pink fluids lead to sugar and spice and everything nice
ok, so i guess i kind of suck at updating. i swore to myself i was going to do it last night after i got home from what was definitely among the top 3 worst things i've ever experienced. just for suspense, i'll slab on some fat before i get to the juicy meat. so my family has a house in northern california- Chicago Park to be exact. the main reason the house is there is because my mother's parents live in the same area. about 7 and a half years ago, my family and i were vacationing at our vacation home (which still goes on today, but much less often) and i was minding my own business, being the easy little daughter that I was. i sensed the excitement in my parents, but did not know what was going on until they summoned me outside where I found the two cutest puppies-one white female and one off-white/brown-tinted male- I had layed my eyes on in God-knows-how-long. coincidentally, my grandparents missed their dead dog, Sasha, terribly by now and actually had interest in getting two time share dogs... they would take care of them for the majority of the time, of course. so as it turned out, these puppies belonged to a litter that the owner was giving away. we looked at all the puppies, and there were two left: the white one who wandered onto our property and a dark colored one. apparently the puppy that had accompanied the white one had been claimed by the owner. he even had a name for him: ranch. my grandma had her rules laid out, so this situation was not going to work for her for two reasons: 1. she did not want such a dark colored dog (it wasnt "cute" enough for her) 2. she would only agree to take care of a dog if it had another dog for a companion (basically, since we couldnt get the two specific dogs that ambled so curiously onto our property, she didnt want anything to do with the siutation). so anyway, after many hours and many tears, I was sitting on the swing right outside of our house when I hear someone driving up our gravel road. when the car stopped, the owner of the dogs stepped out of the driver's side. i guess he and my parents had a heart-felt talk... well, no, not really... but he told my parents that he saw how much i wanted the dogs, so he was going to give ranch and the little white dog to us if we still wanted him. point of the story: we ended up with two time-share dogs named Dolly and Bear. little white female= Dolly. Ranch= Bear. so we stayed with that whole plan for i guess like 7 years... i mean the plan where they live with my grandparents the majority of the time. but then about 2 months or so ago, the dogs were brought down here to live in manhattan beach with my family because my grandparents are growing old and are learning that they cannot take care of other beings because they struggle to take care of themselves. so the dogs were down here. i was happy as fuck... if fuck can be happy... bear was really overweight and dolly was a little overweight as well, so we started feeding bear diet food and taking both of them for 2 walks a day (when they lived with my grandparents, "walk" was not in their list of commands). my dad even took dolly running a couple of times. i don't quite remember how it happened, i mean why we took her to the vet, but we took dolly to the vet and found out that she had severe heart worm. after several tests, they decided that they could give her the heart worm treatment. mind you, like all other sorts of treatments, it came with high risks. the family decided that we would give it a go because it SEEMED like it would be the best thing for her. we found out that she would have to be closely monitored and would not be able to engage in any physical activity for four months. so i wasnt really paying attention to what was going on, but i did notice my mom being overly worried about dolly a lot. im tired so i'm going to kind of cut to the chase. dolly was really sick and we didnt know why. on fourth of july, i stayed up until about 1230 while the rest of my family was sleeping. before she went to bed, my mom had asked me to check on dolly to see how she was doing before locking the door, turning the alarm on, and getting myself to bed. so i did just that. yes, at 1230. dolly looked absolutely horrible. i felt like my stomach was going to pop out of my mouth at any moment. she was suffering horribly. it was just unnatural. she was breathing heavily with green snot dripping off her snout. every minute or so she would briefly stop breathing and then take a huge gasp for air. so i woke my mom up and she came out to see for herself. after about 30 minutes, she decided that it was necessary to take dolly to the animal emergency hospital. my sister was awaken by all the hubbub and came downstairs in her pajamas, insisting to come along. oh, and we took bear too. so there we were: me, my mom, stef, bear, and dolly; driving to the bottom of P.V. at 1 o'clock in the morning. So then we spent some time there and they told us they were going to run some tests and that it would be at least an hour. my mom then drove my sister and i home. so i finally closed my eyes at 2. i skipped school the next day (which was yesterday). yesterday, the results were back. so at about 330 in the afternoon my mom told me that we had to make a trip that night. dolly had very little hope and was extremely miserable. she had pneumonia and a respiratory infection. mind you, this is all on top of the fact that she was still recovering from a potentially deadly heart worm treatment. yeah, this is a predictable story, but im going to finish it anyway. last night, at about 600, my family (including bear) went back to the vet thinking we were prepared to put Dolly to sleep. we had to wait nearly 2 hours in that tiny, packed animal emergency room before we even got to see dolly. its depressing just to think about it. its the first death ive ever had to deal with. so we spent like 5 minutes with her, and then my mom decided she couldn't take it any more and called the guy in. the place was busy and therefore the service was horrible, so after another 5 minutes of waiting, an elderly man dressed in his green uniform came in with two syringes: one with clear fluid and one with pink. he explained to us that one was to numb her and the other was the euthanasia. he stuck the first needle (the clear fluid to numb her) in her leg and began applying pressure to the head of the syringe. dolly cried and flailed and then slowly began to stop functioning. first her head kind of fell to the side as her eyes looked around in completely fear and confusion. after another 30 seconds or so her entire body slowly moved toward the ground, until she was in the position she sleeps in: head on paw, body flat. i held my hand to her back and felt as her heart beat was taken away from her. the strange thing was that she stopped breathing before the euthanasia was injected. anyway, my mom kept petting her after she was dead and my sister vocalized what i was thinking: "why are you still petting her? shes DEAD!" it was really dramatic and really fucking painful. everyone was crying. well, everyone shed tears at least. as i sit here typing this now, it's been about 26 hours since she left and i think bear is finally starting to realize. i'm scared shitless that he is going to go as well. kind of like old married couples in that one death usually triggers the other. bear refuses to eat and seems really lonely. i spent like 30 minutes with him today, which was really good seeing as i usually dont spend any time. i think dolly's death (god that makes me sick...) has made me want to spend time with bear and sugar (my cat) more because they could be on their way out pretty soon here as well. it has also made me think about how fucked over i would be if a human i knew died. just think about that for a minute. like even if it was just an acquaintance... death sucks.