Sadie is a 13-year-old border collie-dalmatian-shepherd cross. She has been a loyal companion to her owners for all her life – ever since she was 8-weeks-old and got adopted by them. So, when one of them died of a heart attack, she took it really hard.
Julia Beaulieu, who is the grieving widow of her husband, arrange for Sadie to say goodbye to her owner in the funeral home.
“Once they stopped working around him, she came and she laid with him and pushed at his hand almost as if to get him to pet her,” Beaulieu said. “She was daddy’s girl — she was his and he was hers.”
Beaulieu is also struggling with her loss, but now she has to deal with a devastated dog as well.
“She was so distraught and lost. Around 2:30 or three o’clock she’d listen for his truck, she’d go stand at the window and look. She was waiting for him to come home.”
After the unfortunate event, Sadie stopped eating for 10 days. She lost 10 pounds in that time!
When the time for the memorial service came around, Beaulieu thought she should let Sadie have her closure as well.
She hadn’t eaten since he passed, so I thought by letting her see inside the coffin and seeing him there, maybe it was going to give her some closure as it did for me,” she said.
“I let her stand up and look [in the casket] and she had almost a look of shock on her face. She stood there… and was quite puzzled by it and then she just seemed to relax and just stood there with me.”
The touching moment was captured in a photo made by the CEO of the funeral home.
“It really showed the connection between humans and their pets and how tight it is,” Jeremy May of Elements Cremation said.
Having dogs at funeral services doesn’t happen often but may be growing as a tendency.
“They’re family,” Beaulieu added.
Sadie started eating again after the memorial service and Julia says that every time she looks at the photo made by Jeremy May, she feels a bit of comfort.
