Getting a new dog after the loss of my beloved JR

[Ginqueen456]

Hi all!
Hoping someone here can help me.
I lost my lovely boy at the beginning of the week, it was really sudden and we're all incredibly heartbroken. My son can't even spend time in the room where our boy would sleep. I can't stand the house so quiet and I'm desperate to get another dog, I could never replace my boy but I think it would help us all heal. I just worry that it's too soon. What have others done in this situation?

So sorry for the loss of you dog OP . It is heartbreaking I know.

Do whatever you feel is right, there is no reason why you should wait, if you are ready for another dog, go for it.

I’m sorry for the loss of your boy

There’s no right or wrong time limit, really. We waited a couple of years, other dog owners I know got another dog very quickly.
The emptiness of the house is just awful, I know. We rearranged furniture and wrote memories of our girl in a little notebook. Planned lots of Dog Free activities but Covid lockdowns scuppered a lot of that!

Don’t rule out getting another dog but don’t rush to fill the empty space, would be my advice.

Get yourself a greyhound. There are 8000 of them who need homes every single year; 1500 of which go missing and are presumed to be euthanised. They are absolutely gorgeous lovely dogs and I cannot recommend them highly enough

I waited once and wish I hadn’t.

you know the new dog isn’t a replacement, we all know that. It feels like waiting is the “decent thing to do” when in actual fact you are missing two things- one your dog who will never be replaced and the second is the structure and routine having a dog gives. You don’t need to miss that.

get another whenever you want. It will not be a replacement

xx

We lost our elderly dog in March and knew we would definitely have another dog, but expected to have to wait for the breed we wanted. As it turned out, a breeder I have known and been on the waitlist with for a couple of years heard of our loss and contacted me to say they had a litter due and the pups would be ready to come home a little over four months after we lost our old boy. They knew we didn’t want a pup while we were still caring for our old lad and said they were happy to bump us to the top of the list, if we felt ready. (If we had said no we would have had to wait at least a year.)

We discussed it as a family and decided that even the few weeks it had already been were just awful without a dog in the house, so four months seemed right for us.

We’ve had him for five weeks now and he has brought so much love and laughter back into our home. He is a completely different breed from our previous dogs and the opposite in terms of size, so it’s a new experience, rather than comparisons being made.

For me personally, it’s an odd feeling. I am still grieving for my old boy and still shed tears on occasion - in fact that is also the case for our other dog that we lost during the first ever lockdown - but I have so much love for our new little boy and he has been a breath of fresh air after nursing sick and elderly dogs for nigh on four years. He is in no way a replacement, he never could be, but we haven’t regretted our decision to have him at all.

It’s a very personal decision though and if anyone in the family hadn’t been comfortable with it, we would have waited.

My vet lasted ten days after his beloved dog died! You loved your dog and getting his successor won't change that. You will love the new little chap as much, amazingly quickly.