He Stopped by as a Butterfly

 

There’s a kind of knowing that lives in your chest before your mind catches up. I knew before I knew. And I think that’s the hardest part to talk about.

I don’t know how to write this post without just writing it exactly as it was. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Ryder was my dog. He was also my safe place — the first male presence in my life that I never had to brace myself around. He didn’t come with conditions or complications. He just showed up, every single day, steady and warm, like safety was the simplest thing in the world. For someone who grew up without that, he was everything.

WHAT HEMANGIOSARCOMA ACTUALLY IS

Hemangiosarcoma is a cancer that forms in the cells that line blood vessels. In dogs, it most commonly develops in the spleen, heart, or liver. It’s aggressive, and it’s quiet — devastatingly quiet. It rarely shows symptoms until something ruptures, which means most dogs are completely normal right up until they’re not.

What You Should Know:
— Hemangiosarcoma accounts for roughly 5–7% of all canine tumors
— Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds, and Labs are disproportionately affected
— Splenic hemangiosarcoma may show no symptoms until internal bleeding occurs
— Signs to watch for: sudden weakness or collapse, pale gums, distended abdomen, labored breathing, unusual fatigue
— Average diagnosis comes only after a crisis event — a rupture, sudden collapse, emergency imaging
— Survival after diagnosis without surgery is typically weeks; with surgery, months
— There is no reliable early screening test available for most dog owners

There’s nothing fair about a disease designed to stay hidden. And when you lose your dog to it, there’s this specific grief that comes with the knowledge that you couldn’t have caught it sooner. That it wasn’t something you missed. That it just — moves like that.

MY MOMMA HEART KNEW

Before the diagnosis. Before any of the final days. I knew something was shifting with Ryder. Not dramatically — he was still Ryder. But there was something in his eyes, something in the way I’d catch him watching me. A quietness underneath the quiet. A mama knows.

“I couldn’t have named what I was feeling, but it was there — this low hum of dread underneath everything. Like my body was already starting to grieve before my brain had the word for it.”

I kept pushing it down. Telling myself I was being anxious. Telling myself he was fine. He was eating, he was walking, he seemed okay. But that knowing was persistent, and it didn’t leave me.

And then it wasn’t okay. And everything moved very fast in the way that catastrophic things move fast — suddenly you’re in an emergency vet, in a large trauma unit, and they’re showing you an ultrasound, and you’re trying to hold yourself together while Ryder is right there with you the entire time.

HIS FINAL DAY

His last day started at 2am.

I sleep with my door open so my cat Riley can come and go through the night. Something woke me — a flickering. My salt rock lamp in the living room stays on overnight, and so does the night light in the kitchen. Both were flickering the way lights do right before a power outage — but nothing else in the house was affected. No other lights, no appliances. Just those two.

I took it as a sign. That I was doing what I needed to do for my boy. Setting him free while gutting myself in the process.

We woke up to snow. Fresh snow — which this season in Colorado had been rare. And I just stood there for a second because it was so perfectly him. Ryder was a snow bunny from the very first time he ever saw it. We were at our old house, he was a puppy, and he just sprinted into the yard like the snow had been made specifically for him. That joy never left him.

That morning he walked around his yard. The yard he had spent years in — sunbathing, patrolling, just existing in the way dogs do when they’re completely at home in a place. He walked slowly. He licked the snow a few times. And then he just sat down and looked around at everything, like he was taking it all in.

“I stood there with tears running down my face trying to burn every single moment into my memory. I needed to never forget what he looked like right there. In his yard. In the snow.”

Ryder was my kid. I don’t have children. I’ve been single for a number of years. And so much of the healing I’ve done — from things that go back further than I can fully explain in one post — happened because of the love he gave me every single day without condition. He showed me what it felt like to be loved by someone who never once made me earn it.

I don’t know if that kind of loss ever stops being shattering. I’m not sure it’s supposed to.

Those final 48 hours — Ryder never left my side. My family was close. He was held the entire time. The last night I slept next to him holding his paw, listening to his breathing — rapid and labored, the way hemangiosarcoma sounds when it’s taking over. I stayed right there.

He died at home. With his family. In the place he knew.

After he was cremated he came back to me. I didn’t expect that to feel the way it did — but it did. He was back. Close again. That still gives me something I can’t quite name.

“I made him a promise. That I would carry him forward. That he wouldn’t just be a memory — he would be a reason.”

GUATEMALA. THE BUTTERFLIES. HIM.

Months later — in a season of my life I can only describe as a threshold — I went to Guatemala. To a sanctuary. To do the deeper work that grief and healing and becoming ask of you.

And I have to be honest: if Ryder hadn’t passed when he did, I would never have gone. Not just because of the timing — but because I never would have left him. Not with the way his health had been in those final months. I wouldn’t have gotten on a plane and left my boy. His passing was what made it possible for me to go, and that is a complicated thing to sit with.

And the butterflies found me.

Not once. Not in a way I could explain away. Repeatedly, unmistakably, in moments that made me go still inside. A butterfly landing close when I was in the middle of something hard. A flutter at the edge of a ceremony. A presence that felt less like coincidence and more like a signal.

I knew it was him. I know how that sounds. I don’t need anyone to believe it — I believed it, and that’s what mattered. My boy, checking in. Letting me know he was right there.

And in those moments, I felt something I hadn’t expected to feel: readiness. Not healed — I don’t think grief works like that. But ready. Ready to build what I promised him I would build. Ready to walk into this next chapter with him right beside me, the way he always was.

Leah Ashley’s Organics exists because of Ryder. Ryder’s Fund exists because of Ryder. Every batch I make, every jar I seal, every lip balm that goes out into someone’s hands — he’s in it. He’s the reason I made something out of the hardest thing I’ve ever been through.

Some days I’m still heartbroken. I won’t pretend otherwise. There are mornings where it hits fresh and I just have to let it move through me. That’s grief. That’s love without a place to go.

But mostly? I feel him running alongside me. And I keep going.

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If you’ve lost a dog to hemangiosarcoma, or you’re in the middle of it right now — I see you. It is one of the most disorienting, devastating losses there is. And if your momma heart is telling you something is off with your pet, please trust it. Push for answers. You know your animal.

Ryder would want me to say that.

With love,
Nicole · Founder, Leah Ashley’s Organics