The Beginning
Summer after sixth grade, I was obsessed with the idea of having a dog. No one else in the family was particularly into it, even my little brother, because he sucked. But I somehow managed to drag my mother to the Anti Cruelty Society Downtown one day and that's where I saw this little mug.
Amidst the barking and cage shaking of the other dogs, he sat quiet and composed observing the chaos around him. When I walked by, he looked up and said, Hey you, I think I'd be a good fit. I get along with all types of people, I'm super low maintenance and my fur is pretty. I had to have him.
My mom liked him too but wasn't going to make any decisions that day. "We'll go home and talk to your dad about it." Fine. So we did, and he was surprisingly gung ho. We'd go back to the shelter tomorrow and get our dog.
The next day, his cage was empty. The other canines continued to bark, and I wanted to scream back at them. I threw a shit fit in the middle of the shelter and demanded to know where they put him. My mom said she would track him down, and my dad took me and my brother to get hot dogs.
Apparently he had been moved to a Petsmart in Broadview, a southern suburb of Chicago. We didn't know if he would still be there, but we were going to make the drive to find out. I ran in the store like a crazy person looking around every which way, and there he was against the wall. I sighed of relief, took him out of the cage and walked him down the isles. And then he humped a bag of dog food.
I wanted his name to do something with his heritage (he was a Japanese Chin) and the fact he liked food. I shall name him Sumo, I decided, you know, like a sumo wrestler.
Over Time
Then, like the way many kids get with things they are once so passionate about, I lost interest. It's not that I didn't care about him anymore, I just didn't want to be responsible. I didn't want to walk him, I didn't want to brush his fur and I didn't want to feed him all the time. My original obsession was taken over by laziness and preoccupation with pathetic middle school woes. And Sumo lost interest in me. He discovered who his real love in the house was—my mother, the food bearer. The woman who constantly bitched about his shedding then secretly fed him chicken chunks under the table.
This continued on over the years, a shared distance between me and him. I should also point out that Sumo is much more like a cat than a dog. He enjoyed his space and privacy, and if you ever tried to get him to do something like fetch a ball, he looked at you like, Fool, please. Get it yourself. The only time he barked was out of excitement of being fed. He was definitely a fat kid of dogs.
But he started acting differently in the past year. Sumo had always been mellow, but now he seemed to have no energy to the do the simplest things. He didn't hold his beautiful fanned tail up anymore, he wanted to turn around after half a block when being walked, even his appetite diminished. And this past month was the worst. He couldn't make it up and down the stairs by himself anymore, so he would just wait on one of the middle steps for long periods until someone picked him up. One of his back legs started curling under the other. He painted louder than ever like he wasn't getting enough oxygen. His cataracts got worst and he aimlessly ran into things.
And then for the first time in years, Sumo actually started acting like a dog, a dog that wanted company and affection who sits at your feet and lays on your lap. We all became extremely sentimental toward him once we realized his days were numbered. I started paying more attention to him and remembered why I loved him so much in the first place.
My parents took him to the vet the other day to see what was up. Turns out he had two growths, one on his lung and the other on his kidney. He had advanced arthritis in his hips. He was already 12 years old and wasn't going to get any better. The vet gave him some pain medicine and that was that.
The past few days were up and down. He wouldn't move for four hours at a time and then would get surprisingly energetic. But on Friday night, he couldn't lay comfortably or seem to breath well, so my dad stayed up all night with him. And yesterday morning, my parents decided it was time to end his suffering.
Going In
Driving to the animal hospital with Sumo on my lap was one of the worst car rides of my life. The moment we all got into a little room to wait for the nurse, we transformed into blubbering children. Even my dad was a wreck. The nurse came in and told us the procedure, that they would put a catheter in for the anesthesia and then the poison. She took Sumo away for ten minutes as nostalgia and tears took over. He came back with a bandaged arm, completely unsure of what was going on. My mom snipped some hair from his tail, his best feature, and put it in a plastic bag.
Then the doctor came in with two needles in her hand. She was very kind and respectful and told us what to expect. The first needle went in and Sumo sunk to the metal counter in 30 seconds. Then the second needle went in, and I watched the life leave those big watery eyes. It broke my heart seeing his body lay like that.
When the doctor turned to each of our red, streaked faces, I could tell she sincerely felt for us. Can you imagine having her job—taking away the lives of animals people adore? Not that it's a dishonorable profession, it's actually a very necessary one. I just couldn't do it.
What's worst about the whole experience is the permanency. The fact Sumo will never drink from his water bowl that's still sitting on the kitchen floor. The fact that his hair is still covering that nasty blue couch upstairs he will never lay on again. The fact I can't hear his dog collar clinking up and down the stairs at night. My nose stings just thinking about it.
Shit, I haven't cried this much in one weekend since my grandpa died in December. I'll eventually be fine, but right now it's all a little too fresh in my mind.
So Sumo, my dear: thank you for being such a wonderful companion, and I hope you rest in peace. May your next chapter be filled with food, lush pillows and many back rubs. Love you always. J.
No comments:
Post a Comment