As I write this, tears are flowing down my cheeks and my chin is quivering.
Today, we lost our third dog. Jayde has joined her brothers at Rainbow Bridge.
For many pet owners across Noosa and the Sunshine Coast, the poem “Rainbow Bridge” – first published on the website Rainbow Bridge (/www.rainbowsbridge.com/Poem.htm) – is more than words on a screen.
It is a place we send our companions in our hearts, a meadow where they are restored to health and youth, waiting for the day we are reunited.
Two years ago, we farewelled Murphy and Barney, our two loving Bichon Frise boys.
Murphy was first to go. At 4am he suffered a seizure on our bed. I scooped him up and carried him outside, holding him with my hands and my heart.
After a moment, the convulsions stopped, but he wandered the house disoriented, bumping into walls.
He didn’t know where he was.
Then it happened again. Another seizure. Again I carried him outside, willing it to stop. But I couldn’t.
Within half an hour we called the vet. After three seizures, he was suffering. We said goodbye.
Barney’s farewell came two months later, slower but no less painful. His back legs began to fail. He lost control of his bowels.
The alpha dog who once ruled the house with quiet confidence could no longer stand without pain.
Barney had always curled beside us at night. Sometimes I would wake to find him perched on my wife’s pillow, eyes wide open, staring me down as if to say, “I’m still in charge.” It made us laugh.
He and Murphy were seasoned travellers.
I made 12 road trips between the Sunshine Coast and Melbourne with them – two-and-a-half days each way.
We stopped every two hours for toilet breaks, overnighting at caravan parks and roadside stops.
Once, while I ducked into a bathroom at an Anzac rest area in New South Wales, the car alarm shrieked. I ran out, pants half down, to find the boys wide-eyed and distressed, having set it off themselves.
Rather than finish the business, I quickly pulled up my pants, stopped the alarm, and off we went.
Another time, just shy of Taree, in New South Wales. It was 30 degrees. A smell from the back seat told me Barney had well and truly had an accident.
I pulled over, threw out the bed, cleaned up and carried on. At the time it was chaos. Now it is memory, tinged with love.
Barney was laid to rest two months after Murphy. His hips were gone. He was vomiting in the mornings. He could not walk without pain. It was time.
And now Jayde, their sister, has followed. She outlasted her brothers, but what is life when you can no longer walk or stand, when every movement is struggle?
The hardest part of loving animals is this: deciding when to let them go. Even now, I question whether it was the right time. Every pet owner who has sat on a vet’s floor, cradling a loyal head, knows that doubt.
But love is not only about holding on. Sometimes it is about release.
I love all animals.
Like so many in our community, I would live with them forever if I could.
But life – theirs and ours – is fleeting.
If Rainbow Bridge is real, I hope Murphy, Barney and Jayde are running together again, free of pain, waiting patiently.
Until we meet again.
