Haley, I'm so so sorry. Thank you for sharing your grief with all of us -- your love for Bug is so palpable and comes through so strongly in your writing that I (and it seems like most of your other readers) loved him too because of it. I hope you take all the time to mourn and process his absence, and don't in any way feel rushed to move on or diminish it just because Bug wasn't a human.

I've lost two family dogs, who we all still miss, and now have my own 6 year old dog whose eventual death ca…