Letting Go of Zoe: A Veterinarian’s Journey Through Love, Surgery, and Loss

I knew I wanted a Newfoundland/Great Pyrenees the second I saw one as a patient. A massive, shaggy black-and-white dog stood in the exam room, her tail gently swaying, and I instantly knew I needed one. She would match our cat, Marley, perfectly, I explained to my husband gleefully. Our lives—and our home—would be full of black-and-white fur, and nothing about that dissuaded me from seeking out my dream dog.

We met Zoe on a farm on a sunny early summer day, just a month after becoming engaged, and fell instantly in love with her black face, asymmetrically split by a thin white stripe. The feeling was not mutual. When we returned the following week to bring her home, she hid under the front porch. Her owner had to tempt her forward with pungent canned food and catch her with a long fishing net. That same canned food was promptly vomited onto my lap at the start of our 45-minute drive home.

I didn’t care. My heart was soaring.

Marley, however, was less impressed. He inspected her from nose to tail before deciding she was acceptable — and once he did, he took her under his wing.

Zoe entered our lives before children, when we could devote our full, undivided attention to her. Socializing and training her became our shared part-time job. I brought her to work with me each day, keeping her in a crate in my office so her potty training remained consistent. We spent weekends on restaurant patios, at puppy classes, and wandering dog parks. She quickly became the center of our small family.

She greeted our first child in 2017, and our second in 2020, with gentle curiosity and steady devotion. While our attention inevitably divided, she remained beloved by our daughters, who delighted in draping themselves across her in the yard — a massive black-and-white pillow. On stroller walks, strangers often ignored our babies entirely, exclaiming instead over how beautiful she was, stopping to pet her while she sat and reveled in the attention.

As a giant breed dog, Zoe loved nothing more than lounging in the sun — or better yet, snow — surveying the yard for invaders (squirrels). So it crept up on me the summer her languidness shifted into fatigue.

She’s aging, I told myself.
Maturing.
”Calming down.”

At eight years old, she still seemed young to me — a life just hitting its stride.

It wasn’t until the limp began that dread settled in.

The second I noticed the subtle shift in her gait, I called her over and gently palpated her leg. Pain in her right wrist was immediately apparent as she pulled it away from my touch. Even before the radiographs confirmed it, I knew.

Osteosarcoma.

A devastating diagnosis that is heartbreakingly common in giant breed dogs.

Fight it. She can beat this.

Every fiber of my being insisted we had to fight — even when reason whispered otherwise. The high probability of microscopic metastasis, even with clear lungs on radiographs. The quiet signs that she had been hiding her pain longer than we realized — her subdued demeanor, the fifteen pounds of weight loss concealed beneath her thick coat and lifelong low appetite.

My heart refused to accept what my veterinarian brain could see.

I needed to remove the source of her pain, even if it would not meaningfully extend her life.

So fight we did.

With the help of my trusted veterinary surgeon, Zoe underwent amputation of her right front leg during our household’s first bout with COVID-19. My own feverish delirium blended with helping her outside in a harness, the two of us stumbling together down the front steps. We lay side by side on the floor — me weakened by fever, her sedated by pain medications.

We healed together.
But neither of us healed fully.

While I struggled with brain fog and a lingering cough, I realized with dawning horror that Zoe had developed a persistent cough as well. Radiographs showed what I already knew to be true.

Metastasis.

Her lungs were filling with the cancer we had hoped to outrun. She struggled to breathe comfortably. To lie down. To walk even half a block. Her surgical incision had barely finished healing when the cancer claimed more territory.

Quality of life.

As both a veterinarian and her person, I found myself facing the question so many families ask:

How do you know when it is time to euthanize a beloved dog?

For Zoe, the answer became clear in the quiet suffering she could no longer mask. She spent her final two days saying goodbye to old friends, including her dog sitter, who came to share stories and tears while offering final pets.

For her euthanasia, I chose something different than I had with Marley. I took the advice of a fellow veterinarian and asked someone else to perform the procedure so I could be fully present as Zoe’s companion, not divided by medical responsibility. I also chose to have it done at my clinic. Working in our garden still carried echoes of Marley’s passing, and I could not bear layering grief upon grief.

My trusted coworker of eleven years performed the euthanasia. Zoe passed quickly and peacefully while we told her — through tear-clouded eyes — how deeply she was loved.

Love. Still love.
Gone, but not forgotten.

The large shadow of Zoe lingered in our home for months, then years — slowly softening, but never leaving. For weeks, my two-year-old would peer through the sliding glass door and exclaim, “I see her! She’s in the yard!”

I could almost feel her nose press into my stomach when I opened the front door. Hear her tail thumping softly against the wood floor when the house was quiet. Her presence surrounded us.

And in many ways, it still does.