Yosha

✎ How did they greet you when you came home?
Always! Every single day I was coming home to him. He ran to me, rushed to my hands and when I rose him we hugged. He sniffed my eyes to check on me. If I had cried that day, he would have always known it just in seconds and licked my eyes. He always smelled as home. It were fresh cookies, vanilla and bread. The day he left me, it was impossible to go back to home where no one was waiting for me. He was my purposes to going home.

✎ What was their favourite season, and why?
Summer was our peak season. Three or four hours. We didn’t count time. We walked around and when I grew up we started to explore other areas in the city. You were my first and only friend with whom each of my crazy ideas was ENOUGH.

Hi everyone,

Lately I've been thinking a lot about happiness.
When I looked back over my life, I realized that most of my happy moments have one thing in common: Yosha.

Happiness is walking the dog at Borisovskie Ponds on a sunny day. Running after him as he chases a bumblebee, and then running back with him, this time away from the bumblebee.
Happiness is waking up in the morning to the smell of my sleepy, beloved dog.
Happiness is listening to Yosha whimper in his sleep, twitching all his paws at once. He was probably, as usual, imagining himself scolding the stupid kids at the playground.

My greatest happiness was our walks together.
Now I walk alone a lot, and my brain keeps unconsciously looking for Yosha behind every bush.
I don't feel like a whole person. I don't feel like I have the right to walk if I'm walking without a dog.

For those of you who haven't walked a dog every morning and afternoon: how do you experience happiness? Where do you find it?
I'm genuinely curious, because I'm still searching. I really hope I'll find it one day.

Maybe you know the feeling of trying to fall asleep after having slept in someone's arms for a while. You miss them, and you curl up into a ball because it makes it easier.

Another example of touch is a hug. Who decided that we should hug when we meet and when we say goodbye? It's some kind of code in our heads. Our arms reach out on their own to hug a friend goodbye. It's a beautiful tradition, because you never know when you'll hug that person again.

I started thinking about touch after sorting through a bag of my beloved dog's toys. I remember how he played with each one. I remember how gratefully he played with a toy right after we bought it. But he had only one favorite. He always came back to that one. While my boy could still hear, he would come running from anywhere at the squeak of that toy. He'd clamp his little teeth on it and growl.

The thought that he slept hugging that toy makes me take it to bed with me. I can imagine that Yosha is sleeping there too, between me and the toy.

I hope you always have someone to fall asleep next to ♥️

I realise how little my boy lived.
I know that I'm alive. I know that I'll be alive tomorrow.
I want to close my eyes and wake up in the past. I want his smell and his wet nose. I want to be able to hug him. And never leave him.
We often say we'll always be there for the people we love. I was with him his whole life, but he was with me for only 14 and a half years of mine.
Every day I wash his water bowl. Every day I refill it with fresh drinking water.
Every day I trip over his bowl of dry food that he never finished.
I step over the balls and bones he never finished chewing, without thinking.
I tried to put everything on the top shelf. I sorted through all his things and moved his last medicines. But there are things I can't touch. Maybe because I believe he'll come back.
He'll meet me at the door. Drink some fresh water from his bowl. Finish his dry food. Lie down in his nest to finish chewing his bone. I'll trip over his bowl again. Scold him again. And he'll turn his side to me again, showing with his whole body how offended he is. I'll throw him a ball, and he'll run and bring it back to the exact center of the room.
And everything, absolutely everything, will be right where it belongs.

It won't be like that. Not ever.

Скорбь по кому-то - это способ проживания своей любви. То как мы скорбим соизмеримо с тем как велики были наши чувства к умершему.
Эти слова я узнала очень давно. И каждый год приходится понимать их смысл.

Я не заходила сюда умышленно все это время. Просто по невозможности увидеть нечто неприятное и, в целом, из-за уровня стыда от того что не смогла прожить свои эмоции не иначе как писать в маленький забытый тгк.

Я научилась игнорировать собак на улицах, а также переходить на другую сторону при виде знакомых собачников, с которыми еще полтора года назад мы с псом встречались и гуляли.

Но научиться не скорбеть невозможно, потому что потерять скорбь будет означать потерять все, что меня связывает с этой прекрасной собакой с фото.

Я все также каждый вечер мою его мисочку от воды, затем вытираю насухо, ставлю на его столик и наливаю воду из бутылки, чтобы она была комфортной комнатной температуры. Я покупаю его любимую диетическую колбасу из индейки во вкуссвиле каждые 3 дня и кормлю кошку, которая поселилась в нашем подвале. Меня успокаивает то, что я все также нарезаю колбасу квадратиками, а её потом съедают.

Мне снился мой пес всего 3 раза. Я обнимала его и плакала во сне. А потом просыпалась и плакала еще больше, потому что это ощущение что он рядом было таким реальным, что хотелось выть, от того, что сон вообще кончился.