Historically, my birthday has been a bad day for me. At times, it’s been because I’ve gotten drunk and done something incredibly stupid. More often than not though, I just seem to have bad luck, more so on my birthday than any other day of the year. This year was no exception to the rule. This year, we lost a pet, and not just any pet… We lost Diamond.

Many of you know that Diamond was our beautiful Australian Shepherd, and was really my oldest son’s best friend (as well as like a child to me). Losing her broke my heart, and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to post about it. It hurts too bad, and to just say we lost a pet doesn’t really convey the hurt that we have all been feeling. We didn’t just lose a pet, we lost a valued and treasured family member, and we still don’t understand why.

You see, the day was like any other day… My husband got home from work and got the kids, and they let Diamond out to run off some energy. Except that this day, for some reason when my neighbor came home, Diamond decided to run out and get under his truck. He didn’t mean to run her over, he loved her almost as much as we did. And, the part that really sucked was trying to console him when I pulled into my yard a few minutes later and my world fell apart. We stood there, in my yard, and cried together.

I know, why wasn’t she on a leash? Because Diamond was strong. Very strong, and could pull the kids down when she wanted to run and play. Why didn’t we have a fence? Because we don’t own our home, and because we live way out in the middle of nowhere, and we never let out babies go out alone.

I’ve analyzed that day over in my head time and time again, because I truly feel like as though we not only lost a pet, we lost my baby that day. We lost my son’s best friend. We lost our hiking buddy. We lost Diamond. Nothing can replace her. Nothing can make my broken heart mend itself. I miss her running with me. I miss her curling up on my feet while I drank my coffee. I miss her kicking me out of bed every morning so she could snuggle with my husband. I miss Diamond… And I cannot comfortably just say “we lost a pet” and let that be it.

We have other animals… We have 4 cats (and I am NOT a cat person) and one other crazy dog. None of them are anything like Diamond though. We have started considering getting another dog… A running buddy for me. Nothing is in stone yet though. We know we won’t be getting another Aussie. We just can’t bring ourselves to try and replace her. After all, we didn’t just lose a pet that day, and there are no other dogs out there like Diamond, so we’re not going to try to get another one that looks like her to fill the void she left in our hearts. It’s just not possible.

Some of you will understand this post. Some of you won’t. It’s okay… I’m still just grieving, months later, and I needed to get it out. We lost a pet, but we lost a family member and a piece of our hearts on my birthday this year, and I am trying to move forward.