Loving—and grieving—another species
On dogs as kin, and the strange lucidity of grief
I got the news while at a writing residency in Washington state. It was late May and from my room, I could see the Pacific Ocean frothing over the rocky beaches. For days, I’d been meaning to take a canoe out, to paddle across the indigo waters and peer down at the jellyfish swimming its depths. After a week, I hadn’t gotten to it. It turned out I never would.
That day, my partner had taken our dog to the vet after he’d developed a sudden, inexplicable limp. It wasn’t the first time—he’s a big dog (104 lbs)—and big dogs notoriously suffer from joint issues and muscular pain. He’d had tendonitis before, and we figured this was another flare-up, easily resolved with rest and medication. We would be wrong.
After a quick physical exam and x-rays, the vet diagnosed him with osteosarcoma. The bone cancer is common in large dogs between the ages of five and eight. Chutney was six—my first dog and my best friend. Osteosarcoma is a highly aggressive cancer with no cure. The most common treatment is to amputate the leg with the tumor, followed by a few rounds of chemotherapy, but these are mostly to manage pain. They do not shrink or eliminate the cancer.
Even with aggressive treatment, dogs diagnosed with this condition typically die within 12 months.
My family never had dogs growing up. Seveal Hindu religious texts position the animals as karmically impure because they eat everything, and as Indologist Wendy Doniger writes, “in Hinduism, you are what you eat.”1 Dalits are sometimes insulted as “Dog-Cookers’ (Shva-Pakas), because upper-caste Hindus believed they ate dogs, rendering them doubly dirty. In 2010, after a Dalit woman fed an upper-caste man’s dog, he abandoned the animal as “polluted” and the village council ordered her to pay him 15,000 rupees, or $150.
When we moved to Canada, all those myths about dogs’ purity or lack thereof revealed themselves as ludicrous. If our neighbor’s golden retriever, who stood on his hind legs to hug us, also “tainted” us, then that was fine with me. My father and I soon lobbied to get a dog—specifically, a shih-tzu, for some reason—but my mom put her foot down.
Now, I’m grateful she did. Dogs need safety, routine, positive reinforcement—all things that children also need, all things that my parents could or would not provide.
Still, I treasured the few encounters I did have with dogs. In Thanjavur, my paternal grandparents’ hometown in south India that we still returned to most summers, a neighbor’s dog named Dharma often came around, his tail wagging so fast it blurred. My grandfather, Thatha in Tamil, adored this mutt, fetching him bowls of water and tossing him hot, buttery chunks of roti. Dharma loved Thatha back, following him around like a sweet, panting shadow as he took bucket baths and milked the cow. Soon, I, too, grew to love this dog, his musky smell, his soft nuzzle against my leg, his presence in my life as steady as a metronome.
Those memories with Thatha and the dog are etched in my mind because they were so unique: my grandfather was not, in general, an affectionate man. I remembered him with a shock of white hair, thick-lensed aviator glasses, and a scowl twisting his face. My whole life, I’d heard whispers about his temper. I shivered, imagining the violence unleashed by his hands, which were meaty and hot to the touch.
I only ever saw him be tender with animals. He refilled the bird feeder in their garden daily and doted over their dairy cow, feeding her banana peels by hand. Thatha could thrash his son—my father—within an inch of his life but hearing about any sort of animal cruelty brought him to tears.
Unfortunately, he saw such cruelty doled out regularly. Thatha was born and came of age during imperial rule. Facing strict animal protections at home, British scientists turned to the colonies as sites for animal experimentation. Starting in the late 19th century, they launched cobras onto “scores” of Indian street dogs or forcibly injected them with snake venom. They mutilated thousands of Indian rabbits.2 In south India, they regularly infected monkeys with malaria.3
It was a regime that, as historian Pratik Chakrabarti writes, deemed Indians as “cruel and childlike” and therefore deserving of “violence and control as much as animals.”4 That is to say: born a British subject, Thatha could legally have been punished like an animal, through whipping, caning, and forced crawling. Perhaps he had been; he did not like to talk about the years he spent working as a clerk in a British-run hotel.
Either way, he was reminded of his bestiality constantly: signs reading “No dogs or Indians allowed” hung outside British establishments throughout colonial India.5
I wonder what the constant equating of Indians to beasts, as well as the constant brutality toward both life forms did to Thatha’s psyche. It must have wounded him, enraged him, confused him deeply. Perhaps my grandfather’s rage couldn’t be forgiven, but it could be understood, both its origins and how it spilled into the future, forming his son and forming our family’s fractures, too.
I flew home from my residency immediately, seven hours of transit dissolved into tears, cheap airplane wine, and Ubers that smelled of Axe body spray. When I arrived home, Chutney thundered down the stairs and my heart dropped. It was so much worse than I’d thought. His limp was so pronounced his whole body seesawed when he moved, his head bobbing up and down, his right leg landing heavily with a thud. He flopped down after just a few seconds, panting, unable to stand.
He’s only six, I kept thinking. Only six. How could he be taken from us so soon? What would I look forward to without his giant head to kiss in the mornings, without his grumbles for breakfast, without his velvet ears bouncing up and down on our evening walks?
The next day, I called Colorado State University, which has one of the best teaching veterinary hospitals in the country and is a mere hour’s drive from us in Denver. Their first oncology opening was a month away. Again, my heart sank. We couldn’t wait a month with such a fast-moving cancer; most oncologists recommended amputating the same week. I made the appointment just in case, then called other, average-but-not-great animal hospitals in the area, one of which could get us in the next week.
Then, all my administrative work done, my book due in six weeks but feeling about as urgent as a cold plunge in deep winter, I sank to the floor and buried my face in Chutney’s fur, that thick brown and white fur I’d brushed and bathed and vacuumed up a thousand times, the fur I found on all my clothes and hair and food—the fur that, I realized now, would continue turning up in our house long after he was gone.
The shelter we adopted Chutney from rescues strays from the tribal reservations in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Like many services on tribal lands, the US government severely underfunds animal control and care in these areas. The Navajo Nation, for example, teems with an estimated 250,000 rez dogs, with only two veterinarians serving its 27,000 square-miles.6 Many of these dogs roam free: some are given food and seen as part of the community, while others have no one taking care of them and nothing to live off of.
What do we owe these animals, whom we’ve evolved alongside for at least 10,000 years? It was, after all, we who domesticated wolves: in exchange for guarding our campsites against predators, we tossed them scraps. Later, we hunted together, their keen noses leading us to prey. When we started farming and herding, they guarded our livestock. When we built factories, they guarded the premises.
If they’d remained wolves, there would be no dog overpopulation problem today. Instead, we tamed them, bred them, shaping not only their bodies but temperaments to suit our desires. As a result, more than 300,000 dogs—many of them “designer” breeds—are euthanized in America every year. This figure does not count the thousands who starve or thirst or shiver or overheat to death on rocky cliffs, deserts, and farms. It also does not count all the dogs that rot for months or even years in shelters, becoming progressively more afraid and shut-down.
Don’t we owe dogs more—especially after all they’ve given us? Perhaps we would’ve survived as a species without them—without their tracking, protection, and companionship—but both our lives and our capacity for love would be poorer for it.
A few days after the cancer diagnosis, CSU called: they had an oncology cancellation for later the same week. Could we make it? “Yes,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “Yes, we’ll be there.”
In the midst of tragedy, a small mercy.
“What forms of sociality and the communal are available for us if we estrange ourselves from the life of our species?” asks Black studies scholar Hugo Ka Canham.7
Or, what if you’ve always felt estranged from your species? What if your family home was a place of constant threat? What if those early life experiences made it hard for you to feel safe with other humans later on? What can other life forms teach us about kinship, about safety—about re-building a life after ruin?
Over the past year, we’ve fostered five dogs. There was Chicken, a golden-eyed 8-month-old who’d grown up in the shelter. She startled at every little sound—the honk of a car horn, the rustle of a plastic bag in the wind. For weeks, she wouldn’t go potty outside. She cowered around humans, but around our dog—that was beautiful to watch. Immediately and mostly against his will, she made him her big brother, cuddling up as close as possible, copying his every sniff and movement until, finally, mercifully, she, too, started peeing outside.
There was Lin-Ling, a six-year-old cattle dog who was labeled as “bad with other dogs” and basically lived in solitary confinement at the shelter for a year. It didn’t take long for us to realize she got along just fine with other dogs so long as they had a proper introduction. And there was Lil Scruffs, a one-year-old terrier mix, no more than 30 lbs, an absolute terror who took great delight in stealing eggs from our plates and knocking over our plants.
I loved—love—all these dogs, not least for showing me how to live less fearfully. The Chicken that came to us whimpering and so scared she pooped and peed on the car ride home was a different animal than the one who got adopted, wagging her tail, licking my fingers, sniffing her new siblings’ butts. The Lin-Ling who I picked up, nervous and running every chance she got, was nothing like the dog who, just 24 hours later, happily chewed a beef hide the size of my arm and rubbed herself into her bed until she was grunting with pleasure.
Many of these dogs were abused or left to fend for themselves for weeks or months at a time. And yet, after just a few hours or days in a safe space, with people who didn’t raise their voices or punish them for doing the wrong thing (that they didn’t even know was wrong!), they started trusting again, showing their belly again, licking faces again.
Is that not the most hopeful thing you’ve ever heard? If they’re willing to give their trust so easily, so fearlessly, then what was my excuse?
Most of our fosters got adopted within two weeks. Being in foster increases a dog’s chances of getting adopted by up to 14 times. 14 times!! This is not just because they’re more likely to be housebroken and know basic commands, but because they have someone taking them to adoption events, posting them on social media, and answering questions from potential adopters. They have someone rooting for them, and that one person—powerless in so many other ways—can help usher them into a new life.
Maybe it’s my savior complex, but I have to say: it feels really fucking good. Even after half a decade as an aidworker, fostering dogs is the most tangible good I’ve done.
The oncologist at CSU was curly-haired and plump, the kind of medical professional who thanked you for choosing them and said “great question” in response to even the dumbest question. I liked her immediately.
As a matter of procedure, she wanted to repeat all the diagnostic x-rays and bloodwork our vet had done, a process that would take several hours. Chutney trotted off happily with her (traitor!). We went to a café where I promptly spilled a full mug of coffee onto my laptop keyboard and burst into tears. I didn’t even think it was possible to cry again after the past few days, but there I was, rushing my laptop to “uBreakiFix” in Fort Collins, the road ahead of me blurring with my own stupid tears…again.
When we returned to CSU, we found our dog drunk and stumbling from sedatives. Odd spherical patterns had been shaved into his legs and back where they’d inserted IVs. I rubbed them gingerly and touched my head to his. He seemed to already be disappearing from us.
The vet had news: in the x-rays she’d done, neither her nor the radiologist nor anyone on CSU’s oncology team could see any evidence of bone cancer. We stared at her, blinking like cows startled awake. What? What did this mean?
It meant he might still have cancer: with his symptoms, size, and age, he did fit the risk profile almost perfectly. But there was a chance it could be something else, something non-fatal. The only way to find out was to do a CT scan, which they’d schedule for later that week.
Dazed, dazzled, we piled into the car and started the drive home. We said nothing, too afraid to speak aloud the shred of hope we’d just been handed. I held Chutney’s paw and looked into his bleary eyes. Let it be something else, I begged silently. There were still so many hikes we wanted to take him on, so many scraps of food for him to bully us into giving him, so many naps to take with his giant head resting on my chest, inducing in me a kind of peace that I wished everyone could know, that I wished my younger self, quaking alone in her bedroom as her dad embarked on another drunken outburst, could have known.
Yes, dogs need us to survive, but I needed this particular dog more than he’d ever needed me.
During those hellish days of endless waiting—for appointments, for phone calls, for test results—something unexpected happened. Even though I was exhausted and puffy-eyed from all the crying, a fog seemed to lift from my brain, finally revealing all that had remained hidden.
Usually, certain questions turned over and over in my mind like stones in a tumbler: should I get back in touch with that friend I’d lost contact with? How much of my time did I want to spend writing versus doing the annoying but necessary labor of “building a platform”? Was it really worth continuing to live in the US for our careers?
Suddenly, as I watched my dog limp from his bed to his lambie, the answers appeared like oracles. There was no more decision to make, no more pros and cons lists to ponder endlessly. It was all there, as tangible as my dog’s hot, musty breath when he licked my face.
I’ve come to believe the best kind of kinship clarifies your own life. Watching a friend carve out a life as an artist showed me that such a life was possible for me too, even if it wasn’t easy. Ongoing conversations with another, older friend, who’s built his life around art and friendship and dogs, reinforced my desire to never have kids. I wanted what he had way more than I ever wanted to breed.
Now, the prospect of losing my dog—perhaps my closest kin—crystallized all the answers that had remained fuzzy and vague for so long. Lucidity, I was coming to see, was grief’s great blessing.
We woke at 5 am on the day of his CT scan. My partner would drive him up to CSU and I would remain behind. (A while ago, we’d agreed to dogsit a former foster dog that weekend. I thought about cancelling, but in case Chutney did have cancer, I knew I’d need all the canine comfort I could get.)
All morning, I watched the clock: he’d be getting dropped off now, he’d be going under now, they’d be doing the CT scan now, they’d be getting the results back now. Finally, at 11:07 am, my phone rang.
“I have only good news for you,” the oncologist said. From my window, I saw a flock of geese flying west. It was spring, I thought stupidly.
Our dog, it turned out, didn’t have cancer. He’d never had cancer. What he did have was elbow dysplasia in both his front legs, compounded by arthritis—neither of which are curable but both of which are manageable with diet, medications, and physical therapy.
That night, we spoon-fed him vanilla ice cream and stroked his back while he snored. I knew we hadn’t escaped a terrible fate so much as gotten a temporary reprieve. He will die in a few years, 4 or 5 if we’re lucky. I’d just gotten a taste of the sorrow that awaited us.
A few years ago, I met another writer who loved dogs more than anyone I’d ever met: every time she went on a walk, she’d stop to pet every dog she passed. She dog-sat for all her friends, sometimes even flying to different cities to do it. But she’d never had a dog of her own. “I have a phobia around the dog dying,” she said. She was afraid it would hurt too much. I understood, even agreed. Certainly, I didn’t feel any urge to convince her otherwise. But I did feel clarity: to me, kinship with a dog is worth all the grief that follows and more.
Years from now, when his smell and the sound of his paws pattering after me are just memories, I hope I’ll clean out my closet, find a few strands of his fur, and even as ny heart breaks remember all he gave me.
Chakrabarti, P. (2010). Beasts of Burden: Animals and Laboratory Research in Colonial India. History of Science, 48(2), 125-151. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2997667/pdf/ukmss-30621.pdf
Chakrabarti, P. (2010). Beasts of Burden: Animals and Laboratory Research in Colonial India. History of Science, 48(2), 125-151. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2997667/pdf/ukmss-30621.pdf
These signs existed well into the 20th century. Source: https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0906/p6s3-wogi.html
https://www.hercampus.com/school/cu-boulder/reservation-dogs-and-the-effects-on-indigenous-people/
Canham, H. (2023). Riotous Deathscapes. United Kingdom: Duke University Press. p. 325
I sat through Christopher Nolan's whole, noisy, bloody, man-centric Odyssey, but when Argos died, I lost it.
This is such a captivating post . I too am a dog mama and feel the special significance of the bond