Why Dogs Are Important Essay

"They say death is hardest on the living. It’s tough to actually say goodbye. Sometimes it’s impossible. You never really stop feeling that loss. It’s what makes things so bittersweet. We leave little bits of ourselves behind, little reminders, a lifetime of memories, photos, trinkets, things to remember us by… even when we’re gone." —Dr. Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy).

Monday, December 10, 2007—a day I dread the anniversary of each year. I remember it as clearly as if I were still in my fifth grade body, getting home from dance lessons and preparing to leave for basketball practice at 7 o’clock. Even though my mom had warned me about it several weeks in advance and the appointment was set, I was still in denial about the whole situation.

You can always count on people, even dear friends, to hurt you in the worst possible ways, keeping you down until you’ve suffered enough. However, dogs are the exact opposite—greeting you at the front door, jumping around like a bull in a china shop as they await dinner, displaying astonishing loyalty every day, and showing unremitting love when you least deserve it. Nobody lives up to these standards, and maybe that’s why it was so hard to let Penny go. Even though it would get easier with time, a part of my heart would remain eternally empty once she was gone, no human able to fill the

All of these decisions have consequences I’ve been forced to handle, yet for reasons I don’t understand, I continue making the same decisions with the same idiotic consequences. But why? Why would any logical human being choose the consequences, choose to be hurt? It doesn’t make sense to undergo so much agony for a minuscule amount of joy. Yet for incomprehensible reasons, I, along with the entire human population, am constantly guilty of finding ways to make myself suffer.

In order to attain comfort, you find people to love and decide to go through everything with them. When they cry tears of joy, so do you. When they finish school, you’re at graduation to celebrate with them. When they grieve, you grieve right along with them. Each of us does it, picking whose adventures we want to go on, who we want to have movie marathons with, who we want to spill our secrets to, who we want around until the very end. And once it’s all over, we do everything we possibly can to make sure those people are never