Nathan, Ivy, and I sat in the comfort room of Omnivet with Winston’s now vacant body for a long time. We hugged him, spoke to him, cried over him, took pictures, clipped pieces of his hair, and eventually gathered enough strength to leave that room. I can’t say I remember the next few hours. The first step was to visit the front desk on our way out and pay. It seems so silly and unfair to have to pay for your dog’s death when it’s the last thing you ever wanted to happen, and yet Winston’s euthanasia bill sits atop our stack of his vet records now.

I know the immediacy of climbing back in the vehicle with only one dog instead of two felt bleak. Felt wrong. We returned to our hotel in Traverse City, Michigan. Back to the room where we had sat up all night with him seizing. It felt empty and barren without him there, too. We laid in bed and cried for hours. I remember saying to Nathan that I just wanted to go to sleep so I didn’t have to be awake without him anymore, but it was useless. We couldn’t sleep. Our bodies still instinctively remembering his shaking. Every time we tried to drift, we would feel the shaking again. We kept reaching for him until we realized it was us trembling. It would take us a minute to remember he wasn’t there anymore.

At some point late in the afternoon, we remembered Ivy needed fed. Her demand barking was usually always right on time if we missed meal time by a minute. Not this day – she wasn’t hungry. The confusion of being an only dog far from home was starting to creep in. Our heightened anxiety over her wellbeing started to grow on us as well. The thoughts crossed my mind but I didn’t say them aloud. “We already let one dog die on our watch, we can’t let another.” The guilt and regret I still am experiencing today already showing early signs of life.

I started preparing Ivy’s meal – kibble and a couple scoops of wet food. As my spoon went to scoop the wet food out, I realized I always gave the carrots to Winston. Being on a strict diet from his pancreatitis, I felt like her carrots were a way to cheat while still playing it safe. I put the bowl down for her and laid in bed for a while again. At some point as the day crept along, Nathan and I started sharing another kind of guilt more openly with each other. We had sought to make the most of Winston’s time every day and here we were in Michigan with Ivy and she was laying there bored.

We had a week off of work already for vacation. We already canceled the next Airbnb we originally planned to check in to the following day thinking we were going to find a way to bring Winston back to Kentucky alive for additional treatment, and were running off zero sleep. This is where I’ll quickly interject that even when you buy travel insurance for Airbnb if your dog becomes ill and dies, they will still reject your claim and not reimburse you for any of your stay you had to cancel. They suck! We made the plan to stay the last night in this hotel to try to get some sleep for safety before making the long trek home. There was no part of us that wanted to continue on this vacation without him. We agreed we were done with Michigan for a very long time. Sorry, Michigan. It’s not you, it’s me.

We hadn’t eaten in about 30 hours. Hadn’t slept. Our dog was dead. The mood wasn’t great as you can imagine. We picked ourselves up and decided to drive to the park we had intended to go with Winston and Ivy the previous day – Sleeping Bear Dunes. We wanted to take Ivy somewhere – to do anything – to help ease our guilt over her now.

When I finally came out of the room to start readying for the trip, the two carrots I had placed in Ivy’s bowl were tossed aside on the floor now. Had she been saving them for her brother? Did she just not like them? I’ll tell myself it was a sign from him to help cope with my grief.

We loaded in the car. Again, one dog short felt wrong. I sat with Winston’s beloved stuffed animal mammoth in my lap. We cried the entire drive to the national park. When we pulled into the parking lot, our eyes were puffy and swollen. I had cried off all my makeup from the morning and purposefully chose not to wear any mascara.

Nathan and I repeatedly said, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. Ugh. Let’s just go in. Get a stamp. Take Ivy somewhere and be done.” We were forcing ourselves to keep moving. Keep going through the motions. To keep functioning. We each took turns going into the visitor center with our national park passport books, the other sitting at a picnic table with Ivy. On my turn, I heard a man ask a ranger about the dog-friendly beaches there and how to access them. The question I should have been asking. The answer I should have been paying attention to. But I had no energy. I wanted out of there. I wanted back with my family. What was left of them.

When I returned back outside, I asked Nathan if he could take my picture by the national park sign. A tradition I’ve done for 200 or so parks. There was another trip years ago when Nathan and I first started dating. I either had the flu or food poisoning or both at the same time. I was so violently sick that in some of these national park sign pictures I can tell you which sign I mustered up a smile for after throwing up just seconds before. This will be another sucky one to add to album, I thought.

I’m in a hat. My hair hidden is a greasy mess. I hadn’t showered in two days now. I was wearing my dad’s oversized Carhartt shirt my mom tried to get rid of in a yard sale at my house one day, but I asked her if I could snag it instead. I was also wearing jean shorts that were a few days overdue for a wash. The hygiene was gone. The motivation was non-existent. Eyes puffy, no makeup.

A man approached us and asked if we wanted our photo taken together. We muttered something like ok that’s not necessary, but he insisted. We faked our best smiles.

Promptly after he left, two women approached us and asked if Ivy was an English Setter. I said yes and she started showing me photos of her setter. It was so rare to meet another setter owner in real life. So rare to not have someone ask if Ivy was a Dalmatian, a Spaniel, (insert breed here). I started crying. I told her we had just had to say goodbye to our Winston this morning. She hugged me and let me cry. I told her I felt like there was something special about her coming up to me. Maybe Winston had sent her. I don’t know.

We stumbled our way through the park driving through tears until we found a road lined with cars and people walking their dogs to a beach. This would do. We parked and followed their paths until we reached the water. Two signs side by side. The left one said no dogs allowed and the right said dogs allowed. OK then – we’re going to the right. By all accounts the beach was gorgeous. There was a picturesque dune in the background and dogs and their owners all over. We picked a spot with Ivy and sat in the sand watching the waves crash. She wasn’t in the mood for swimming like she normally was. She seemed anxious and nervous on her own or feeding off our emotions. She would tip toe into the water and retreat back to the bank. Winston made us all feel safe. How we missed that feeling already.

I remember watching a woman with her yellow lab throw a toy way out into the lake, over the waves, and watch the dog to struggle to reach it swimming as hard as it could exhausting itself but going deeper and deeper. I wanted to scream and say, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THAT DOG?! DON’T YOU SEE HOW UNSAFE THIS IS? YOU COULD LOSE HIM. YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE HIM!” But I knew it was the grief talking. They all suddenly seemed so fragile. How quick it suddenly ends.

We didn’t stay long. We felt like there wasn’t a place for us anywhere. We decided to head back into Traverse City where we were staying to try to find some food. Trying to find a place we both felt like eating when we hadn’t eaten anything when we didn’t want to eat anything was quite the task. We didn’t want to deal with wait staff trying to make small talk with us so we found a place called Fleet. It was literally just a fleet of food trucks all parked together and a bar as the only permanent structure. I’d like to say we sat around with our meals and drinks, and reflected on happy memories, but in reality, we sat in silence, occasionally wiping a stray tear, doting on Ivy, making sure she was cool enough and drinking enough water. Every little moment she made sent us right back to the trauma we felt over Winston. Would she suddenly start seizing like he had?

When we got back to the hotel, we both finally showered and laid back in bed with Winston’s mammoth and Ivy. We tried so desperately to sleep again but the hotel room only reminded us of the trauma we had experienced the previous night. Every couple hours, we would wake again shaking and crying.

In the morning, we quickly packed and hit the road to go back to Kentucky. Shortly into the drive, I gave Ivy some CBD. She was nervously panting. We quickly realized how much of a comfort Winston provided.

We pulled back in our house, not quite ready to go back in knowing he wouldn’t be there waiting for us. We met our dog sitter for Brady (our special needs rescue setter who stayed home) in the driveway. She asked if we thought Brady would know since he wasn’t there. It had always been our original plan to do an in-home euthanasia so they all could attend. Looking back on it now, I’m glad we could leave some things behind us.

I said I hope Ivy can somehow tell him the news. She said she thought he may already know, because on the day of Winston’s death, it was the only day he wouldn’t eat for her.

The next few days off work for vacation we used as our bereavement days. We were devastated feeling a grief more intense than we had ever experienced before for any loved one. Time was moving quickly for everyone around us, but we were in a daze moving so slow. Our brains were somewhere else at all times. To stay busy and out of the house (every part of the house reminded us of him), we donated Winston’s food to a local shelter. We donated his medications to other dogs with hemangiosarcoma and Cushing’s. I attended therapy. I bought Winston a tree and became obsessed with its health. We took Ivy and Brady to my parents’ farm. I drove a rescue setter on a transport to his foster home.

Everything we did was with the simple objective to make it through yet another day without him. Almost a month since his passing, the objective is still the same. Oh how we miss him.