Run Free, Princess Leia
by Agnieszka Wolsoncroft
Today I don’t really feel like writing anything.
But I thought about it, and I will. Because today is about second chances, unconditional love, and the most perfect companion. And those things deserve to be written down.
On Thursday, we had to say goodbye to our beautiful girl. Princess Leia. She had been declining for some time, but Wednesday night and all of Thursday she was leaving us, slowly and gently, the way she had always done everything — with grace.
It’s Sunday afternoon and I haven’t stopped crying yet. David cried too. Anya cried. And Gizmo — poor, sweet Gizmo — is still standing at the front door, waiting for his big sister to come home.
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We brought Leia home from Shenton Park — in our language, the “big house with many doggies.” That first Saturday morning, David had told me not to be disappointed if we didn’t come home with a dog on our first visit. We might have to go back a few times. I said I understood.
We were given a map and a piece of paper with spaces for five names. I started crying before we were halfway through the shelter. I wanted to write all of them down. I wanted to take all of them home.
And then there she was. A small, happy, jumping, “look at me” little princess, wagging her tail like crazy, running from one side of her kennel to the other, her eyes never leaving us. Calling to us. Choosing us, really, before we had even chosen her.
David looked at me. I looked at him. We knew.
We always made the biggest decisions just by looking at each other.
In the car on the way home, she was agitated at first, moving around, her breathing loud. I kept stroking her and telling her it was all alright. After a few minutes, she grew very still. She settled with her chin on my thigh and looked out at the world going by through the window.
David glanced at us in the mirror. “We have to change her name,” he said. “Asher doesn’t suit her.” A moment passed. Then: “Her name is Leia. Princess Leia.”
She came home already a Princess. It was never in question.
We got home. She ran around the garden, sniffed every corner, came back inside and went straight to her basket, like she had always known it was hers.
And she was. From that very first day, she absolutely was.
Leia was already eight years old when she came to live with us. Most people walk past the older dogs in a shelter. They want puppies, blank pages, easy beginnings. But Leia had so much more to give, and she knew it. She grabbed that second chance with both paws and never looked back.
For more than nine years, she filled our home with love.
She had a habit — one of my very favourite things in the whole world — of letting me pick her up and placing her paws on both sides of my neck. And there we would stay, gently swaying. Elvis, sometimes. The Beatles. Bob Marley. Nina Simone. Just the two of us, dancing slowly in the kitchen or the living room, her small warm weight in my arms, her paws resting on my shoulders like she was holding on and letting go at the same time.
I will miss that more than I have words for.
A year after Leia came home, Gizmo arrived. He was nine months old, rescued from an abusive household, passed through a shelter and then a fostering family who kept him safe while he waited for us to find him. He came to us shaking. Thin, flinching at sudden sounds, terrified of brooms, cowering when voices rose above a whisper. He had learned, in his short life, that the world was not a safe place.
Leia taught him otherwise. Patiently, without fuss, one ordinary day at a time. He watched her and followed her and slowly, slowly began to understand that this house was different. She taught him how to trust, how to play, how to sleep without one eye open. She was the big sister he needed, and she stepped into that role as naturally as she had stepped into everything else.
She was there on the hardest days. One year later, on Friday before Mother’s Day, I had a miscarriage. Two days later, I went to work — because Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year in hospitality, and I was managing a cafe, and people needed to celebrate their mothers. I spent the whole day smiling, taking orders, chatting, wishing people a happy Mother’s Day, while something inside me was completely broken. Nobody knew. Nobody could tell that I was crying silently inside.
When I got home that afternoon, I went straight to bed.
Leia and Gizmo came without being asked. They curled up beside me, one on each side, warm and solid and entirely present. They didn’t need to understand but somehow, I think they did and they simply stayed with me. It was, in that moment, the most important thing anyone could have given me.
She was there the night Anya came home. Our daughter — six years old, from Thailand, exhausted and overwhelmed and taking in everything at once — climbed into her new bed, and Leia settled beside her without being invited. Anya stretched out her small arm in the dark and rested her hand on Leia’s fur. And that was that. From the very first night, Leia was her big sister too.
Always loving. Always gentle. Always there.
A second chance gave us Leia. And Leia gave us nine years of endless, boundless, unconditional love.
People sometimes say that dogs don’t know how much they mean to us. I am not sure that’s true. I think Leia knew. I think she understood something about our family that she never needed words to express: that we were hers, and she was ours, and that was the whole thing.
She was there through every chapter: the house we fell in love with, the seasons of joy and the seasons of grief. The long waiting, and then the answered prayer. She witnessed all of it, quietly and faithfully, from her basket or her spot on the sofa or pressed against whoever in the family needed her most that day.
She was, as I wrote when we first brought her home, the perfect companion. The most beautiful girl. And such a precious part of our family.
Today is such a sad day. And it is also a wonderful celebration of just how incredibly lucky we were to have her.
Our hearts are broken. And they are also so full of gratitude that we got to love her.
Both things are true at the same time. Grief and gratitude, side by side, the way love always eventually teaches us to hold them.
Thanksgiving. Appreciation. Gratitude.
I didn’t plan to write a TAG reflection today. But sitting here with this grief, I find that the practice is exactly what I need.
Thanksgiving (Action):
She showed up. Every single day, for nine years, she showed up. At the door when we came home. By the bed when we were sad. Beside Anya on her first night. Next to Gizmo when he was afraid. Showing up was the entirety of her practice, and she never once failed at it. If there is one thing Leia taught this family, it is that showing up — fully, faithfully, without conditions — is the whole of love.
Appreciation (Awareness):
I am trying, today, to notice what I had rather than only what I have lost. Nine years of a warm weight beside me on the sofa. Nine years of being greeted like a returning hero, every single time. Nine years of her chin on my knee and her eyes finding mine across a room. And our special dance. In many ways, she was my first baby. I had all of that. I had it for nine whole years. That is not nothing. That is everything.
Gratitude (Feeling):
Thank you, Leiuś, for everything. For your love. For your companionship. For being Anya’s big sister from the very first night. For being Gizmo’s patient, steadying presence. For the Mother’s Day you curled up beside me and stayed. For teaching me that love truly is unconditional when the love is true. For nine years of simply being you — the most complete expression of unconditional love I have ever witnessed.
What you focus on expands. Today, even through tears, I am focusing on gratitude. For the second chance that gave her to us. For the nine years she gave us in return.
Run free, beautiful girl.
You were greatly loved. You are greatly missed. And you will never, ever be forgotten.
Our hearts are broken, but they are also so full — because we got to love you.
With love and gratitude,
Agnieszka
If you have ever loved an animal and lost them, you already know that what they leave behind is not absence. It is presence of a different kind — in the corner of the room where they used to sleep, in the habits they built in you, in the love they made larger just by being here.
If you’d like to meet Leia as she was when she first came home — jumping, smiling, running straight to her basket — I wrote about her eight years ago in a post called ‘Meet the Princess.’ The link is below. She was, from the very beginning, exactly who she always was. Meet The Princess
Come back in a fortnight. I’ll be writing about the people — and the souls — who changed my life without knowing it. Who gave me something I still carry. I think you’ll know someone like that too. For those, who follow me on Substack, Curiosity will be the word in question in our newsletter on Sunday. See you then. 💛
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