What happened to Jess

Saying goodbye to the Worried Whippet

Jess Bolton is an author, content creator, podcaster and the opposable thumbs behind the Worried Whippet, a celebration of bravery through the eyes of an anxious dog. Been forwarded this email? Subscribe here.

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Our lovely girl Jess, the Worried Whippet, died last week.

Those of you who’ve been through pet loss knew how this would feel. You reached out in your droves and sent me thousands of beautiful messages full of understanding and compassion. Now I’ve joined your ranks I plan to try to pass it forward, starting here.

As far as I’m concerned, Jess was in every way a person. She had her own quirks and desires. She made her own plans (“I’ll pop inside, stand by the fridge and see if I can convince someone to give me a snack, then I’ll come straight back out here to lie in the sun”). She had a voice, intonation, special little noises that were uniquely hers. Her foot stomp would make Michael Flatley jealous and she could communicate a million different things to me with just her eyes.

Jess never fully recovered from her bumpy start in life. She spent her first three years in a cage in someone’s garden, then the next being bred for puppies. By the time she found us she was a very conflicted soul. But dogs are amazing and, despite everything she’d been through at the hands of humans, she loved my husband Oliver immediately and without hesitation. The only other thing I saw her love so much was the beach.

My relationship with her was more complicated. Maybe she knew how long I’d waited for her and it made her suspicious. Perhaps she was put off by the fact that we shared a name. We got a lot wrong in those early days - that’s a story for another time - but in the end I learned to give her space and we developed a special friendship.

In the daytime she was entirely Oliver’s, his little shadow, her face dropping when he left the room and lighting up again when he came back. In the night time, though, she was all mine. For five years she insisted on sleeping on my side of the bed, sandwiched up against me, head under the covers and bum pointing perilously at my face. If I got up in the night to go the loo I’d come back to find her curled up on my pillow like a doughnut, waiting for me. Now she’s gone I find those are the moments when I miss her the most. I’d spent years struggling to accept my body but Jess loved it because it was soft and I began to appreciate that about it too. Just one of the many gifts she gave me.

The last few years have brought a lot of change for us and I still can’t wrap my head around the jumbled timeline of what happened to Jess. She changed so much in the years she was with us. How much of what we experienced was the complex behaviour of a dog who had been passed around and mistreated? How much of it was the injury developing inside her brain? And when did one give way to the other?

We first started noticing cognitive symptoms nine months before she died. She became very sensitive to certain noises, some of which were so faint we couldn’t make them out. She would wake up in the night, confused and barking. Over time she had become a recluse, struggling to go out much but completely unable to accept new people coming to the house. Her world got smaller and ours got smaller with it.

In March, while she was running on the beach, she jumped, twisted in mid air and collapsed, losing control of her legs. We rushed her to the vet in Olly’s arms, thinking her little bones had broken, only to find out that she’d had a stroke. She bounced back quickly and within an hour she walked out of the clinic to the car, vet nurses and punters clapping and cheering as she went. We thought we’d got off lightly but things went sharply downhill after that.

In the weeks that followed, something in Jess’s brain started telling her that she was hungry. Insatiably hungry. She struggled to relax, constantly thinking about food, until we stopped cooking at home because she was finding it so stressful. One day her whining became a wailing sound that carried on and on. I rang our vet who came straight over, ready to drive us both into the practice if needed. In the end we were able to sedate her enough to make her comfortable and she woke up the next day feeling a bit better.

Still, that was the day I understood we’d reached the beginning of the end.

Illustration by Anna Pirolli from “Worried Whippet: A Book of Bravery”

We spent a long time talking things through with each other and with our vet and vet behaviourist. Jess’s situation, whether it was a brain tumour or cognitive decline, was going to get worse. Her episodes would get closer together and the amount of medication it was taking to give her a decent quality of life was going up and up. Dogs don’t understand that a good day might follow a bad day. When they’re feeling bad that’s all they know. That’s one reason why we subscribe to the view that, when it comes to euthanasia, a week too early is better than a moment too late.

We made a plan to let her go on the following Sunday. We would go for walks, feed her fish, cuddle up on the sofa and prepare ourselves for a peaceful goodbye. In the end, though, Sunday would have been too late. Jess was starving hungry but so full that her belly was distended. She was stressed, anxious and had a look on her face that told us enough was enough. We rang our vet on Thursday evening and she arrived within the hour.

Choosing how and when someone you love leaves this world is both a burden and a privilege. It’s hard to get the timing right and I can’t let go of the thought that we were a little bit too late. I know lots of you will understand.

In the end we said goodbye to Jess, the queen of my heart, on the floor of our kitchen. We lay down next to her and held her while all the stress and pain left her body and, for a minute, we got to see our peaceful girl again before she was gone. It hurt to see the old Jess flash before our eyes but it was confirmation that we’d done the right thing. We hadn’t seen that version of her in a long time.

Over the years she was with us I took tens of thousands of photos of Jess. I captured all of my favourite moments with her: The first time she discovered snow and she wasn’t sure which she wanted more, to run in it or to eat it. In the end she opted for both, scooting through it face-first, mouth open like a snow-plough. Her face the first time my Mum’s puppy Buddy, just a tiny scruffy potato, crawled onto her lap and fell asleep. The dance she did at the beach, spinning across the sand, pirouetting around Oliver toward the sunset. I captured everything, greedy for the memories, but on our last day with her I realised that was over. Everything worth remembering was already captured and the archive was complete. I didn’t want to remember the dying Jess, I wanted to remember the living girl who took her second chance at life and squeezed everything she could from it. For the first time I put the camera down.

I’ve been reflecting on the gifts Jess has left behind her. Through her Instagram account she’s given me community, connection, fun, purpose, a job that I love. Every day we were together she showed me that I’m lovable, worthy of her tail-wags and that, however much I might think of myself as chaotic and inept, I am capable of caring for another being with more attention and compassion than I thought I had in me.

Her biggest gift to Otto was helping Olly and I learn some tough lessons so that we could get things right first time with him. To the world she left a beautiful book full of bravery and courage. All of these gifts will make it impossible to ever forget her.

Illustration by Anna Pirolli from “Worried Whippet: A Book of Bravery”

I’ve got more to say about the experience of saying goodbye to Jess. It was my first time and I learned a lot that I hope will be helpful for others. It’s still very raw so I know you’ll understand if I share things as and when I feel ready.

Thank you again for being the most kind, solid and compassionate bunch of humans on the internet. I’m so proud of what we’ve built together. I’m sharing whenever I feel up to it on Jess and Otto’s account, Worried Whippet, and on my own, Human Jess. If you want to you can hit ‘reply’ on this email, leave a comment on Substack or come and find me in my DMs where I’m endeavouring to read as many of your messages as I can. They’ve brought me a lot of comfort.

Otto and I aren’t going anywhere. We’ll catch you soon ❤️