Sophia: Celebration of Life

Genie Joseph
7 hours ago
7 min read

The Little Dog

Who Rewrote Her Story

and mine

When I left Hawaii to move to Tucson, I rented a room in a friend's house. We had known each other since we were both waitresses in our late teens in New York City. She was a jazz singer, and I was climbing the rungs of the independent movie business. When I left paradise and moved in, she had one Tucson House Rule:

"No animals."

I moved in anyway.

I had left Hawaii after a heartbreaking breakup and was volunteering at the animal shelter, teaching "at-risk" youth to train rescue dogs to make them more adoptable. One day, animal control was leading a terrified little white dog wearing an oversized plastic cone around her neck. She looked at me once... then launched herself from the ground straight into my arms, utterly certain I would catch her. With one leap she had decided our fate and rewritten the story of our lives.

I named her Sophia.

Suddenly, I needed to find my own apartment. Sophia had been a feral dog, transferred from one shelter to another. Although I had fostered before, she was my first dog. After watching how gentle and loving she became with troubled teens in our classes, I enrolled us both in therapy dog training.

Three different ones.

Because whenever a large dog glanced her way, my nineteen-pound girl transformed into a tiny white dragon. Trainers smiled politely, but I could almost hear the question they weren't asking out loud:

"Are you sure Sophia could ever become a therapy dog?"

When Sophia saw men, especially men in uniform, she turned into a Cujo audition. Rather than risk a humiliating public display of terror, grown men crossed the street rather than walk past her. Maintenance workers would only enter my apartment if she was strapped securely to my waist.

But I had a blind faith that the healing methods I had learned while volunteering with shelter dogs could help rewrite her story. Every day I practiced one of my thirty-three healing methods to help her release her past, soothe her nervous system, and slowly fill her very leaky sense of safety. My world became a little smaller because I was deeply committed to helping Sophia rewrite hers.

She gradually improved, and with way too much hope, I signed up to take the Pet Partners Therapy Dog Test.

She failed.

Twice.

For the smallest reasons. For the first test, she turned her head away from the tester, peering back at her, and was failed for showing “whale eye." (It's called that when a dog turns her head away from the dreaded person, but leaving her cold, hard stare right on them. It's canine body language for "back-off lady!") Back to more training. A new testing appointment a few months later, and she barked at the lumbering, big shaggy “neutral dog.” Instant test failure.

So, we went back to work again. More healing methods. More patience. More trust. Then she took the Alliance for Therapy Dogs evaluation. And this time she passed on the first try. She then spent the next ten years doing exactly what so many people believed she could never do.

Sophia served thousands of high school students, veterans, 911 operators, hospice patients, seniors, and people struggling through some of life's darkest moments. Teens facing a wall of self-imposed misery, veterans who had lost their enthusiasm for living, 911 Operators who had just gotten off a call that got inside their well-worn defenses. She approached them all with a smile as if it was their birthday, wearing tutus in every color for every holiday, and even the shyest students couldn't resist her gentle presence.

One of my favorite memories was watching her help a terrified rescue horse named Miss Betsy. Sophia simply stood beside her with complete calm until the frightened horse relaxed enough to eat beside her. No one taught Sophia how to do that. She simply knew.

Sophia was also my service dog for PTSD and traveled with me everywhere. She flew across the country to conferences on Animal Consciousness at New York University. While scholars debated whether fish feel pain or whether animals should be considered conscious beings, someone accidentally stepped on Sophia's paw. Her indignant shriek brought nearly three hundred academics to an immediate halt.

Debate over.

Sophia reached one other important scientific conclusion during that trip: New York pizza really is the best.

Sophia was also my teaching partner. Together we taught classes on soothing touch for animals, showing people how calmness can flow through our hands into another living being. Watching Sophia completely melt into relaxation often taught people more than anything I could say. They began to believe that healing was possible. Not only for rescued dogs, but for themselves.

She especially loved helping students in the Pima JTED Veterinary Assistant Program. There she quietly taught future veterinary professionals that fear doesn't have to be part of an examination. Gentle touch, patience, and emotional safety could transform an experience that once felt frightening into one of trust.

Sophia was my soul dog through every season of my life. She helped care for my mother during the last three years of her dementia. She sat faithfully beside her hospice bed and was there shortly before my mother peacefully passed away.

Sophia survived two different cancers. Yet, her spirit remained bright. She still brought smiles to people who had forgotten how to smile.

Eventually, however, arthritis made it impossible for her to walk outside on her own. I removed every carpet from my house and did laundry twice a day for nearly a year. Caring for an elderly dog is rarely graceful. Yet in her final weeks, discovering a wet pee pad or the smallest deposit was a sign that her body was still working. It became a cause for celebration.

About a year before she passed, Sophia began letting me know I needed to prepare. I couldn't. Classic denial. I truly didn't believe I could survive losing her.

During her final six months, lung degeneration caused a heartbreaking cough that woke me in the middle of the night and reminded me our time together was growing short. She began acupuncture, herbal medicine, flower remedies, and every healing practice I knew.

Yet only two months before she passed, she was still doing her joyful kitchen dance—trotting happily around the island while I prepared breakfast, looking at me as though I were the most wonderful person in the world.

Those memories haunted me when she had to be carried to her bowl. I had to hand-feed her in those last weeks, and she seemed to be spending part of each day preparing for another realm.

During her final month, I left the house only three times. My blood pressure climbed to 170. I went to the acupuncturist, and I heard one practitioner quietly whisper to another,

"I can't find her pulse."

I wanted to go with her.

After many conversations together, Sophia and I chose her final day. I knew she was ready. I didn't want her to suffer. I completed the paperwork for home euthanasia.

Then I changed the date. Three different times.

Each time she rallied, looking into my eyes with such pure love that I questioned whether I was making the right decision.

Dying is not linear. The body keeps trying to live, even while the spirit is preparing to leave. It is one of the hardest things I have ever witnessed.

Fortunately, Harry was with us. Harry, my big, bouncy therapy dog, had come from a home with twelve other dogs. Like Sophia, he is a therapy dog and helps high school students by quietly seeing who they really are and loving what he finds.

On Sophia's final morning, I carried her favorite little bed onto my own bed so she could leave this world surrounded by love.

Harry stayed quietly beside us through the first peaceful sedation. When it came time for the final injection, he slowly turned away and lay down at the foot of the bed. Still close. Giving us room.

Moments later, Sophia took her final breath.

It was completely peaceful.

Her spirit was free.

That day I cried harder than I have ever cried in my life. Hours later, I lay on the bed where she had passed. Then I felt her. Not physically. But unmistakably.

Her presence wrapped around me with such love that an enormous weight lifted from my heart. The grief of losing her physical body remained, but I knew our relationship had not ended. It had simply changed.

Harry's daily routine had always been the same. He would gobble his homemade meal in seconds. Then he would quietly lie down behind Sophia while she finished eating. Only after she walked away would he lick her bowl clean. Then he'd lick it again.

The first meal after she passed, he finished his dinner and walked to Sophia's usual place.

Her bowl wasn't there.

I had packed it away because I couldn't walk past it without crying. Harry stood silently, staring at the empty space for a long time.

Even though he had watched the veterinarian gently carry Sophia out the front door, on her favorite bed, this was the moment reality seemed to settle into his heart.

We each come to terms with loss in our own time. In our own way.

Nothing I can write can fully express the depth of Sophia's spirit or the love we shared.

But on the third day, I sat quietly beside a simple altar I had made for her on my kitchen table. I had my favorite photographs. Pink roses and a tall spirit candle in glass.

Silence.

The candle flickered. As my eyes softened, I noticed its reflection glowing in the window. One flame. Then another reflected back to me. In the quiet, these words rose gently within me:

"We are now twin flames, united in eternity.

May my reflection come to you in unexpected ways."

Another layer of grief quietly dissolved.

I love you, forever, Sophia.

Sophia is doing very well.

During our many conversations together,

Sophia has told me she has one final message she would like to share.

I would be honored if you joined us.

thehumananimalconnection.org/sophiascelebrationoflife

Watch this little video tribute created by Sophia's dear friend

Mike McWhirter of DesertStreams.Media, Professional, 5-star funeral live streaming services, memorial videos and tribute pages