Saying goodbye to anybody is never easy, but the anticipation leading to letting them go is the worst. When you lose someone/something close to you, it changes certain aspects of your life that you didn't realize were so important until they left.

My family got our dog, Daisy, when we moved to our new city and I was six years old. My mom got an email from a coworker stating that someone had dropped a puppy off on her porch and left, and she needed to find an owner. Soon after, we got her and named her Daisy.

Now, we had a dog before this, but at the young age of 2, she died of cancer. This made Daisy the first dog that I remember having, and let me have a close bond with her. Dogs are always "man's best friend" for many reasons. Daisy was the unity in our family. Granted, our family would never break, but she was an important part to our definition of us (we even included her in the voicemail people would hear when we weren't home).

From 2002 to 2015 she remained the best friend to us all, and several other people too as they friends floating in and out the door.

She had gotten a lump on her arm, and at first, nobody thought anything of it, not even the vets. Soon enough, it began to bother her. We went to the vet and their best option for us was to have it removed. No problem, right? We set up the appointment, dropped her off for her surgery, when my mom got a call saying to come in. The vets discovered that it had grown too large to remove. Our choices slimmed down to letting her live in pain for however long that may be, or ending it in peace and happily for her.

In October, she had started getting worse. And in that month we lost our best friend.

Many people who don't have pets think of them as just that; pets. But they're so much more than that. Coming home that day, we realized there was one dog missing from the front door. One dog who wasn't wagging her tail, waiting for her family to be home. One dog who was always licking you because she loved you. One dog who isn't sleeping beside you anymore, keeping you comfort at night (even if she did take up the whole bed).

A pet isn't just a pet. They're family members. Through everything bad that happens in our lifetime, they are always a shining light letting you know that it will all be okay eventually. She made 13 years of my life more exciting, more filled with love, more happy. I know we did the same for her.