Dogster

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goodbye

re: goodbye my baby

this was written just after he died. it was Nov. 7, 2004. even though it wasa couple of years ago since he died, i still miss him terribly. i still have a dog though. her name's pam and she's a mutt. i'll post her pics sometime soon.

goodbye my dear baby

my baby is gone. michi. my dear sweet michi. as i'm writing this, my baby boy michi died less than an hour ago. it hurts like freakin hell. for those who haven't been in touch with me for the past few years and for those who barely know me, michi is my baby boy. he did not come from me but he is my baby boy. now, for those who have been in touch with me these recent years, you all know how crazy i am with my baby boy. heck, some of you even think i'm insane, talking nonstop about him and always showing his pictures to everyone whom i shared breathing space with. and yeah, i know, at the back of your minds you thought that heck, he's just a freakin dog, but you have to admit that he's a really cute one. as ive been trained by the ogatis method of writing, i'll try my hardest to show not tell, to concretize the hundred thousand thoughts running in my mind as of this very moment, so that you'll better empathize with me.
{michi's a red shorthaired standard dachshund by the way, you know, the long dog with the short legs, more popularly known as weiner dogs or hotdogs or sausages}
well, as of now, i'm listening to metallica's rendition of tuesday's gone. that line: "tuesday's gone with the wind, my baby's gone with the wind" i dunno, i mean heck, i know the song talks about a wholly different thing altogether, but i guess it soothes the sentiments i'm feeling now. i guess if you've heard the song you can't help but notice james, pepper and everybody who backed him up had this really sad twang. and the guitars too. oh well.
i dunno what to think. "i've got to let go. ive got to move on" or is it, "he's gone and i'm stuck here in this crappy world without him" or, "i know for a fact that he's okay, that he's joined the collective soul of the DOG, that the dog is my totem, and he didn't really leave me alone, he's still here with me, accompanying me in my life's journey." but no matter what i think, i can't help feeling that my heart's about to burst and i just cant stop the tears from trickling down my face and the snot from coming out my nose.
[now listening to metallica's the memory remains]
it was only yesterday when michi and i were playing in my bed. i was hugging him and as always, he was licking my face, targetting my mouth and nose. and whenever i put him down so that i can breathe, he would jump up at me and pin me down with his little but strong paws and lick me crazy. think of it, it was an odd day, yesterday. you see since the beginning of this year, my parents decided that they would no longer allow michi upstairs (where the bedrooms and the sala are located) and that he can only stay downstairs at the kitchen area because he realized that he can get away with pissing all over the house and he no longer had to go to the bathroom. (smart boy!) yesterday, my mom was out teaching and the only people left in the house was me and my father. i have just started to recuperate from acute bronchitis (which i had for several weeks) and i really missed my dogs (i was not able to play with them because we were afraid they might also get sick, plus i was bedridden). i played with michi for a little while at the kitchen but i was getting tired and i wanted to lie down but i still wanted to play with him. now i thought that my father was out buying something so i carried him and sneaked upstairs to my bedroom. little did i know that my father was at my room looking for something. now, i was thinking that oh no, i'm dead meat, i'm gonna get it for sure. but to my surprise, he just looked at me and continued looking for whatever it was he was looking for. and so we played and played and played until we both got tired of playing and i fell asleep and he went to his own bed downstairs.
earlier today (around 10am), my mom was again out teaching, and me, remembering that my dad was okay with me playing with michi upstairs got my baby and brought him to the living room. when i placed him at the sofa, he didn't seem as animated as he was yesterday. he just laid down. so i thought that he was just still sleepy so i just left him at the sofa and i went to my room and fell asleep. my mom woke me up at around 1:30pm and gave me my lunch at my room. at around 2pm when i went downstairs to clean up, i noticed that michi was still sleeping. nothing new here. michi is always sleeping. i asked my dad if michi already ate and he said that he hadn't. now we all thought that it was just normal because every year during late october and early november, he's in heat. or whenever he smells a female dog who's in heat, he doesn't want to eat because he just wanted to hump that bitch oh so bad. now, we have another dog, an askal, who's only around seven months old. for a couple of weeks, he just wanted to get it on with her so we separated them because she's too young to get humped. and so we thought that he was only sad and we gave him vitamins so that he'd have his appetite back. he got his appetite back but this lunch, he seemed that he was sad again. so my mom and i thought that maybe if we let the two of them play, he'd be happy. so we let pam (the other dog) come to his bed. we noticed that he just laid there and looked at pam. i was bewildered because normally he would jump at pam and they would play and play and play as long as we let them. i made him stand up and i was surprised because he just slumped back down. i got really worried and started nagging my parents to bring him to the vet. now, we used to have this really great vet but this year, her clinic's gone and we dont know where the heck she moved. her cellphone's no longer working and we couldnt contact her. we had numbers of other vets so my dad called one of them and asked for advice. the vet said to just give him hydrite and feed him liverspread and he'll be alright. we gave him hydrite but he just vomitted it and a little later he pooped with blood. he really couldnt get up and he just pooped and vomitted at his bed. i was in hysterics and my dad finally found a vet who lived near our house.
[listening to the frayed ends of sanity]
we took him there (before 4pm) and i noticed that it wasn't really a clinic. it was just an apartment that he converted into a photo id studio thingy downstairs, and his family lived upstairs. i was like, heck, this is not a real vet! his place is too weird. then i noticed his yellowing diplomas hanging on the wall beside the pictures that he took of his customers. he was a real vet after all. and he graduated from up. (university of the philippines, to my foreign friends) i was so damn impressed. i mean come on, up! it's like the best darn school in this country and only the brightest minds can study there! (it was only a fluke that i got in, i really have a very feeble brain) i thought that maybe he was only taking pictures on the side because he wasn't earning much money from being a vet and he has a family to raise, so that's okay. he still graduated from up. he dragged this wooden table thingy, laid it with newspapers, and we laid michi there. he was unconcious. he examined michi, looked at his gums, peered at his eyes, listened to his breathing and heartbeat, pinched his skin, and asked for the symptoms. we brought a sample of his poop and we asked him if he could take a look at it, just to be sure. he didn't want to do anything with the poop and he said that michi had parvovirus and he's handled lots of dogs who had it so he knows if a dog who has it when he sees one. (i really couldnt believe it because michi is complete with his shots, including parvovirus, how the heck would he have that if he's immune to that virus? but heck, who am i to know, i'm just a stupid kid). it took so long for him to prescribe the medicines and he left us at his sala while he seemed to be rummaging through his old notebooks. when he came back to give us the prescription, michi began to move his paws up and down and whine. i was so afraid and started soothing him. i asked the doctor what was happening to michi and he said michi was only dreaming, it's okay. i believed him. my dad believed him. he's a doctor after all. we left the clinic at around 530pm and got michi home.
[listening to the struggle within]
my dad bought the meds and we gave it to michi at around 620pm. we couldnt give all the meds at the same time because they were too darn many and he was vommitting and he was having "nightmares". ( he would move his little paws up and down and scream in agony, i couldnt bare it!) at around 7pm we gave him the last of his meds and apparently, he was sleeping. then at 745 he was twitching his head and shaking and he was trying to stretch his feet and he was screaming so loud. it was like he wanted to vomit but he couldn't because he hadn't eaten anything and it was like he was having an epilepsy attack. i wanted to bring him to the hospital as fast as possible but we didn't know where. he stopped for a while and seemed to sleep. i started carressing him and calling his name softly. he opened his eyes and seemed to recognize me and my mom. he wagged his tapered tail at us. i thought it was going to be fine, he's happy, he's wagging his tail after all. but then he started twitching again and he couldn't help his head being smacked on the floor again and again. my dad called the vet and asked him what to do and where could we bring him so he can be confined. the vet didn' t know any animal hospitals (duh? how stoopid?!i mean ur a freakin doctor man! don't you know anyone else who's in the business aside from yourself? didn't you have any classmates at vetmed school? what about your profs? don't you know where the clinics or hospitals with complete equipment are located? come on, give me a break!) and just said to observe michi. he admitted that this is the first time he had encountered such symptoms and he didn't know what to do. (arrrgh, he makes me so mad!) then i remembered that there was one in binondo but i didn't know if it was open on sundays, let alone at night, but we still decided to take michi there. just as we were getting ready to leave, he let out this horrible scream and then he stopped twitching. he wasnt breathing and i felt his chest. there was no heartbeat. i immediately ran to my room and bawled my eyes out. (this was at around 810pm) i just cried and cried, and then, i cried some more while my dad tried to revive him.
come to think of it, we really do not know what michi died from. i researched on what parvovirus was and found out that it was a virus that attacks the intestinal tract and that the dog would indeed vomit and poop blood. but i found out dogs would live around 5-7 days without treatment and then die. adult dogs also had a stronger chance to survive. he was three years old. michi died within the day. and the books didn't say anything about uncontrollable twitching. plus he's immune to parvovirus! what if michi had another kind of virus and the vet didn't know it. what if the meds he gave only made him worse, heck, even caused his death. many people died from wrong prescriptions. what more with animals?
i couldn't help but think if only if i just had enough energy, i would try to pranic heal him, but i was too weak, i can barely sensitize my hands. if only if i just didnt have that stupid bronchitis. if only if it was not sunday. if only if our real vet didn't move. if only if she still had her cellphone with her. if only if we knew her landline. what if the stupid vet misdiagnosed his sickness? if only if...
of all people, i know for a fact that death is not the end, death is only a transition toward another plane of existence. but i still cant help myself to mourn. it's different to be with someone who's still incarnated in this world, to touch them, hug them, kiss them... it's just not the same.

[listening to bleeding me]
i started writing this at 908pm. i thought that i should write my feelings down because i would feel differently about this incident tomorrow or the next day. as i was writing this down, my dad found a box to place michi in and i gave him his blankies, bowl, and toy. he buried michi in a vacant lot owned by the jesus is lord movement near our house at around 1045. ...not my ideal choice for a burial ground but what the heck, it's just his body that we buried so it doesnt really matter) i couldnt bear to see him like that, so stiff, so lifeless. when my dad put him in the box and he couldnt fit in because he's so long, his head stuck out of the box, i couldnt take it so i ran back upstairs and resumed typing. i just feel so awful right now. come to think of it, i was not able to bury my own baby. what do i do when it's my parents' turn to go? what will i fukin do? 1128pm.