It was early July 2012 when the unthinkable happened: through an unexpected series of coincidences, my family got a puppy. He was a red and cream-colored Pomeranian with bad breath and a feisty bite, but he had charisma, and we fell in love with him the second he set paw in our yard. We named him Theodore Pasquale, connecting him to our Italian roots, and we called him Theo. I still remember, four years later, the way he toppled over head first and just kept running. For the next three years, he spent time sleeping in every bed in the house, making friends with every cat that came through our door, and being everyone’s best friend and our fearless defender. He was spoiled. My sister and I would try to walk him, only to have him give up halfway and be carried the last mile home. I took him exploring. He once let a toy on the floor for a week, not touching it, because no one told him that it was his. He was, in every way, the best dog that ever lived.

On July 15, 2015, one year ago, I came home from work to find my father crying outside. Theo had been hit by a car that morning. We were devastated. We cried all night after we buried our 13 pound Pomeranian. I felt worse than I ever had in my life, and I haven’t felt as bad since. Not in the same way.

Losing our dog was like losing a member of our family. I called my boyfriend in a panic, and he dropped everything to make the three hour drive to my house the next day. My brother did the same, from his house an hour away. I don’t know what we would have done without them. They sat with us and listened to us cry. I don’t know if my boyfriend had ever seen me ugly-cry so much, and that’s saying something. I drove him out to the last place I’d taken Theo. It was an overlook, at the top of a mountain, where you could see everything for what seemed like miles below. I cried there, too. It might sound weird, but I still cherish that place.

When I returned to work the next day, my office had gotten me flowers and a sympathy card. I stepped out twice to cry in the bathroom, and mostly avoided eye contact. I cried a lot when I came home, too. I think that was when my dad tearfully put away Theo’s food and water bowls.

That first day without Theo was hard. The second day was, too. It was some time that weekend that we made the decision.

My dad had gone to work the day after Theo died – it was his one day a week to be in the office – and someone told him to get another dog. That seemed crazy. No dog could ever replace Theo. But it quickly became apparent that we needed something, and another dog would need love and attention, things that we were desperate to give.

The next week involved a lot of searching, in addition to the never-ending crying. We went to see some Pomeranian puppies that a girl I went to high school with had, but they were so tiny. We needed a Pom, but we needed him to fill some slightly heavier shoes.

We thought we’d found an ideal solution when it occurred to us to contact the person we’d gotten Theo from. She still had the parents, but no puppies. We asked her to let us know if she bred them again, but the prospect of having to wait five or six months or more was daunting.

Our search ended eight days after Theo died. We drove nearly three hours to a suburb of Pittsburgh, and brought home a little black puppy. We named him Gus. I remember holding him and crying a lot in the early days. I also remember my dad holding him and telling him quietly that the love we were giving him wasn’t even his, not yet.

That stuck with me.

Gus grew up, ounce by ounce week by week, and we fell in love with him. He was a little jumpy, and his eyes were tear stained often and seemingly for no reason, but he became our new best friend. His only major problem was anxiety – he hated to see anyone go outside, and everything made him nervous.

The anxiety only got worse on Christmas Eve, when we got a second puppy – a miracle puppy. The person we’d gotten Theo from, you see, had had a litter in November, and one of those puppies came home with my mother in a tiny gift box on December 24^th. We called him Willie. He gets along with Gus better now, but there's still some jealousy from time to time. He’s growing up to look a lot like Theo, and sometimes that still makes me sad.

Just the other day, I snapped a photo of Willie, and all I could see in his face was Theo.

Of course, neither Gus nor Willie is actually Theo. They never will be, and that’s difficult to handle sometimes. But I love them just the same. When you lose a dog, nothing will ever replace them or the love you had for them. I think that’s true for any pet. But they’ll leave you with memories you’ll hold on to forever, no matter how many dogs come after.