My Annie is gone. A month ago, she made her final visit to the vet, and I held her as she passed on to the next life. She was 15 ½, deaf and arthritic, always in pain, and she had cancer. I had to let her go. I am broken, still grieving hard. This loss compounds with the losses I experienced before: my husband, my mother and father, aunts, uncles, friends, Annie’s brother Chico and Sadie, the dog that came before them.

People talk about childless people adopting “fur babies” as baby substitutes. For me, I always knew it was not the same. Dogs will never grow into adult people who can expand your family over the years with spouses, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. They will not carry on your genes or your name. You can never have a two-way conversation with a pup. Dogs are not children. Neither are cats. But they do fill a hole in the childless life.

Were Chico and Annie, shown in the photo, my baby substitutes? Sort of. They slept in a cage much like a playpen, with little blankets, tiny bowls, squeaky toys, and pee pads. As you may have read in my Childless by Marriage book, my church friends threw us a surprise puppy shower, complete with gifts and cake. The pups, who, at 6 and 7 pounds, were the size of human babies, came at a time when we really shouldn’t have been adding puppies to the challenges we already faced. My husband, Fred, had Alzheimer’s disease, and it was getting pretty bad. He couldn’t handle the dogs.

I was the one dealing with their messes, their chewing, and their need for attention at all hours of day and night. I was the one who took them to obedience classes and the vet. I frequently felt as frazzled as a new mother. But I also felt happy. I knew they were not the same as human babies, but they were fun in the middle of a whole lot of sad.

A year after Fred moved to a nursing home, I had to give Chico, the black dog, away. He kept jumping the fence and running off, frequently going after other people’s pets. By then, he was fully grown, almost two years old. That last day together before I took him to a shelter in Salem, he bit me while I was trying to save another dog from him. I still have a scar on my leg. It broke my heart, but he had to go. He was a dog, not a human being, and he was too much for me.

As Annie aged, she was not my baby anymore. She was a big dog, 75 pounds of love. She was my friend, my sister, and my partner. Perhaps if she were a little dog, it might have been different. I have friends who take their small dogs everywhere, who cuddle them in their laps during Zoom meetings, strap them into their cars when they leave the house, and sleep with them in their beds. Annie was too big for all of that. She was also independent. She liked a good snuggle, but then we each attended to our own business. I liked it that way.

Little dogs are vulnerable, baby-like. People dress them in sweaters and put them in strollers. They talk baby-talk to them. Are they a baby substitute or a breathing version of the dolls we had as kids? Is that crazy or a good thing?

Cats are small, too, the perfect size to cuddle like a baby—if they’ll let you. My neighbor cuddles her chickens. You can love all animals, but do they make up for not having children?

Whatever their size, a pet gives you another name to sign on your Christmas cards, someone to talk about and take pictures of, someone to walk with, eat with, and yes, sleep with. Someone to say good night and good morning to. Someone to notice if you cry and someone who misses you when you go away.

My writer friends on Zoom grew used to seeing Annie in our meetings. I wove Annie into all of my writing. In my bios, I called myself a writer/musician/dog mom. Am I still a “dog mom” if my “baby” has moved on? I am still drawn to dogs the way other women are drawn to babies.

There’s freedom in not having a pet. I can just take off now. I can stay out late or travel overnight. I can tell myself my “baby” has moved on and it’s time for me to have an empty nest.

Will I get another dog? I can’t see myself living forever without one. But at my age, I have to consider how long I might be able to stay in this house where I have a big fenced yard and how long I’ll be able to care for a dog. A new dog would have to be smaller.  I need a dog I can carry if need be. Annie’s size was a problem toward the end. But I want a companion, not a baby. I’m too old for babies.

Enough about me. What do you think? Are pets a good baby substitute for you? In what ways do you include them as part of the family? How will you deal with their much shorter lifespans? To love animals is to say good bye over and over again. Unless you get a parrot. They can live up to 50 years.  

If you have a partner who does not want the responsibility and cost of children, is he or she willing to commit to the responsibility and cost of pets? Annie’s care cost a fortune, especially in the last few years. To me, she was worth every penny, but some people might not see it that way or might not be able to afford it.

Annie wasn’t perfect. She’s the dog who chewed up one of my hearing aids, who ate pens, paper clips, reading glasses, and important mail, who could chew up an “indestructible” Kong in an hour (I got a refund). She loved people but shunned other dogs. Cats confused her. She chased robins and rabbits, picked blackberries, and “helped” visiting workmen by stealing their tools.

She ran to help when I spilled food in the kitchen and stared at me until I moved out of her spot on the love seat. She thought dried-out crab shells on the beach were a delicacy and could sniff out a burrito or French fries in the bushes all the way across the street. She shed so much it took three days to blow her fur out of the old Honda when I traded it in last month. Fur will be embedded in this house forever. But that’s okay. She was Annie, the best dog in the world.

Was she my baby? She was my Annie.

Read more about Annie the blog-famous dog:

Many more posts can be found at my Unleashed in Oregon blog. Stories of Sadie, Chico and Annie are also included in my forthcoming memoir No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, to be published in June 2024. It is available for pre-orders now.