A Goodbye Poem for Your Dog

Whether you said goodbye at the end of a long life or too suddenly, the poem below is written to hold that particular weight. It is honest rather than consoling, and gentle rather than tidy.

I kept thinking there was more time.
There always seems like more time
until there isn't.

You were patient about everything —
the vet, the rain, the long car journeys,
the mornings I was slow.
You waited. You always waited.

I hope I got it right more than I got it wrong.
I hope the walks were good enough,
the evenings warm enough,
that you knew — somehow knew —
how completely you were loved.

Goodbye, my dog.
Good dog.
The best.

On using a poem to say goodbye

Some people find it helpful to read a poem aloud at the moment of saying goodbye, or at a small memorial afterwards. Others keep a poem privately, returning to it in the days that follow. There is no right way to use words in grief.

If you'd like to write something personal alongside this — or instead of it — even a few honest sentences about your dog, what they were like, what you'll miss most, can become something you return to.

The goodbye itself is one moment. What follows it — the remembering — lasts much longer.