I never had a dog, so I never had a dog that died. But I’m pretty sure I can tell you what it feels like. Last Thursday night, I’m sure a lot of people could have told you what it feels like.

What it feels like to watch something which elicits indescribable emotional investment be struck down before your eyes is not pleasant. It feels a lot like getting punched in the gut in fourth grade in front of a bunch of girls. It feels like getting cold-cocked with your own lunch-box.

It is that undeniable, searing pain which consumes from the inside out, locking the body in an unwavering, comatose and debilitating, open-mouthed incredulity.

It’s a lot like that universal dream where all you need to do is scream, but when you open your mouth, sound fails to emanate. No matter how much you swear to God (who you know, like you, is watching Game Seven from his living room) that you’ll change your misbegotten ways, no matter how much you pray for a single, measly base hit, there is no hit, and there is no sound.

That’s what my last Thursday night was like. I know I wasn’t alone, but that truth offered little consolation.

Everything about this season reeked of 1986, almost to the point of absurdity. A nice, round anniversary year, a number of franchise-shattering harbingers, the crafting of an insurmountable lead one month into the season, that messianic prospect Lastings Milledge, who made his New York debut at the same age — to the day — of once prodigal son Darryl Strawberry.

Indeed, the Mets’ road to autumnal glory seemed paved.

And, for the entirety of eight innings, there was no doubt in any Mets fan’s heart that we were taking a weekend road trip to Detroit.

For God’s sake, Endy Chavez made the most improbable of catches, reeling in an enemy home run that had all but killed someone outside of the ballpark perimeter, bringing it back to the plane of in-play existence. And, irony of ironies, Chavez’s inhuman grab was framed by the eerily apropos AIG billboard which read “The Strength to Be There.”

That is something that only happens in Disney movies involving American League Californian teams.

But, like so many sports analysts, and the bereaved locker-room themselves, lamented, it was not meant to be.

Aaron Heilman simultaneously hung a pitch, a season and the dreams and hopes of an entire city. Not Endy, nor Christopher Lloyd himself, could bring this one back — 15 minutes later it was over.

I spent the weekend brooding. It’s a familiar October ritual of mine. That bed-ridden ennui was one I was all but done banishing not but a week ago.

Maybe next year. I’ve always hated that. Next year is now. Remember that one? So do I.

The Mets’ season played out like an epic poem. But pick any fairytale allusion you want, last Thursday night was written by Edgar Allan Poe, and everyone knew it.

It was, frankly, disgusting — a grotesque display of circumstance.

Mookie Wilson, lauded hero 20 years ago, toasted champagne with everyone in a Cardinals uniform. Braden Looper, last season’s dejected and disgraced closer, reveled in victory, reportedly mocking his erstwhile teammates in a pejorative “Ole, Ole, Ole,” prodding the homemade battle mantra of our more respectable shortstop.

It was an unnatural progression of fate.

I cried in 2000, on the floor of the apartment in Queens where I lived, when the most-hated Yankees dispatched my beloved Amazins. I was only 13. My mother couldn’t understand how I could have such an attachment to a bunch of grown men who most likely didn’t love me back. She asked me if I had put money on the game. I hadn’t.

I cried last Thursday, on the floor of my room, after the numbness subsided and I realized this wasn’t a flashback of six years ago. It was an experience more similar than I would have cared to relive. When the better part of eight months is devoted to the impassioned willing of a single goal, you have a right to tear a little bit at the end.

Maybe next year.