Grief Writing After a Dog Dies | Sheila Cooperman

>> James Jacobson: [00:00:00] After your beloved dog dies, how can you begin to heal your broken heart? Sheila Cooperman is a listener and member of our DogCancer.com support community, and today she shares with us the True Tail about Tucker, the dog she didn’t know she needed. And how the act of writing about him is helping her to process his loss and two other losses as well.

>> Announcer: Welcome to Dog Cancer Answers, where we help you help your dog with cancer. Here’s your host, James Jacobson.

>> James Jacobson: Hello, friend. Thank you for joining us on Dog Cancer Answers, the official podcast of DogCancer.com, where veterinarians, veterinary oncologists, cancer researchers, and science writers give you better information today, so you have no regrets tomorrow.

Today, we’re speaking with Sheila Cooperman, a dog lover who’s been processing her grief by writing [00:01:00] about losing Tucker, a Boykin Spaniel, to dog cancer. So, Sheila, thank you so much for being with us today.

>> Sheila Cooperman: I’m very happy to be here today.

>> James Jacobson: Tell me about Tucker.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Well, we got Tucker about eight and a half years ago. I was a full time school teacher, and I was never home. And my husband worked at home. And he was a dog owner, always. I was not. So he wanted a dog. And my feeling about that was total indifference. It was like, okay, go get yourself a dog. If you need to have companionship, get a dog. I was surrounded by children, teachers, staff, parents.

I was getting all the stimulation I need. And if he wanted a dog, go get a dog, but I said it’s gonna be your dog You’re gonna take care of the dog because I leave at 6 and I don’t get home until 4. So we did a little research and he kept taking some [00:02:00] online Like, you know Match.com for dogs and.

>> James Jacobson: For dogs.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Owners and this Boykin Spaniel breed that no one had ever heard of in our household kept coming up is the perfect match And we actually went and found a breeder, because neither one of us, or at least me, I knew nothing about rescue. I knew nothing about dogs. And we, we got this little, tiny, bubbly, little, brown eyed, brown furred puppy, and he took care of the dog. But at some point, there was an enormous metamorphosis, and it became my dog, emotionally, and I feel that my circadian rhythms merged with Tucker’s.

I don’t know how to quite explain that, except that if there was something wrong with him, I knew it immediately. If he left, you know, his bowl untouched, [00:03:00] or he didn’t jump quite as high up on the couch, or he, you know, scratched his ear in the wrong way, I was like, there’s something wrong with the dog. And In the beginning, David said, Oh, it’s okay. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. And I’m like, no, it’s something. I’m going to take him to the vet.

And after a while, since I was always 100 percent correct, nobody ever doubted me when I said we have to take Tucker to the vet. And Tucker followed me everywhere, and.

>> James Jacobson: So what was it that first time when you had a suspicion to go to the vet? What was wrong with Tucker?

>> Sheila Cooperman: His ear. He’s scratching his ear. Boykins are swimmers. They’re the state dog of South Carolina. I don’t know if every state has a state dog, but South Carolina does. And they were bred for small fowl retrieval in the swamps of South Carolina. And they have slightly webbed feet, in terms of their, you know, [00:04:00] paws, and all he liked to do was swim and catch balls and he was shaking his head.

I said, there’s something wrong with the dog’s ears. And that was the first time we realized that ear infections were relatively common for, you know, dogs who lived in the water. And I just became acutely aware of always watching his ears and watching what he eats because he was pretty finicky. He never had, um, he never had stools that were firm. And so I just became very aware of his rhythm.

>> James Jacobson: Okay. And then that connection that you had with him was important, I guess, in the diagnosis of first realizing that there’s something wrong with him beyond an ear infection.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Correct. And you know, the way the, the way the relationship developed between the dog and myself is my husband and I would be out and [00:05:00] somewhere around exit 42 or 38 or whatever the closest exit was to whatever house we were living in, I would start to get very excited about getting home. Because Tucker greeted me at the door. He greeted us at the door. It wasn’t just me, but he had a certain squeal.

He made a certain sound when we walked in the door or when I walked in the door. And so it started to become, uh, like a private family joke on the way home. I would say to David, is it gonna be squeal worthy? Our return? He said, whenever you come home, it’s squealworthy. And, you know, Tucker would follow me downstairs. We had a standard routine. He’d get up when I get up. I get up very early. He would follow me downstairs. He would stay with me when I had my coffee.

But the minute was like very much like Pavlov, the minute he heard the jingle of my car keys, he ran right back upstairs to get back into bed with [00:06:00] David. So I think we became a family. You know, David has two grown children. I have three grown children. We live by ourselves. We have lots of grandchildren. They don’t, nobody lives with us, but the dog lived with us. And so we became a family of three and losing him was losing a family member.

>> James Jacobson: And.

And then, and we’ll get to the loss in a moment, but let’s talk a little bit about the cancer journey that he was on, and what kind of cancer was it, and how long did you guys fight?

>> Sheila Cooperman: He had a mutated B-Cell lymphoma and the oncologist at Cornell when she you know got the cytology report back and read everything. She said This is a rare mutaion. We don’t have a lot of research on this. We have no idea how Tucker is going to respond to any of the treatment. Now, [00:07:00] when I heard the word It’s consistent with lymphoma, two things happened to me. One was I felt like one of those cartoons where, you know, there’s someone staring at you and all you hear is wah wah wah wah.

This woman’s mouth was moving and the only thing I heard was cancer. The only thing I heard was lymphoma. And what it did to me was trigger two previous human losses that I’ve had, a mother and a stepmother, that every time I heard the word lymphoma, I said, this is not good, because they both died within six months of a diagnosis, so.

>> James Jacobson: And they also had lymphoma.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Uh-huh.

>> James Jacobson: Both of them.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Yeah. So hearing.

>> James Jacobson: Runs in the family.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Hearing, that’s right. Hearing that word again, you know, was, was, you know, triggered a lot, which is why I’m writing books. But she said, we’re going to, they put them on Prednisone. And you know, my initial attitude, James [00:08:00] was, okay, maybe this mutation is the mutation that will take to the chemo better than any other form of lymphoma. Mutations don’t always have to be bad. So, that’s where I put my head.

This might be more treatable than any other type of cancer. That was a stage of grief. I was bargaining. Nothing worked, okay, for Tucker. The Doxorubicin worked for one week. And after that, nothing worked. We had eight weeks from time of diagnosis to the day we had to take him out of his suffering.

>> James Jacobson: Okay.

>> Sheila Cooperman: So it wasn’t very long. He didn’t know it. You know.

>> James Jacobson: He didn’t know it. Tell me a little bit about the observations that because you and Tucker were so connected, what do you reckon Tucker was thinking during those eight weeks?

>> Sheila Cooperman: Tucker had a very set routine. This was over the summer. And in the summer, there were two things that Tucker loved to do. [00:09:00] Three things. Chase balls, chase balls and swim.

>> James Jacobson: Okay.

>> Sheila Cooperman: And we have a pool. So at seven o’clock in the morning, he was downstairs with a ball in his mouth, sitting at the door waiting to go outside and he would either chase the ball or swim for the ball for hours, and that never changed throughout his whole treatment. The only time I had to keep him out of the water was when he would come back from an infusion.

I never knew Tucker, I mean, obviously we can’t talk to him, but he wasn’t sick. He didn’t demonstrate any sickness. He had no side effects that he could feel. There was one or two times over the course of eight or nine weeks where I did have to take him back to Cornell for some stabilization. He had a GI bleed.

So they gave him, you know, a medication for, you know, soft stools and diarrhea. But other than [00:10:00] that, that happened once he got up in the morning, he went swimming. I started cooking a cancer diet for him. I missed the farmer’s dog niche by a couple of years. I got real good at cooking the diet and his stools were never better. They were horrible for eight years until I started cooking this, this diet and then they were great. So.

>> James Jacobson: And that was the diet that you’d learned about in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Yup. I read that book twice. It became my Bible and I found that it, it just made me feel not alone. And I think that that was really the beginning of my wanting to be involved with, you know, posting and writing because the feeling of isolation and the feeling that you are all alone and you’re the only one suffering this and the why me, why my dog, and all of those thousands of questions that one has, I found a great deal of support with the [00:11:00] community of people on the Facebook page and the book.

>> James Jacobson: You’ve become quite prolific and amazing support to so many people in our Dog Cancer Support group on Facebook.

>> Sheila Cooperman: I hope so.

>> James Jacobson: Let’s pause here and just to remind you, listener, that we have a private support group on Facebook. It has over 10, 000 members and it is growing fast. It’s really active and it’s a great resource for you. You can find a direct link to the group at DogCancer.com/support. In our group you will find amazing people, very little dogma, in fact we aim for none, and good information from reliable sources.

You’ll also find lots of emotional support from fellow dog lovers who know how you feel. It’s the official support group of DogCancer.com. Now, if you haven’t been to DogCancer.com, our main website, please check it out. That is where [00:12:00] the real magic happens. We have amassed a team, what we call Team Dog, that now numbers over 40 people. We have veterinarians and veterinary oncologists and cancer researchers and science writers working really hard to deliver on our promise to you. Better information today, so you have no regrets tomorrow.

On DogCancer.com you will find hundreds of informative, medically accurate, and frequently updated articles, videos, and references. If you’ve got any questions about dog cancer, head to DogCancer.com to help find those answers. And if you don’t see it on the site, please submit a ticket so that we can either find it for you or write an article about that topic.

And just like our Facebook support group, it is all free. It won’t cost you a penny, at DogCancer.com. And now back to Sheila, who joined our support group last year and posts her latest writings every [00:13:00] week.

When did you, you know, soon after, after discovering the cancer, when did you get involved in the Facebook group?

>> Sheila Cooperman: I got involved in the Facebook group. The first post went up on August 12th. Not in the Facebook group yet, but just in general on Facebook. I was supposed to go to a 50th high school reunion, I’m showing my age here, on the week of August 10th.

>> James Jacobson: The school was built 50 years ago is what you’re saying

>> Sheila Cooperman: Okay. Yeah, we’ll go with that, And I was leaving for the weekend and Tucker, obviously he was at the state of his treatments where he was only seeing the oncologist every two weeks and he was panting a lot. Now I know that panting could be a definite side effect of the Prednisone, but somehow this panting was different than the regular Prednisone panting.

It was harder. It was more shallow. It was coming more frequently. We were sitting [00:14:00] outside. I said to David, there’s something. It’s not just Prednisone. I got it. Let’s take him. I’m going away for the weekend. Let’s, let’s just take him. And we did take him to the regular vet. And she took an x-ray. This was on a Wednesday. She took an x-ray and she said, Well, I’m going to send this x-ray to Cornell just so that they have it.

And two days later on that Friday, you know, there aren’t a lot of vets that are open at 5 o’clock on a Friday evening. So we took him to Cornell for stabilization because of the panting. And it was that night, when we got there that they said your dog is going to end up in respiratory distress, or have a heart attack because he can’t breathe. Now again, and I say this to people who whoever listens, he didn’t show any pain. I never felt that Tucker was in pain

Whatever discomfort the dog had with panting. I can’t speak [00:15:00] for him. But he was running and swimming and jumping, until that moment when we took him to Cornell the next day, which was on August 12th, I woke up with COVID. So I lost my dog on the 11th and I woke up with COVID on the 12th and that’s when I started posting.

>> James Jacobson: So it was only after Tucker passed that you started posting?

>> Sheila Cooperman: Well, that I came to the organization’s Facebook page. But all through Tucker’s sickness I posted on my personal page about the journey.

>> James Jacobson: And then you, as you said, you read the book a couple of times, you joined the group after Tucker had passed and then, you know, talk about that a little bit in terms of the experience of being able to, you know, through the grieving process, be able to help other dog lovers with their own dog cancer journies.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Well, I post every Friday. I posted one today. It’s six months today, 26 weeks. [00:16:00] And as a human being, I’m a, you know, I, I was a teacher for 26 years. I have a doctorate in literacy and I’m a writer. I’ve always written. I’ve always written to poetry or I’ve written to work through whatever, you know, um, issues or thinking I have.

I’m a firm believer in the power of, of words and so I started posting just what I was feeling without any barriers, no guardians, no, it was stream of consciousness and how I was feeling and why I felt so alone and what, what did I do wrong? I mean, I think the posts seemed to follow a continuum and then I read Kübler-Ross’ book again, you know, the stages of grief and.

>> James Jacobson: Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Yeah. And I went, Oh my goodness, I’m doing this again. And I realized there was no, no big difference between losing a parent and losing a loved dog. And then people [00:17:00] started to write to me and say, Thank you for saying what I feel but I can’t express, or thank you for putting my feelings into words. And, you know, thank you for being so naked and vulnerable.

And I think that I really was actually taken aback. I was surprised by the amount of support that I not only got for my own pain, but the amount of support that I was really able to give other people. If the words, you know, that I was putting out there was able to help anybody else, then that became a goal for me. That became a goal.

>> James Jacobson: Are you surprised?

>> Sheila Cooperman: By people’s reactions?

>> James Jacobson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Well, yes and no. I’m not surprised because I’m, you know, I’m not narcissistic enough to think that I’m the only one in the world that goes through pain.

>> James Jacobson: Right.

>> Sheila Cooperman: And [00:18:00] that, you know, my dog is the only dog in the world. I mean, everybody who has a dog, who loves their dog, who grieves their dog feels the same way. And I think, I think there’s a pattern to it. Like, what did I do wrong? What did I miss? You know, why me? What could I have done sooner? And I think a lot of people, you know, feel that way.

>> James Jacobson: A lot of people do feel that way. That is for sure. Let’s take a break right here and hear a quick word from our sponsors. And when we come back, I’d like to talk about what your overall goal is with this writing project.

And we are back with Sheila Cooperman. So Sheila, what is your goal when you post your writing?

>> Sheila Cooperman: So my goal is to help people at least put a word to what they are feeling and to validate how they’re feeling. [00:19:00] Because even though I have not come across people who’ve said to me, Oh, get over it. It’s just a dog. Because my whole family is involved with dogs. I know that there are people who do run into that and who feel very isolated and alone and my thought is if my words can give anybody a sense of feeling validated and accepted and feeling that they have voice and someone’s listening, I feel like that’s going to be very helpful.

>> James Jacobson: Well, it has been helpful. It’s been helpful for lots of people. And that’s why we want to, you know, let folks who are listening to this podcast or watching this podcast on YouTube, know about it, because there are so many people who can benefit from just hearing about the odyssey of what you and Tucker went through for those eight weeks and, and your eloquence is quite striking.

And so in the notes from today’s show, we will post some links to some of our favorite posts that you’ve posted [00:20:00] in Dog Cancer Support, which you can find at DogCancerSupport.com, which is a quick link to our Facebook group. And the thing is, this is going to live beyond the confines of Facebook. You’re planning a book.

>> Sheila Cooperman: I am planning a book. Actually, I’m planning several. And I wasn’t planning on writing a book. My husband is a wonderful photographer, and we have hundreds of pictures. And all I wanted to do was take the wonderful pictures of Tucker and put them in one of those, you know, books that you can get from any one of these, you know, photography websites.

So I opened up a Google slideshow, Google presentation, and I uploaded Tucker’s picture, and I was just planning on putting a caption there, but a story came. A children’s story came. And the story came, it was about an angel, because I always referred to Tucker as my angel. He was just, he was my [00:21:00] angel. He would put his little schnozzle, which we called it, his, you know, nozzle on my neck, and he was my angel.

So, the story came to be about an angel that comes to the door, and a little girl sees this angel, and says to her mother in the story, there’s an angel at the door. The name of the book is going to be, it’s not out yet, An Angel with Four Legs. And this angel comes to this grieving house because there is a, a mother who, you know, they lost the father, the husband’s gone, and this angel comes to the house to bring this family back together.

And he does. And of course, the dog is, you know, based on my dog. And the picture book uses names, you know, nicknames that I had for the dog. And then when I first met with the publisher, I told [00:22:00] her about, you know, she asked me about Tucker, so I started to talk to her a little bit about how I write every week about the dog.

And she said, well, my goodness, have you ever thought about publishing a grief journal for adults? And I said, no, but why not? So all of the posts that I’ve been putting up for the last 26 weeks are also going to be curated into another text. But with that text, there’s going to be an integration of the similarities in loss between losing a human and losing a dog.

>> James Jacobson: Have these writing projects been cathartic for you?

>> Sheila Cooperman: So cathartic. So cathartic.

>> James Jacobson: Tell me about that. Tell me about the benefit that you get from just putting your hands on a keyboard and communicating this.

>> Sheila Cooperman: You know, the grief that I felt when I first lost [00:23:00] Tucker over the, you know, beginning weeks, there was something that I felt about my reaction to his loss that seemed, and I don’t know if this is the right way to express it, over the top. I got unbelievably depressed. Not depression. I mean, I was still able to work and do this, but Tucker was the first thing on my mind in the morning. He was the last thing on my mind at night. I had a very hard time with the concept of the permanence of his no longer being here.

So because writing has just always been something that I do, I just started writing. And I found that once I started to put, you know, words on the paper, I didn’t feel as agitated. I felt that I could make a [00:24:00] connection with my grief and a connection with how I was feeling by immortalizing it on paper. Because one of the, the biggest things that I always feel is that everybody has a story. Everybody is a writer.

The difference between people who write and people who don’t is just picking up a pen and doing it. Because everyone has a story to tell. And as I started to write, I realized that I was clearly working through a lot of other types of grief. I’ll give you one example. It’s a tough one to listen to, but I’ll give you one example if this fits in.

I lost my mother when I was 15. And we were away, and when I saw, my father, my sister and I were in California and they called us home. And when we got to the airport, we discovered that my mother had passed away about an hour earlier. She’d been in the hospital. [00:25:00] She took a turn for the worst. Nobody expected that she was going to pass.

And when I went to the hospital to see her, I was very shocked, I was 15, about what she looked like, about the color of her face, about the coolness of her skin, because I did touch it, and much to the dismay of the nurses. And this was, by the way, was in 1969, and things were very different in 1969.

Hospitals were very private. They, they didn’t give people a lot of information. I pushed past the nurse. I pushed her out of my way. She didn’t want me to go in the room. And I remember that I wanted very much to kiss my mother, but I didn’t. I was afraid. When Tucker died, when he, he died in my arms, the very first thing I did was bury my face in his neck and his fur. And it occurred to me that what I didn’t do in 1969, I [00:26:00] closed in 2023 with the dog.

And when I wrote about that, somehow I was released of the anger because I felt sort of mad at myself that I didn’t give my mother a final hug goodbye, I gave Tucker a final hug goodbye, that circle closed and I, it, it got resolved.

>> James Jacobson: And while you gave Tucker that hug you weren’t consciously thinking about it. You weren’t seeing ah, this kind of closes everything. But through the process of writing about it, that’s where you saw it.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Yup. And that’s why when, you know, she suggested it, have you ever done a grief journal? And I, I thought, you know what, this might be a good idea because as I’m thinking about it, there are a lot of similarities. My mother’s death took me by surprise. Tucker’s death took us by surprise. We thought he had a tick borne illness. The vet said I think he has a tick borne illness. So, the writing helps me clarify [00:27:00] in my mind, you know, my feelings and how I can help other people.

>> James Jacobson: Well, and you don’t need to be an author, you can just, you know, join us on our support group and write those stories, because it’s hearing stories like yours, Sheila, that make such a difference for so many people to help them go through this process, and of course, other things in our forum and at DogCancer.com as well to help you battle and hopefully do well through this process of dog cancer.

So Sheila after Tucker, Is there another dog on the horizon?

>> Sheila Cooperman: I don’t know. I have a metaphor in my head of a balance scale. Like, you know, there’s a positive for getting another dog. I miss the dog’s presence but then there is, Well, I don’t have a dog right now, so I will admit there’s a little bit more freedom of time.

>> James Jacobson: Right.

>> Sheila Cooperman: I don’t need to get a dog sitter, you know. [00:28:00] But I miss having that presence in the morning when I come downstairs. But, what if the dog gets cancer again? Now, one of the things that I would have to say is I had no idea that dogs got cancer. I never had a dog. And all of the other dogs in my family lived. My daughter’s dog, 16 years. My other daughter’s dog, 15 years. My neighbor’s dog, 14 years. So in my mind, dogs live 16, 14, 15 years. And what do they die of? They die of old age.

I never ever thought. that a dog would get cancer. I never thought that, you know, I would be going once a week in the middle of the summer for chemo treatments. That scares me! Okay? The support group helped me through that, so you know, I would never have been able to get through it if I didn’t have that book, and I didn’t have the support group, even though I [00:29:00] wasn’t posting, I was reading. I was reading. So I’m not sure. I’m also, you know, older than I might look. I’m gonna be 70.

>> James Jacobson: Wow.

>> Sheila Cooperman: I get a little afraid that maybe the dog will outlive me and then what? So there are all sorts of things that speak for a positive reason to get a dog. But when I see the puppies, and I, I, I, I, when I see the little yellow eyes of the Boykin Spaniels, I come, my heart skips a beat. So, I would say it’s up in the air. It’s up in the air. Some days it’s a total yes, some days it’s no.

>> James Jacobson: You will keep us posted on, on what you decide.

>> Sheila Cooperman: You bet I will. You bet.

>> James Jacobson: And if I was a betting person.

>> Sheila Cooperman: You’d bet yes?

>> James Jacobson: I’d bet yes. I bet we’ll be seeing little puppy pictures on, on our page. But who knows? You know.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Who knows? You know, who knows? But I do get involved. I do post [00:30:00] on many grief sites. I mean, there are 11 or 12 other sites that I post on, and one of them is IVDD, in the Boykin Spaniel, which is a vertebrae disease. And I’m very active in that site, and they also deal with other kinds of really serious illnesses with dogs.

So I don’t want to stop being involved in helping people who suddenly wake up one morning and that first line that I see in all of these sites is bad news, our dog just got diagnosed, my heart dog, my love dog, my world, my life, and every story that I read is my story and I feel it. So if people can be helped through my story, to me, that’s a little piece of grace that I can offer this damaged world right now.

>> James Jacobson: Yeah, we need that. Dr. Sheila Cooperman, and I say doctor because you are a PhD in, in [00:31:00] literature, right? Is that?

>> Sheila Cooperman: In literacy.

>> James Jacobson: In literacy. Okay. Well, we appreciate you being with us today. Thank you so much.

>> Sheila Cooperman: Thank you very much.

>> James Jacobson: And thank you listener for being here today. If you are grieving your dog or any other loss, take Sheila’s advice, as a PhD in literacy, and use the written word to process your grief, just picking up a pen and doodling or speaking into your phone’s recorder or jotting down a memory or two, can help the healing process as you mourn. Not everyone will have a book in them like Sheila does, actually multiple books, but everyone is a writer who can write.

That’s it for today’s episode. I hope you will subscribe if you’ve gotten benefit from this podcast. I’m James Jacobson, and from all of us here at Dog Podcast Network, I’d like to wish you and your dog a very warm aloha.[00:32:00]

>> Announcer: Thank you for listening to Dog Cancer Answers. If you’d like to connect, please visit our website at DogCancer.com or call our listener line at (808) 868-3200. And here’s a friendly reminder that you probably already know, this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not meant to take the place of the advice you receive from your dog’s veterinarian.

Only veterinarians who examine your dog can give you veterinary advice or diagnose your dog’s medical condition. Your reliance on the information you hear on this podcast is solely at your own risk. If your dog has a specific health problem, contact your veterinarian. Also, please keep in mind that veterinary information can change rapidly, therefore, some information may be out of date.

Dog Dog Cancer Answers is a presentation of Maui Media in association with Dog Podcast Network.