My husband and I got married in June 2014. By our one-month anniversary, we had our first baby: a four-month-old Cairn Terrier puppy. We named him Scout after the main character in our shared favorite book, To Kill A Mockingbird. We assumed we would have time to raise our sweet puppy and then, in a year or two, think about having a kid.
Instead, I found out I was pregnant two months after Scout came into our lives. We spent that first year nesting, preparing for a baby, and being completely wrapped up in our dog.
We adored how much Scout loved curling up with us on the couch, and we laughed at his neurotic fear of our laminate flooring. He would literally leap from rug to rug as he sprinted around our first house, refusing to let his paws touch the hard floor.
Because a Cairn Terrier is the same breed as Toto from The Wizard of Oz, Scout became my Toto for his very first Halloween. I dressed up as Dorothy and carried him around with me all night, the perfect little sidekick to my costume.
If you’ve ever had a dog and then had a child, you probably know what I’m going to talk about next.
Dogs are the best. But you don’t love a dog in quite the same way you love your child.
When my son was born, Scout was still deeply loved and cared for, but he was suddenly lower on my very literal “totem pole of love.” My attention, my energy, and so much of my heart shifted toward this tiny human who now needed me for everything.
Three years later, we had our second child. Three years after that, our third child came along. We were now a busy family of 5, and while Scout was still an important member of our family, I could not deny that I felt differently about him than I did when he first came into our home.
But Scout was there for all of it. He was with us through two moves. Three houses. Three babies.
He was there for toys scattered across the floors, babies learning to walk, snacks dropped from high chairs, bedtime routines, Christmas mornings, birthday parties, family walks, and endless couch cuddles.
My kids don’t remember a world without him.
For their entire lives, Scout was always there. He was a constant presence, greeting them when they woke up in the morning and wagging his tail with happiness when they came home from school in the afternoons. He always joined us on family walks, and as our kids got older, they proudly took turns walking him.
Over the past few years, Scout started having more and more health issues. We’d take him to the vet, we’d worry, and somehow, he’d always pull through.
Until one day, he didn’t. We had to tell our kids that their dog wasn’t going to make it this time. He wasn’t coming home.
We all went to the vet as a family to say goodbye to Scout. My husband and I weren’t just saying goodbye to a dog we’d had for twelve years. We were watching our children experience their first major loss.
Our kids also saw my husband and me grieve. I don’t think they’ve ever seen me cry that hard, but I didn’t want to hide my tears from them. I didn’t want them to think being strong meant pretending I wasn’t devastated. I wanted them to see that grief and love are connected, and that we were hurting so much because we loved Scout so much.
And I hope, in showing them our own grief, we gave them permission to grieve Scout openly too.
Scout was there when the kids were born, but he didn’t get to see them grow up. However, he got to be an integral part of their growing up. He was there for all the little moments that make up a life. He was there for the version of our family that existed before we knew what it would become, and he stayed through every transformation that followed.
Our first baby wasn’t a baby. But he helped raise three.
