. And watch a lot of YouTubes. And do a lot of soul-searching in between.
I can’t relive the day that I took him in to be put down because it breaks my heart, so I’m not going to write about it. But I know that it was the right thing to do. My best bud of 19 years. (I was actually kind of hopeful we’d have made it to 20.)
Harold was everything to me. When I say everything, I mean it. He was there for moves, marriage, divorce, birth, death. Every milestone that’s made me who I am today. It’s tough, right? Because when you lose your best friend, life seems to stop… almost. But what I always remind myself of, is that the price of love is grief. And that’s worth it when it comes to our animals.
I’ll change my biography eventually, but not today. And not tomorrow. Not next week, and maybe not even next year. I wasn’t really ready to say goodbye. I’m not sure we ever are, to the people and the friends that we’re the most used to and the most comforted by. Harold was that for me. 19 years is a really long time.
He had an awesome life. I had an awesome life with him. We had an awesome life together.
So for anyone struggling, find comfort in the memories. They’ll get you through.
