Life Lately: Lily + A Visit to a Garden Nursery

A pet makes a house a home. We really feel that after the loss of our pup Jack. Thank you all for your comments and messages about Jack and we appreciate everyone who has been asking how Lily is doing. Today I thought I would post an update on her and share one of our recent adventures together to a local garden nursery!

Lily never had known a single day without Jack by her side, so we knew she was also going to feel the loss of her friend and companion in so many ways. This was (and still is) going to be hard on all of us so we decided right away that we would do whatever we could to show her lots of love. We needed to go through this together.

In this post I’ll share how she’s doing and our visit to Christianson’s garden nursery plus at the end of the post I’ll add few other things we’re doing to help her through this loss and transition.

One of things we started right away was taking Lily on special adventures. We’ve always taken the dogs with us when we could, but we are trying to make special adventures with Lily extra meaningful and frequent for her.

We discovered as a puppy that Lily was particularly engaged with all of her senses. Her favorite excursions include walks where she can sniff all the things, so a visit to a plant nursery is so wonderful for her!

We also give her time to stop and smell the roses. Plant therapy is healing.

I’ve found gardening to be helpful myself when I’ve gone though hard times.

I wrote about this in my book Dwelling, it is therapeutic to spend time in nature and around plants.

Lily loved being here! We love it, too. This is where my daughter Courtney had her wedding! (You can see photos of her wedding here.) It’s such a beautiful place with so much to see and smell.

The hydrangeas were spectacular!

It was especially fun to see Lily look at all the animals, she didn’t even bark. She just stopped to say hello and then went on her way to continue to sniff each and every plant and flower.

After this adventure she had her haircut in the mobile grooming truck. Another first without her Jack. She used to worry so much about him when it was his turn to go in. It’s sad to think about how much has changed for her.

Lily doesn’t like to have her picture taken like Jack did, but she’s so cute I try to get her to pose or into a photo when I can although she normally looks the other way or turns her head when she sees the camera. 🙂 Every dog is so different in their personality and the things they enjoy doing, so we’re just appreciating all that she means to us. She is such a delightful and gentle pup (but she’s a quiet leader when she’s with other pups!).

Having her in our home and life is so special, we’re very grateful to have her.

In general we thankfully haven’t seen too many troubling changes in her behavior or habits, but we can tell she misses Jack. We noticed she’s definitely been trying to stay closer to us in the house. Lily is usually very independent but now that she’s an only pup she will always go to wherever we are, rather than ever staying alone in a room.

We are giving her lots of love and hug and trying to think of ways to make her surroundings and our every day routines feel cozy, comforting and less lonely for her. It’s not easy to fill that void because Jack was the life of the party and always in the middle of everything we did.

One idea we had was to get her a new bed. She has always loved making beds all over the house. She and Jack used to sleep side by side in their matching dog beds at night and so it really has made me sad to see her alone now without a friend next to her.

During the day she often curls up in one of my soft round baskets which is really too small for her but she does it anyway. So one thing we thought she might enjoy having was a new basket bed all her own!

We ordered this bed (we got the large size in Color 1, there were so many great color options it was hard to choose!) and we’re just waiting for it to be made and shipped. I’ll share it when it arrives. We’ll see if she likes it and decide where to put it then.

We’re just always trying to think of little ways to make her feel extra safe and loved. We miss Jack so much it still hurts, but we’re pouring as much love as we can into this little gal and she is loving us back so I think she’ll be okay.

Thanks for being here and for all your kindness to our family! We have been so touched by the heartfelt messages on every platform.