Saddest posts about dogs on the internet.

September 17, 2014 10:17 AM

For purposes that I probably don't need to get into, I'd like your saddest and/or most heartwarming links / photos / stories / etc. on the internet about dogs and our relationships with them.

Here's an example. Here's another one. Bonus points if your link hinges on how shortly we get to have them in our relatively long lives with us. Stuff from MeFi or anywhere else is welcome. The more likely it is to make mrs. allkindsoftime ball, the better. Thanks.

posted by allkindsoftime to Pets & Animals (32 answers total)

Best answer: This cartoon from The Oatmeal is one of my absolute favorites. It makes me hug my beast every time I read it.
posted by chatongriffes at 10:20 AM on September 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

Best answer: This recent thread.

This thing mochapickle said:

Every time I lose a dog, he takes piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving and forgiving.

posted by phunniemee at 10:21 AM on September 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

Best answer: Found on the Internet, but not necessarily an "Internet thing" - The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O'Neill. This was something Eugene O'Neill wrote upon the death of one of his own dogs, and is lovely. (We staged this as a one-man piece during a festival of short O'Neill plays my theater company did once, and more than once the actor himself got choked up onstage for reals.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:22 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I've seen a couple of things on Pinterest that might fit the bill. I'm trying to find them now (and not break down in tears).

Here's one story of a 6-year-old saying goodbye to his canine friend.
posted by rawrberry at 10:24 AM on September 17, 2014

Matt Fraction's story about how Hawkeye ended up with a dog makes me cry and cry every time I read it. I'm literally crying right now.
posted by MeghanC at 10:35 AM on September 17, 2014

I'm a huge fan of Hope For Paws. They have what's called a Cheeseburger Fund (just donate enough to buy a couple of cheeseburgers to help Eldad feed hungry dogs when he does his street rescues) - every couple of weeks, I see a McDonald's ad on TV and it reminds me to donate $10 here and there to him. The guy who does the rescues has an incredible, gentle way with terrified dogs who have been abandoned or lost on the streets. I have killed way too much time watching just about every single rescue video he's done, many of which have brought me to tears.
posted by HeyAllie at 10:49 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seconding Hope for Paws videos. If you only watch one watch the Rescue of Fiona a poor terrified blind dog alone on the streets. Her rescue from just complete misery to a happy loving dog is pretty much the definition of heartwarming. Though any of his videos make me cry like a baby as you see the worst and best of humans and their relationship with dogs in one small short video.
posted by wwax at 10:54 AM on September 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

A colleague of mine wrote this when she said goodbye to one of her pups last week.
posted by kitkatcathy at 10:55 AM on September 17, 2014

Not dog specific, and kind of glurgy, but there is the Rainbow Bridge*.

*the one without Idris Elba
posted by sparklemotion at 11:09 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: First thing I thought of was John Scalzi's post about Kodi's passing from a few years ago.

Also, when you say "The more likely it is to make mrs. allkindsoftime ball, the better", I really, really hope you meant "bawl". Otherwise I feel kind of dirty.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 11:25 AM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's James Lileks' eulogy for his dog Jasper.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:32 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

This comic almost made me cry, and I'm not really even a dog person (though I love all animals equally, I love cats more equally than other species).
posted by alex1965 at 11:46 AM on September 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

The Animal Odd Couple kills me every time I see it.
posted by goggie at 11:47 AM on September 17, 2014

Response by poster: Bawl. A million times times bawl.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:22 PM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sometimes when you are fishing, weird things happen

Last minutes with ODEN
posted by dilaudid at 12:27 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

This clip of Fry's dog from Futurama makes me bawl to the point where I'm at work, so I'm not going to check that the Youtube video is OK all the way to the end.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:11 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

A Dog's Last Will and Testament:

Before humans die, they write their last will and testament, giving their home and all they have to those they leave behind. If, with my paws, I could do the same, this is what I’d ask…

To a poor and lonely stray, I’d give my happy home; my bowl and cozy bed, soft pillow and all my toys; the lap, which I loved so much; the hand that stroked my fur; and the sweet voice that spoke my name.

I’d will to the sad, scared, shelter dog the place I had in my human’s loving heart, of which there seemed no bounds.

So, when I die, please do not say, “I will never have a pet again, for the loss and the pain is more than I can stand.”

Instead, go find an unloved dog, one whose life has held no joy or hope, and give my place to him.

This is the only thing I can give…

The love I left behind.

– Author Unknown

posted by invisible ink at 1:46 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Bill Simmons Actually wrote a wonderful piece about losing his dog, One final toss for The Dooze.
posted by beisny at 2:14 PM on September 17, 2014

Fiona Apple's letter to her fans about cancelling her tour to be with her dog was really touching.
posted by barnone at 2:24 PM on September 17, 2014

The story of Schoep, the arthritic dog and John Unger, who would hold him in Lake Superior because the water soothed his joints is pretty sweet.
posted by kinetic at 2:41 PM on September 17, 2014

Seconding Last Minutes with Oden...amazing.
posted by three_red_balloons at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2014

Response by poster: This is fantastic but I'll have to save the rest of my best answers for later when I can find more of these onions to cut. Thanks all. Keep em coming.
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:33 PM on September 17, 2014

Joanna Newsom- Sadie
posted by dilaudid at 4:31 PM on September 17, 2014

Everything Is Different Now
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:24 PM on September 17, 2014

I have saved many of these stories. I'm not sure why, except I know one day I'll have my own to write.
If I'm very, very lucky, that's many years off yet.

Ruby
Jessie
Lacey
Ashley's boy
Sara Silverman, Duck
Jimmy Stewart, reading about Beau
posted by Glinn at 5:57 PM on September 17, 2014

Best answer: Neil Gaiman's tribute to his dog Cabal.
posted by hellopanda at 2:18 AM on September 18, 2014

This is heart smushy and awesome, but not exactly sad except for the knowledge of the life spans of those dogs vs. those babies.
posted by chatongriffes at 11:28 AM on September 18, 2014

This poem always makes me bawl my eyes out.
posted by SisterHavana at 10:21 PM on September 18, 2014

I had to search way back in my favourites for this comment by cairdeas.

This is the bit that always makes my eyes leak, as it has done AGAIN reading it now:

With my other dog it was different but just as resonant for me. With him I had decided I was going to go to the worst kill shelter I knew of and get the dog who would be next to be put down. I didn't know anything about his background except that he was 9 and had been dropped off by his family. They brought him out, handed me the leash, I signed the paperwork and paid and we walked out the door. When we walked out the door, he started jumping. He was jumping as high as my shoulder. He jumped all the way to the car. I had never seen an animal jump for joy before. There have been few experiences in my life that have affected me emotionally more than that.
posted by greenish at 5:58 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

George Graham Vest's closing statements in a civil trial about a dog who was killed (Old Drum) is hackey lawyering by an ex-Confederate Senator, but it still makes me well up.
posted by dhens at 6:19 PM on September 21, 2014

This excellent Futility Closet post about a series of grieving letters written by lonely author T.H. White on the death of his beloved dog Brownie reminded me of your question. Some excerpts:

She was in perfect health. I left her in my bed this morning, as it was an early start. Now I am writing with her dead head in my lap. I will sit up with her tonight, but tomorrow we must bury her. I don’t know what to do after that. I am only sitting up because of that thing about perhaps consciousness persisting a bit. She has been to me more perfect than anything else in all my life, and I have failed her at the end, an 180-1 chance. If it had been any other day I might have known that I had done my best.

[...]

She looks quite alive. She was wife, mother, mistress & child. Please forgive me for writing this distressing stuff, but it is helping me. Her little tired face cannot be helped. Please do not write to me at all about her, for very long time, but tell me if I ought to buy another bitch or not, as I do not know what to think about anything. I am certain I am not going to kill myself about it, as I thought I might once. However, you will find this all very hysterical, so I may as well stop. I still expect to wake up and find it wasn’t. She was all I had.

[...]

Dear Bunny, Please forgive me writing again, but I am so lonely and can’t stop crying and it is the shock. I waked her for two nights and buried her this morning in a turf basket, all my eggs in one basket. Now I am to begin a new life and it is important to begin it right, but I find it difficult to think straight. It is about whether I ought to buy another dog or not. I am good to dogs, so from their point of view I suppose I ought. But I might not survive another bereavement like this in 12 years’ time, and dread to put myself in the way of it. If your father & mother & both sons had died at the same moment as Ray, unexpectedly, in your absence, you would know what I am talking about.

[...]

I have found … that the people who consider too close an affection between men and animals to be ‘unnatural’ are basing their prejudice on something real. It is the incompatibility of ages. It is in Lucretius. He says that centaurs cannot exist because the horse part would die before the man part. All I can do now is to remember her dead as I buried her, the cold grey jowl in the basket, and not as my heart’s blood, which she was for the last eight years of our twelve. I shall never be more than half a centaur now.

posted by Rhaomi at 11:39 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Late to the game but I can't pass without adding British comedian Sue Perkin's heartwarming, heartbreaking and fundamentally honest eulegy to Pickle. Warning: contains graphic scenes of pet adoration.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/201661385/A-letter-to-Pickle
posted by Elfasi at 7:08 AM on November 20, 2014