Season three of The Baroo is finally here after a longer than expected hiatus! I'm dedicating this season to the human-dog bond — in honor of Chance, my scruffy almost-18-year-old rescue who basically ran my life (in the best way) for almost two decades. This is our story. And looking back, what stands out to me isn't just the love or the loyalty — though, obviously, those too. It's resilience. Just showing up, day after day, soft-hearted, even when everything hurts. Before Chance When...

I've spent most of my adult life caring for other people's dogs. I know the particular love that lives in that work — and I know the particular grief that follows it. His name was Chance. He was seventeen and a half years old, and for most of those years, he was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I checked on at night. This is the story of losing my own, and everything I learned along the way. I keep rehashing the last 72 hours of my sweet boy's life. It's an obsessive...

The death of a beloved pet brings with it a complicated set of emotions: sadness and grief, of course, but also, in the case of euthanasia, guilt and anxiety that you’ve done the right thing, and regret if you feel you haven’t acted quickly enough to spare your pet some suffering. Add to that the anger at those who, even if they mean well, minimize or marginalize your grief because your pet is “just” an animal, and the plain old anticipatory grief that comes with watching your pup decline as...