In case you hadn’t already gathered (or are new here) – I have stage IV cancer – but returning Duke was what nearly broke me. Not the scans, not the meetings, not the word malignant, or palliative, or incurable. A dog. My dog. A harlequin Great Dane who weighed over seventy kilos and thought he was my shadow. He turned two on 7 November. On 8 November, just before my mum’s funeral, I drove him back to his breeder to be rehomed. I can still hear him howl.
For the record, this is not a story about failing a dog. It is a story about choosing his life over our pride and wants.
Also, apologies, I had so many good pics of my Dukey dog that I couldn’t not pack this blog with them.
The reality at home
By early November, I was spending more time in the hospital than at home. Ana had undergone a lobectomy (having an entire lobe of her lung removed) just weeks earlier. She had strict orders not to lift anything heavier than a kettle and to avoid any strain on her healing ribs and lungs. Duke was raw fed, which meant he needed proper food – a chest freezer full of meat bricks that required cutting (maybe sawing might be more appropriate) to size with a knife. If the bricks were not fully thawed, it was a serious workout in the kitchen. Ana couldn’t risk the sawing motion or the weight/pull of it. I was not there enough, and we had no local support to help us. We didn’t have any daily support to fill in the gaps.
Duke was not difficult, but he was needy. He loved attention and required a daily walk. If Ana had been fully healthy, she would have managed. But being healthy was not our situation. A seventy-kilo puppy could have jeopardised her recovery with just one excited step in the wrong direction, and we weren’t going to risk that.
There are different kinds of love. One is about staying no matter what. The other is about acknowledging you cannot meet the basic needs safely and choosing the dog’s well-being over your pride. This was the second kind.
The decision
We discussed it the way you talk about things that hurt – slowly and repeatedly. We used the language of logistics because the language of grief is too costly.
Could we change Duke’s diet? Could we board him short term? Could we find a daily walker strong enough to hold him if he lunged after a cat or rabbit? Could we manage night feeds, hospital visits, post-op restrictions, and two small boys who still needed parents?
Sometimes, the answer is no, even if it’s dressed up in admin.
I called Sophie, his breeder. She didn’t make me justify my decision or shame us. She listened to the facts and offered me the only gift I could accept – a way to be kind to Duke. Bring him back. I will make it as easy as possible.
On the seventh, we gave him a birthday he could enjoy – cuddles, play, treats, photos. On the eighth, we packed his things – leashes, bowls, and the smell of our house in blankets – and put him in the car. Axel came along as my moral support. He wanted to say goodbye to his dog and wanted Duke to feel safe.
The handover
There are moments you remember for their beauty, and then there are moments you remember because they are true. This was the second type. We arrived and handed over the lead. Duke howled. He screamed at the top of his lungs when I turned to leave, clawing at the gate to get back to us. Axel held my hand tightly and remarked that Duke wanted to come back with his family and that Duke would always be his doggy. He has such a big heart for someone so small.
We got into the car and sat for a minute, as driving away felt like treachery. Then I drove off because being an adult sometimes means doing the right thing, even when it feels like your chest is tearing open and your heart is being savaged with pain. He was my boy. I had raised him from a tiny puppy. I built him a crate under the stairs with my own hands. I knew the sound of his paws on the floorboards and the thump when he lay down, how he pressed against my legs like a living blanket. I miss everything about my dog except for the Great Dane-sized messes (think elephant poo and you’re somewhere close). I needed his love and cuddles more than ever. That is the hardest part – needing something and choosing against it because love demands better.
Sophie was wonderful. She sent photos and updates when she could. She carefully rehomed him. The new owners requested we be removed from the owners' group and have no contact. I understand the boundary, but it still hurt so very much.
We have always been honest with our boys. We told them why and what happened. We gave Duke a proper farewell for his birthday and let the cuddles last as long as they could. It broke their hearts, and it broke mine.
Grief stacking
The week continued. On my way to my mum’s funeral – a very wet November day – my dad got in the car with a fold-out umbrella and struggled with the buttons. He couldn’t collapse it properly. Then, as if in slow motion, the thing shot open and cracked the windscreen in one clean motion. We drove to the crematorium with a new fracture across our view. It felt like a joke the month was playing on us.
The service was at the crematorium, just a few close family and friends, and the wake was at the Bishop’s Palace in Wells. Hundreds of people came throughout the afternoon. Mum was a palliative care nurse throughout her lifetime. She guided families through the very terrain we were suddenly facing. The cruelty of losing her when I needed her most hasn’t left me. She was an extremely vibrant person, always the life of the party. She was the sort that, when we were kids, she once snuck into her friend Helen’s immaculate garden and glued gnomes everywhere for fun. That was Mum – practical compassion and mischief – it was also very fitting that she named herself ‘Granny Naughty’.
Funerals are logistics and politics in black. An old friend of Mum’s took control of the seating, pushing my dad’s side to the back and dismissing them quite unjustly and cruelly. He and Mum hadn’t been together for years, but they remained married until her death, for reasons that are their own and don’t belong to my speculation. He was unfortunately treated very rudely by this same person for the rest of the afternoon (and into the evening, albeit I wasn’t there to witness that part), and my brothers and I were not the only ones who noticed. I kept the peace because sometimes you choose the battle you can win, not the one that will wear you down.
We drove home with the crack across the windscreen and a kind of silence that isn’t empty. It is heavy. It presses down.
The house without Duke
You feel a dog's absence in ordinary places. The corner where the water bowl sat. The rhythm of the day when you would have clipped a leash to a collar. The empty space under the stairs where the crate fit perfectly because you measured nd built it yourself. The first night I went to bed and paused at that door, even though there was no reason to. Muscle memory is cruel and accurate.
Ana did exactly what she could and nothing more. She was weeks post-op, and that mattered more than sentiment. I was in and out of wards, getting scans, eating small meals through a lot of pain, and lying on the floor afterward because the pain wouldn’t even let me sit up. Some seasons, you can’t carry everything. If you try, the things you love get dropped.
People like to categorise decisions like this into two buckets – you could cope or you could not. The truth doesn’t fit in either bucket. The truth is about capacity. We could not safely meet Duke’s basic needs without risking Ana's recovery or leaving the boys with two broken parents. That is not a story about coping. That is a story about triage.
What nearly broke me
Of everything in this long and difficult stretch – mum dying, the meetings where palliative care came up, the consent forms and new vocabulary I had to learn quickly – this is what still makes my chest feel like it has been stepped on. The day we took Duke back. The sound he made when I turned away. The silence under the stairs.
Grief is additive. Duke's departure piled on top of losing Mum – Granny Naughty to my boys – and for a while, it felt almost too heavy to bear. If it weren’t for my dad and Ana (and our boys too), I might have broken. They steadied me when I was unsteady. They gave me room to fall apart and the push to stand back up. If you measure love by how often it says try again, then I am incredibly rich.
What I want to remember
I want to remember that choosing Duke’s life over my pride was the right decision, even if right and easy never meet. I want to remember that Sophie was kind, that she didn’t force me to justify my grief or prove my love. I want to remember how Axel held my hand tightly, how Duke tried to follow us, and how much that hurt because the things that hurt sometimes reveal who you are.
I also want to remember my mum not by the crack in the windscreen but by how she would have laughed at it and then handed my dad a roll of some random tape she’d hoarded for years – somehow knowing it would be needed just for such an occasion – to turn the whole thing into a story. I want to remember her by the gnomes and by how she looked while doing the work she was meant to do – the work I needed from her and didn’t receive because life is unpredictable.
We did not fail Duke. We chose not to shortchange his life. That is the line I will stand on when guilt comes looking for a place to settle.
Thank you, Sophie, for making the hardest return bearable. I hope Duke’s new life is full of the things he loved – long walks, hands on his head, children who see him as a shadow, and a sofa that welcomes him despite his size. May he be as loved as he was here.
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