My Beloved Alexandra

I am not able to post at length right now because I am having a very difficult time, but I found this site on a search for grief resources and was touched by not only the stories, but the kindness of the members in response.

My beautiful and amazing Dalmatian, Alexandra Spotsalot, was tragically killed on March 1, 2007. I continue to have such an abiding ache and cannot find any resources for myself in my community. My grief has been complicated by the circumstances of her death and my witness of her suffering. She was killed by malpractice and her story is incredibly sad and excruciatingly painful for me.

Alex was the Light of my life and I have done my best to cope, and did have some grief therapy for a time, but in one case, because it was an animal death, the program decided it could not serve me, and in the other, when I found a wonderful art therapist through a sliding scale program, the sessions were limited because of the low fee nature of the service.

I miss her so much and am so heartbroken still that she was taken in the manner that she was. I will post more about her at some point, but for now just wanted to post to acknowledge how important it is for those of us grieving an animal loss to have a safe place to discuss our experiences and memorialize. While a good deal of lip service is given to such losses by the counseling and grief support community at large, I find that we are nonetheless a culture that really doesn't view animal death as 'equal' to human losses.

This makes no sense to me and I've found it additionally stressful that her death is somehow not as 'big' of a loss to the social order around me.

At the same time, I've found some powerful ways to memorialize her and at some point will share that, in hopes that it's helpful to others on the forum.

My warmest regards to all of you who are grieving and I appreciate the opportunity to tell you about Alex, when I can manage that a bit better than I can tonight.

Robin, Best Friend of Alex