Dachshunds Teach About Life and Love

Meet Stephen and Gail Valenti, who hail from Metairie, Louisiana, and their beloved blue and tan smooth 'Smokey,' who passed away last year at just 5 years old after a bout with lymphoma cancer. The Valentis were so distraught after losing their little friend that their oncologist referred them to counseling for their grief.

“We visited with the counselor one time for about two hours and she was just wonderful,” Stephen Valenti said. “She got us over the hump — as it were.”
“She was wonderful,” Gail Valenti said. “She had dachshunds also and that helped.”

The Valentis now have an isabella and tan Dachshund named 'Izzy.' They highly recommend counseling when grieving over the loss of a pet. Read all about it at the Advocate.


Now meet cute little red shaded smooth 'Willy,' when he was a puppy, in 1993. Willy hailed from St. Petersburg, Florida, and passed away this last April after a happy life with his family. His human, Arleen Spenceley, recalls the wonderful memories that Willy left them with:

My parents, my brother and I sat in a circle on the kitchen floor of our home in Spring Hill and put Willy in the middle. He frolicked, like puppies do, into my mother's lap. How little we knew then of how much he would make us laugh, all we would learn from him and how much we would love him.
With Willy also came lessons. I learned to how to clean up after someone. I learned to share a bed. I learned to ignore his breath and let him lick my face, and how to lift a couch off a dog.
I learned to make sacrifices for the sake of somebody else. I learned to be patient. I learned to love.

Read all about Willy, who recently would have turned 16, in a great post at the St. Petersburg Times.