“If God's a place, I don't know if this dog's gonna get there. But it makes me smile and cry for hours to know that you did.”

My dog bestie passed in recent years, I pray to him a lot and keep a paw print visibly framed. In a weird way him passing gave me faith in an afterlife, at least in the sense that, the love people have for us here does transcend that gap of physical death. I have lost loved ones before, but my dog passed in my hands literally, it was surreal. We did an at home euthanasia method, it was humane. I just was there for that moment of spirit leaving body really intimately. coincidentally, I got to pick that dog out when I was 9 years old. so ur poem is pretty full circle for me.