When we were children, we looked to an assortment of things for comfort and companionship. My greatest companion, my number “2,” my sidekick, my cuddle buddy and my fellow adventurer was a spry Australian shepherd named Lady.

The summer before I left for college I remember worrying about the possibility that she was going to die while I was away from home. I played a question over and over in my head: would it be less painful to be there with her when she died or to be away at school?

That summer, on the night of July 3rd, my dog had a seizure. When I woke up in the morning, she had lost the ability to stand on her own. She couldn’t see, her hearing was poor and she was struggling to breathe. Seeing her in pain and not knowing what to do left me feeling paralyzed and helpless.

I looked to my parents, who were both in medicine, for answers, and it was as bleak and disheartening as I could have imagined: if her condition didn’t change in 24 hours, we were going to the vet to put her down.

I didn’t want her to be in pain, but the feeling of my throat tightening and my chest quivering uncontrollably from the desire to sob was my natural response to losing a part of myself.

As I slept on the floor of the laundry room, on what would be remembered as the worst Fourth of July in history, I awoke a few times in the night to yelps and scratching noises as my poor friend tried in vain to stand up. Lady’s legs would buckle and she would fall with a thud onto her side or her back, at which point I would hold her still and weep and pray that God would take back her death sentence.

But when morning broke on that restless night, my puppy still couldn’t see, couldn’t drink, couldn’t eat and couldn’t stand, and I couldn’t breathe when my parents walked in with blankets to cradle her.

As we rode in the car I held her foot to keep her calm. I asked God why and begged Him to stop. As we walked into the veterinarian’s office I tried to conceal the tears in my eyes from all the adults in the room.

It annoyed me to no end how optimistic and cheerful the veterinarian was as I sat with my soon-to-be dead dog, but as he took my dog and set her on the examining table, my muscles became weak, my anger subsided and grief took over. Then he smiled, and told me my dog was just suffering from “old dog” vestibular disease (which I can best describe as dizziness and loss of balance in older dogs) and would be back to normal in about a week.

Hearing that she would live made me cry even more and it helped me to cherish all the time I had left with her. Every time I came home for break, we would lie around or walk in the back yard or I would sneak her some cheese and ham. I made sure to say goodbye to her whenever I left, just in case. She lived about two years after her accident and passed away at the age of 15 last Friday.

When my mom told me the news, I hated the fact that I wasn’t with her. The fact that I had to go back to work and school and a normal life as if nothing had happened, because at college it doesn’t affect you nearly as much as it would if you still lived with them. The rest of the process is pretty much the same (the endless crying, the guilt and the random bouts of anger for something that has nothing to blame other than time).

I look back at how I have mourned for my dog, once with her and once away from her, and I realized it doesn’t matter how painful it is for you. What matters is how they feel before they leave this world. If you can be there to comfort them, all the better. But if you can’t, then you had better give them enough love in the small amounts of time you have left together to make up for it.