How My Dog Helped Me Heal After Miscarriage
This post is sponsored by Just Right by Purina. All Opinions are my own.
It’s crazy to me that we’re approaching the end of July and, subsequently, almost the end of summer. The year is flying by and it’s been a crazy few weeks here in HTC land. I’ve been traveling a ton (Philly and Idaho in the span of one week) and we’re working through a few hurdles in real life that we’ve been handed this month. Nothing too drastic, but still - enough to throw me off my game a little bit and even put me in a bit of a funk last week.
I’ll be honest, the weirdest thing for me about the summer flying by, though, is the fact that we’re getting closer and closer to the one-year mark of when I found out that I was pregnant. It’s really….surreal to think that it’s almost been a year since we started getting ready for Baby Carr, and almost a year since we went through the devastating reality of miscarriage.
Healing from that trauma and loss has been a long road and there hasn’t been a day that goes by where I don’t wonder what our lives would look like right now if our pregnancy had been viable. There isn’t a day that goes by where I wonder what our baby would have looked like, and who he or she would have become, or what it would be like to see Dustin be a dad. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t carry that loss or grief for the child we wanted so badly and never got to hold in our arms. Coming back from that trial and finding my footing again has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to make it out of that dark hole and there were days and weeks that went by and I wondered if I would ever feel joy or happiness again. It was the darkest place I’ve ever been in, but I can honestly say that I made it out of that tunnel and I’m standing in the light again. I have found joy and peace and happiness and purpose in this experience, and I have learned that it’s possible to carry that grief and feel joy at the same time.
In a recent survey conducted by Just Right by Purina, 55% of dog owners confessed that their dog comforted them after receiving bad news. When I look back at that time in my life and wonder how I clawed my way out of that despair, I realize that there is one BIG thing that helped me stay grounded and helped me heal: my sweet boy, Teddy.
If you are new here, Teddy is my 1.5-year-old Goldendoodle. He recently chewed up my favorite chaise lounge while I was at work two weeks ago and he has also the culprit behind my beauty sponges being torn into bits and pieces. We currently refer to him as Teddy Trouble because he is ALWAYS up to something mischevious. But even though Teddy can be a little naughty, he truly was the key in my healing process during my miscarriage and my love for him knows no end.
My busy, trouble-making doodle-toodle (who was only 11 months old at the time of our miscarriage) spent weeks GLUED to my side, snuggled in my lap, and would not let me out of his sight. While Teddy is typically a snuggle bug at bed-time, he’s usually chewing something or wrestling with Rosie or pulling socks out of the laundry basket during the day. The fact that he stopped ALL of his busy-body activities for weeks on end as I wrestled with my grief made it obvious that he knew something was wrong. My sweetest boy spent all day as the little spoon in the bed with me after I came home from the hospital, gave me tiny kisses instead of trying to chew on my hair and never once got off the bed to leave the room, even when Dustin invited him to go for a ride. He was my constant companion and a daily reminder that there was good in this world even though something terrible had happened to us.
Teddy still had a lot of learning and growing to do at the end of last year (he was still a pup) and gave me motivation and purpose to get out of bed and teach him and take care of him, even on days when I thought it would be impossible to move. And on the days I found myself asking “was I not good enough to have this baby?” he reminded me that I was worthy of unconditional love - the only kind you can get from a dog. Teddy is not just a dog, he is a valuable member of our family and was meant to be ours. I cannot imagine where I’d be or how I would have healed without his little furry face and I am so, so grateful that we live in a world where there are dogs because we truly do not deserve them.
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