About the magical farewell of a little dog who was busier than ten very busy dogs combined.

When I drive Zjon to the vet on Monday, he looks out of the window. As if he knows what’s coming. Since Sunday morning, his only back leg hasn’t been working anymore. That morning in the forest, he still found a ball and felt like a king for a moment. But when I gently roll the ball a second time and he walks after it, he sits down… and doesn’t get back up.

For a while now, I’ve been carrying him during our walks. He would sit down, look at me, and I would pick him up. Like a little king, he’d sit in a special carrier against my belly, observing everything. When you’re a dog and can’t stand on your only back leg anymore, ordinary things like peeing and pooping suddenly become complicated. And that’s how he looks too: confused, and a little overwhelmed.

As I watch him look outside during our last ride together — after 11 years of loyal service — I think I see a kind of surrender to the inevitability of life. I asked the vet if she would give him the injection in the camper, and thankfully she agreed. I once read that it can be comforting for dogs to pass in a place associated with pleasant memories.

So there we are, together on the back seat of the camper. I’m on the bench, he’s next to me on his favorite blanket. A small injection in his hip, an IV line. As the vet administers the medication, I think of something my mother said earlier that week: “Why don’t they just sell that stuff so we can do it ourselves?” I replied, “And what if one day I get annoyed with you?” My mother, wide-eyed, in her Brabant accent: “Oh dear.”

He lies down peacefully. No sound. No resistance. His little head resting on my hand. It’s smooth sailing. Over quickly.

Death is very small and very big at the same time.

Before driving to the crematorium in Hasselt, I lay him down for a moment in the living room at home. I’ve read that it’s important for the other dogs to say goodbye. Polly sniffs once and quickly turns away. Easy sniffs a bit longer and then follows me to the kitchen to beg for a treat. Everyone has their own way.

A friend once told me, “You should get rid of those dogs and get a proper life.” I was deeply offended at the time. Now I think: my dog family is a family — just in a different form. And he projected what he finds most important in life onto me, just like we all tend to do. If you start paying attention, you’ll hear the word “should” everywhere.

But back to the back seat.

It felt magical to be with Zjonnie there in the camper. Maybe he was so calm because I was calm too. To be honest, in the days before, I had done some inner work on all those unnecessary mind-traps that show up in moments like this — guilt being number one. Luckily, I know a powerful way to dissolve polarized emotions. 🙂

And yes, it may sound soft or sentimental, but I sat there with tears and a heart full of love and gratitude. And yes, that feels better to me than tears of emptiness and despair. I know the norm is to grieve, and I almost hesitate to say this, but the way we’ve been taught to grieve isn’t the only way — and not always necessary.

I strongly believe in the universal Law of the One and the Many. One of its principles is that qualities are never lost. They move from one — in this case, Zjonnie — to many. No one is ever truly gone. I can already see parts of him returning in Easy and Polly. Polly is actually staring at me from behind the computer as I write this.

There is one quality of Zjonnie that I want to claim for myself — even though it didn’t make him universally loved, and made him one of my greatest teachers:

I have never seen a being so convinced that he was the most welcome guest on this planet.