How Loss Made Me A Pet Photographer
My Google calendar reminded me this morning that fifteen years ago today, Renee drove into downtown Atlanta to meet a family surrendering Sissy the Siberian Husky.
Sissy's first family — a young military wife alone with two kids under three and a young Husky in a small apartment — needed help. Renee and I had just begun fostering, and Sissy was only our second Husky foster.
From the minute she arrived, we knew she was ours.
Sissy
She was immediately best friends with my first Husky, Bella. She had this innate ability to help foster dogs come out of their shells — to referee games of chase, to lead the pack, to keep everyone safe. We called her our "momma dog." She was genuinely something special.
My favorite story about Sissy is the snake.
The house we were in at the time had the dogs' crates in the finished basement, with the back door left open so the dogs could go in and out freely. One afternoon, Renee and I heard Sissy — who never barked or howled like the other Huskies — howling in the yard. We knew immediately something was wrong.
We ran downstairs and found every single dog — three fosters and three of our own — sitting inside their crates with the doors wide open. Sissy was outside on the patio. She had cornered a copperhead snake against the wall. Somehow, she had sent every dog inside and then called us to come deal with it.
She was like that. She just knew things.
Sissy had a major heart attack in November of 2012 and died instantly. She was only about seven years old. Renee was in the yard with her — one moment she was leading a game of chase, and the next she was gone.
The shock of losing her broke me. We should have had more time.
What I Regret
I have two regrets about Sissy.
The first is that she never got to live at the farm. She would have loved everything about it — the yard, the space, the chaos of animals.
The second is the photographs.
Every photo I have of Sissy was pulled from Facebook. The phone I took them on is long gone. I have no portraits of her on my walls, nothing in an album, nothing I can hold. I'm sitting in my office right now and the walls around me are filled with faces I love — some still here, some already gone. But Sissy isn't on any of them.
I think about that every time I walk past those walls.
Why I Do This Work
No one wants to talk about the loss of a pet. But we want to talk about their life. We want to share their stories and remember — how plush her fur was, like a rabbit. How happy she was when you shared a bite of dinner. How joyful she was when she got to run.
Having my memories of Sissy only on a screen isn't enough. It has never been enough.
I am a pet photographer because I have lost.
I am a pet photographer because I know what it is to have that hole inside.
I am a pet photographer because I want people to have something tangible to hold on to — because I know exactly how it feels to not have that.
That's the whole reason. It has always been the whole reason.
→ Read next: