Puppy Teaches Owner How To 'Live Again' After Death of Her Soul Dog

Many dog owners form unbreakable bonds with their dogs, and when our fur babies leave us, it can leave a hole in our lives that is very difficult to fill.

This was the case for Megan Marshall, 32, from Reading, England, who lost her golden retriever Sasha suddenly. The dog that had been in her life since she was 15 years old.

"Sasha was 15 years and 10 months old when she passed and I had her since she was 8 weeks old, and I was 15," Marshall told Newsweek. "She had a degenerative condition which meant she was slowly losing her ability to use her hind legs. We always thought this was something that would ultimately take her from us as she was really healthy otherwise."

Worried about how she would cope on her own without another dog, Marshall brought home retriever puppy Skyla.

"Being without a dog was something that had been on my mind for quite a few years," Marshall said. "I've always struggled with anxiety and Sasha was my rock throughout life. So, for me, taking that away was a really hard thought to process."

Three weeks after bringing Skyla home, Sasha had a seizure and suddenly lost the ability to walk overnight.

"The vet suspected it was a neurological condition—bleed on the brain or a tumor but it was hard to say without scans." Marshall had to make the difficult decision to put Sasha to sleep.

In a video posted to Marshall's Instagram account, she said that after Sasha died, all she wanted to do was "stay in bed and grieve. But I couldn't."

"Skyla has been the light in a really dark time," she said. "I was so focused on helping her through her development that it gave me the strength to keep going. I didn't want to let her down and although there were days when I wanted to stay in bed, having a puppy, it's impossible. She showed me how to live again."

In a paper entitled Overcoming the social stigma of losing a pet: Considerations for counseling professionals, published in the Human-Animal Interactions journal, Michelle Kay Crossley and others argue that the process of grieving a pet is complicated.

"One factor that complicates one's psychological well-being after this loss is the belief of others that pets are not worthy of being grieved over because a companion animal may be viewed as replaceable, whereas a human is not," the study states.

"The stigma associated with pet loss, compounded by the feeling of losing a part of the family, can lead individuals to avoid openly grieving the loss of their companion animals and can intensify symptoms of depression," the paper adds.

Marshall believes that losing an animal is no different from losing a person.

"We bond with them deeply," she said. "Sometimes more so than any other human and grieving can really affect you, especially when your pet has been your sidekick through life."

Marshall did not take the decision to get another dog lightly.

"Although Sasha was very senior, she still really loved the company of others," she said. "In fact, those three weeks Sasha and Skyla were together, she really loved life. They even cuddled together. Sasha actually caught a second wind and really took on the mother role. I truly believe Sasha knew it was the right time to go and she left me with Skyla.

It would seem that despite their short time together, Sasha's force of personality rubbed off on Skyla.

"They are surprisingly really similar which is bizarre," said Marshall. "I think Skyla learned a lot from Sasha in such a short space of time. Sasha was certainly a lot like Skyla in her younger years. Incredibly loyal, loving, and the type of dog you can just take anywhere with you."

"They help pull us through when we don't want to," commented one user on Instagram. "They are the best gifts in life. It's so good when they are with us and so hard when they go," wrote another.

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