Mark J Burkholder

When I woke up to find that Paige had died next to me in the night, one of my first thoughts was “I have to let our dog Olive smell Paige’s body.” At some point in Paige’s cancer journey we’d looked this up. We looked up “how to help a dog grieve its owners death,” and that was the one part that stuck in my brain: “Let your dog smell the body. If you don’t, the dog will keep looking for them.” Olive has been an amazing grief buddy for me since Paige died. Here’s to our pets, and to letting them grieve our loss when we did. #cancer #dachshund #griefjourney #loss #dogsoftiktok