Huub.

There are just a few of us behind DearestDog. This story belongs to one of us.

She had loved dogs before him - loved them deeply, and grieved each one quietly, the way you do when the world doesn't quite understand why you're still not over it. None of those loves were small. And still, none of them was Huub.

He was two when she picked him up. A rescue. She took him home, and somewhere in that first hour, he rescued her right back. The kind of bond you don't plan for and can't quite explain.

He couldn't manage stairs, so she slept on the couch downstairs until he felt safe. From that day on they were inseparable - he read her mind, and went everywhere she went.

He wasn't just along for the ride. He was part of the team, in every sense - listed as a colleague on her business website, with his own email address. Because that is exactly what he was.

Then aggressive cancer came, at six years old. Every treatment, every option, everything there was to spend. It wasn't enough.

In the weeks after came the particular loneliness of grieving a dog in a world that mostly says - it was just a dog. Three in the morning, the leash still by the door, the silence too loud. And nowhere to go. No app, no place that understood.

DearestDog is what should have existed then. Not a help page. Not the five stages of grief.

It doesn't fix anything, doesn't rush you, doesn't suggest getting another dog. It sits with you at any hour, asks about them, and listens without judgment.

And while your dog is still with you - when you want to hold on to every walk, every photo, every ordinary moment - it's there for that too.