There is a silence unlike any other when a certain heartbeat stops.

It is a specific kind of quiet.

One that seems to settle into the floorboards.

And it remains a part of our home forever.

It is a quiet so heavy that it feels as if it has its very own weight to it.

How can air feel so heavy?

We tell ourselves when we bring them home — those tumbling little balls of fur who trip over their own paws — that we are ready for the end.

We tell ourselves that we understand the math.

We convince ourselves that we realize there is not a lot of time when it comes to the life of a dog.

Intellectually, we know we are signing up for a heartbreak.

But we tell ourselves that pain will arrive in roughly a decade or so down the line.

And still, the truth of the matter, as anyone who has ever shared a soul with a four-legged friend knows, is that you are never actually ready for them to go.

And it never, ever gets easier.

It doesn’t matter if it is your first dog or your fifth.

That walk from the car to the clinic door is always the longest and shortest journey a human being can take.

We think we will be the ones who decide when the time is right.

But in reality, they usually tell us.

It isn’t a spoken word, of course.

Rather, it is a shift in the atmosphere.

It is in the way they look at their food bowl with a polite kind of exhaustion.

Or it is how they no longer look up whenever the mailman comes to the door.

We can see it in their eyes.

A cloudiness that isn’t just cataracts.

A distant sort of “ready.”

They show us in the way they struggle to find a comfortable spot on the rug or the bed they have slept on for years.

They show us in how they lean their head against our knee with a sigh that sounds less like contentment and more like surrender.

We want to be selfish.

We want to ask for one more summer.

One more walk to the end of the driveway.

One more morning of being woken up by the sound of their collar as they shake the night away and welcome in the day.

But then we catch that look.

That quiet plea that says they have done their job.

They have loved us as hard as they could.

And now, their bones are simply too tired to keep up with their heart.

There is a profound, agonizing grace in that final act of love we provide.

Although it feels like betrayal in the moment.

We sit there on the floor at the veterinarian’s office, our hand on our best friend who isn’t as warm as he used to be.

We wonder how a creature who never spoke a word managed to teach us more about loyalty and love than any human ever could.

We spent years weaving these beautiful animals into the very fabric of our lives.

People who do not have a dog will never understand.

They never could.

But we know better.

We know they are a piece of our history.

They are a witness to the years of our lives that didn’t go as planned.

They are the one constant who didn’t care if the house was a mess or the promotion didn’t happen.

They are the silent keepers of our secrets.

The only ones who truly understood our bad days.

And on those days, they offered us their understanding eyes, placed their heavy head upon our lap, licked away our tears and was the only therapy we ever truly needed.

And so, we hold them.

We tell them one last time they are a good boy or a good girl.

But they can tell that this time, something is different.

How?

Because our voice is cracking on each and every syllable.

We realize that this is the price we pay for the years of wagging tails and unconditional devotion.

It is a steep price.

And it hurts just as much … every single time.

Because with every single animal, a piece of us goes with them.

I am so very sorry that you had to say goodbye to your Handy, mom.

A dog you didn’t ask for but took in because you knew he needed a better life than the one he had.

And you gave him that in abundance.

Well done.

So, yet again, your house is going to feel much too big for a while.

We find ourselves stepping over a phantom body in the hallway, don’t we? A space that is now just occupied by empty carpet.

We still listen for the jingle of a collar that is no longer there.

From time to time, we will swear that we can hear it.

We will miss seeing that hopeful gaze that followed every single movement of the bread knife and knowing how they never missed the sound of a piece of cheese being unwrapped.

No matter how quiet we were about it.

Yes, we will be met with the cold, sharp reminder that the chair beside us is now vacant.

And we will tell ourselves that it will get easier in time.

We convince ourselves it will get easier because we knew right from the start that this day would eventually come.

But the truth is, this kind of loss doesn’t just fade.

We simply get better at carrying the weight of their absence.

We tuck it away in the pockets of our hearts.

We place it alongside the memories of chewed up socks and the way their ears felt like living velvet.

We mourn not just the animal, but the version of ourselves we were when they were with us.

We were their person.

They greeted us with the energy of a hero’s welcome every single time we walked through the door. Even if we only went to check the mail.

The loss of a dog is truly a permanent shift in the landscape of our soul.

But eventually, the heaviness part does lift.

It will be replaced by the realization that out of all the homes and all the laps in the universe, they chose to claim ours.

And in those few short years, they taught us more about unconditional grace than we could ever learn in a lifetime from people.

I believe there is a world where our beloved dogs and cats go.

A place where their joints are no longer stiff. Their eyes are clear and their bodies are strong.

A place where their tails wag constantly in delight.

For those of us who love dogs, for those of us who love cats, we should all believe.

We should believe in the day when the silence of our house is finally broken by that familiar bark (or soft purr.)

We should believe that we will be reunited with all of those faithful friends who taught us how to love without saying a single word.

And knowing that the next time we say hello … that we will never have to say goodbye again.

(Stenger is the community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times newspapers. She can be contacted at jstenger@heraldstaronline.com.)