By Deirdre Cunniffe
Editors: Ashley Yeung and Alloe Mak

For Pippa
Not always a good dog, but forever the very best girl.

People say there isn’t much from 17-20 years old.

Sure, you’re a legal adult when you turn 18, but that pretty much only opens up opportunities to buy a lighter from a Walgreens and vote. However, I would disagree. 17-20 is a very specific era of people’s lives.

It’s the time when everyone’s dogs are dying.

As we enter 17-20, our beloved family pets—the ones we’ve had our whole lives, or for as long as we can remember—normally turn 15-18. It is at this time when we’re all getting terrifyingly older. We’re getting ready to start the next chapter of our lives and they’re getting ready to cross the rainbow bridge. We can’t go with them, and they can’t come with us.

We learned to tie our shoelaces and they learned to sit. They learned to shake and we learned multiplication tables. They learned how to walk on a leash, we learned to jump rope. We all, simultaneously, learned not to eat grass.

We are all moving forwards and leaving our homes. The labrador across the street that’s been there for years turned 16 the other day, and I’m starting to worry. He’s not even mine. When getting my acceptance and rejection letters from various colleges, he is there, laying in the sun. And when he looks across the street after hearing the creaking of my mailbox, his tail thunks against the pavement and my heart hurts. There is a day when he won’t be there. And I probably won’t be there either.

What horrific symbolism. Why must we lose our best friends as some sort of metaphor for the passage of time? I wish I could steal some of the longevity of abstract comparison and give it to the lab across the street.

We are all growing in the physical sense, we are all growing in the metaphorical sense, and everyone’s dogs are dying.