[sabrina]

My niece who is 26 years old lost her collie dog Ben to cancer in July. He was 5 years old. Now Deborah has always been a very happy person so it has been a huge shock to her husband and her parents that she is now suffering from very bad depression. So much so that she felt life was not worth living. The doctor put her on pills as they do but she has not been getting better. She has a very stressful job and walking Ben helped her cope with this, her way of unwinding.  At the moment she is off work, yesterday my brother took her to see some collie puppies. It could have gone very wrong as he had not told her were they were going but after lots of tears she came home with a wee boy who she has named Alffie. Already the healing process has started. I don't think people who have never had a dog understand just how much a loss and pain they cause when they are gone. Its 11 years since I lost my German Shepherd Kelsy and I still get upset talking about it.

[Bionic]

A very sad tale but it looks like it may have a happy ending. 

[SallyintNorth]

I still cry whenever anything reminds me of Moses, my first dog.  (And probably all my other dogs and cats too, but especially that first one.)

I usually try to have two dogs, one a few years older than the other, so that if one dies you still have one with whom you are already bonded.  It takes some years to develop the depth of bond which it hurts so much to lose, so a new puppy is a great distraction, but in some ways can make it more apparent just what one has lost.

The other reason for having other pets / livestock is that caring for them makes you get up and do stuff, and that really helps.

I'm glad to hear that your niece is starting to heal 

[Bex]

I'm very glad the new little one is helping.

The doctor put her on pills as they do but she has not been getting better.

Advise her to ask for different pills. Docs put me on some a few years ago and they did nothing. I assumed it was my fault, I must have been exaggerating my problems etc. I ended up in a very dark place. 

This time around a different doc put me on different pills and I can actually feel the difference. It's worth trying some different ones. You can't rely on just the pills to get you better but if you've got some that work it's a lot easier to work on getting yourself healthy.

   for her

[devonlady]

In spite of all the dogs I have ever had and still have I still grieve for Taff, my Welsh Border Collie who died, aged 15 years 13 years ago. For years I could call him back to me until I felt him say" Please, let me go" Now I can think of him with joy instead of grief which is how it should be.

[shygirl]

lack of iron in the diet can also contribute to depression so its worth taking liquid iron medicine - they sell it in morrisons.

I dread the thought of losing my gsd. 

[Marches Farmer]

The poet Keats wrote of the folly of giving your heart to a dog to tear.  .  if you hadn't enjoyed their companionship so much it wouldn't hurt so much when they go - two sides of the coin, I guess.

[Rosemary]

 “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love:it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to help others cope with losses in theirs.”

Dr Colin Murray Parkes , a psychiatrist at St.Christopher’s Hospice and author of "Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life".