The Day I Thought We Lost Him

Suzi’s Secrets #36: 

Bruno on a hunting trip earlier this season.

There are moments when your body understands something long before your mind catches up. And there are times when your mind, searching for answers, settles on the worst-case scenario, even when the truth hasn’t revealed itself yet.

When the USPS van came speeding down our driveway and struck Bruno, our one-year-old chocolate lab, everything after that felt unreal. He ran off yelping, leaving blood behind him, disappearing into the woods and snowy fields that stretch across our land and the neighboring properties.

Callie (our charcoal lab) and I followed the trail as far as we could.

Across fences.

Through dense woods.

Over frozen ground.

It ended. We’d pick it up again, just for it to end again. After hours, we couldn’t pick it up again. It’d started snowing again and we still had; no Bruno. No movement. Just silence. As the snow softly fell. 

Blindly, with no trail, we kept searching; crossing property lines, trudging through snow, and calling his name. As the hours wore on something heavy settled in my chest. I was certain he was dead. I stopped yelling for him and began looking for a body instead.

At some point, life insists on continuing even when your heart doesn’t want it to.

I had animals to feed. Chores to do and a family to care for. I filed a police report with RCPD. I reported the incident to the post office. I went through the motions of responsibility while carrying the quiet devastation of believing I’d lost him.

Twenty-eight hours passed.

That night, after finishing evening farm chores, I walked toward the house and up the steps…and there he was.

Standing on the back deck.

Alive.

It took a full twenty to thirty minutes for my shock to wear off enough to do more than stare at him. To breathe. To understand that what I was seeing was real. Bruno was dirty, traumatized, and desperately thirsty, but he was here and he was alive.

He didn’t rush me. He didn’t bounce or bark. He just stood there until I opened the door and he calmly walked in.

I gave him water. He drank deeply. When I offered food, he refused, until I tried a small piece of ham. He chewed it awkwardly, carefully, as though his body remembered pain his mind hadn’t processed yet.

The next morning, we went to the vet. Bruised lungs. A  missing tooth. A popped blood vessel in his eye. Nothing life-threatening. Nothing surgical. Nothing that couldn’t heal with time, care, and support.

Relief doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it comes as quiet gratitude; so deep it almost hurts.

I’m profoundly thankful for access to Western medicine. For diagnostics and professionals who could tell me what was wrong… and what wasn’t. I’m equally grateful that I can support that care with holistic practices, nervous-system support, and energetic healing to help Bruno process the trauma his body and mind endured because survival isn’t just physical.

Animals carry shock. Fear. Disorientation. Just like we do.

Bruno is home now. Healing. Resting. Slowly returning to himself. And I keep thinking about how close I came to accepting a story that wasn’t true—that he was gone forever.

This experience reminded me how quickly certainty can harden around fear and how little room we sometimes leave for anything else. I had accepted a loss because the evidence pointed that way, because my mind needed an ending it could hold onto.

But life doesn’t always follow the stories we brace ourselves for. Sometimes it surprises us with mercy we didn’t think was still possible. Sometimes what we believe is gone finds its way home; battered, changed, but still here.

💜 Suzette R. Berry 💜