It’s been one year. One year since I said goodbye to the dog that walked through life with me from the time she was six weeks old. I didn’t go looking for her. I went to the pound for a different dog I had found earlier that week. When I got there, they told me that dog was already gone. What I didn’t know at the time was that they had already put him down.
But Sadie was there. Curled up in a crate. Six weeks old and about 7 pounds. When I picked her up, she leaned into me like she already knew. That was it. Three days later, after waiting out the shelter’s policy, I brought her home.
The first night she slept in the kitchen. The second night she was in my bed and she never left.
She was a little wild child at first. Chewed holes in the couch, the carpet, my shoes, anything she could get her teeth on. I stayed on her. I corrected her. I trained her. And she became one of the smartest, most loyal dogs I’ve ever known.
By the time she was four, she passed her therapy certification. For years, she walked into hospice rooms with me, places most people don’t want to go, and she brought something I can only describe as peace. There’s a verse that says:
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18
I’ve always believed God uses people to do that. But sometimes… He uses a dog… and Sadie relished it regardless of the emotional weight she carried home. She LOVED visiting patients.
Later on, she became something else entirely. The queen of the dog park. We had a group, probably twenty of us and our dogs, and the dogs formed their own little pack (ironically, so did the owners). And somehow, Sadie became the one they all protected. She was the oldest. She didn’t demand it.
She didn’t fight for it. She just carried something that made others respond.
Even the dogs knew it. People would get up off our bench when we walked in. “Sadie sits here.”
They called her the queen.
We went everywhere together. Traveled the country with her head hanging out the window and her tongue wrapping around her head… Eyes bulging, wind blowing her ears…loving every bit of life in the moment.
She rode with me, sat with me, slept with me, lived life with me. Every day. Every minute. She wasn’t just a dog. She was part of my daily rhythm for over 15 years. And when something becomes part of your daily rhythm like that, you don’t realize how much of your life is built around it until it’s gone.
March of last year, things started to change. Her legs gave out first. She couldn’t stand anymore. And for four weeks, I watched the strongest, most capable dog I’d ever known slowly lose the ability to do the things that once defined her. Until I had to make the decision.
Not because I wanted to let her go… but because I loved her enough not to make her stay.
It’s been a year. And it still hits. Because it wasn’t just losing a dog. It was losing a presence.
A routine. A constant. A space in your life that nothing else quite fills the same way.
Two weeks later, I brought home another dog. Not because I was replacing Sadie. But because after 15½ years of constant presence, the silence in that house wasn’t something I was meant to sit in for long. His name is Shiloh. And if Sadie hadn’t existed…He wouldn’t either (with me).
Scripture says: “Every good and perfect gift is from above…” — James 1:17
Sadie was one of those gifts. Not permanent. Not meant to stay forever. But given at exactly the right time, and for exactly the right purpose. I wrote two books about her:
My Name is Sadie: From the Pound to a Purpose
Sadie Goes to the Park
Because some things are too meaningful to just let fade into memory. Some things deserve to be carried forward. It’s been a year. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s this: She didn’t just exist. She fulfilled her purpose. And I got to walk through that purpose with her.
Available on Amazon:
My Name is Sadie: From the Pound to a Purpose
Sadie Goes to the Park
Troy P Zehnder 