Dog Day

 

This is Candy. She's fifteen years old. She has brown fur with a white-tipped tail and a black mark on her tongue. We got her from The Humane Society, so, you know, she was relatively cheap compared to buying other dogs, and while that's not a breed, it is the only dog I can afford. No, I've got no idea what breed of dog she actually is.

Most of Candy's days start at about 5:00am, sometimes earlier, when she starts barking to let me know she needs to poop and eat. Just a constant, steady, three-round Bark, Bark, Bark until I can assure her I'm awake. Yes, I do manage to drag myself out of bed around that time, too, as she refuses to eat breakfast after 7:30am, maybe 7:45am at the latest. Her morning walk ranges from traveling to the end of the street or maybe around the corner and up the next street - however long it takes for her to drop her morning poop. The mornings I've woken up late for work and don't have the time to take her out, she's voiced her displeasure by refusing to eat until she does poop, once, right at my feet.

Most days while I'm out at work, Candy spends her days keeping to herself as there's no one around to keep an eye on her. This includes activities such as roaming around the house, sleeping on her blankets or in her grave, sorry, the pit she dug, and taunting the other dogs with her freedom while occasionally displaying her dominance by shitting in front of their kennel with her usual satisfied grin. 

On the days when I do find myself at home, either because it's the weekend or I've got a day-off from work, I'd be able to keep her in the cooler garage to hang-out, which just means she'd plop herself down to sleep while I'd either read or wrote pieces.

 

With as many as I bought, Candy never really cared about toys, getting bored of balls or frisbees pretty early in life. Unless it's food, she doesn't care.

 

On one of these days, once a month, would come the dreaded bath. Even at 15 years old, with arthritis in her joints, she still fights me at bath time. Whether it be refusing to get into the tub or trying to escape once in, she is always looking for an exit to avoid the inevitable. She can't even get in or out of the tub without assistance since she can't jump nor lift her legs high enough, but that still doesn't stop her from trying (and scrapping her face in the dirt when she trips).

When she was confined to the backyard, I'd come home, park my car, and open my car door to the sound of Candy's cries for freedom. Looking down the side of the house, I'd see her looking back at me, waiting for me to come back there with her leash for her afternoon walk. Once she was allowed to roam, however, I'm now greeted with a headbutt as she tries to push past to the street behind me once I open the gate.

Older, obviously, our walks go slower as she no longer tries to run from random spot to random spot only to stop suddenly to smell ... whatever it was she was smelling. Her first lap around the block usually goes at an even pace as she uses the time to refamiliarize herself with the neighborhood, sniffing and peeing at all the usual spots while I play either PokemonGo or Monster Hunter Now and (sort of) keep an eye on traffic (there aren't sidewalks). After a lap, it's time for a water break and, maybe, lying down on the pitching screen for a belly rub before heading back out.

 

 

The second lap (which, 90% of the time, is never a full lap) requires more attention on my part as this is when Candy is more likely to try to eat random objects off the ground, not all of it food, or edible. Thanks to her experience and old age, she no longer tries to fight me though when I want to take things from her mouth. No, instead she simply falls over, daring me to stoop down and pry her prize from her mouth while looking like an asshole who shoved my dog to anyone else watching.

Finally tired, Candy plops herself down on a mess of sheets and towels ... and passes out. Honestly, this didn't happen when she was confined to the backyard all day, so I guess doing laps around the house all day really tires her out. I like to think she uses that time to not only rest, but to allow me time to play with the other pups. She does announce when she wakes and is ready to eat - meaning playtime with the other dogs is finished - by, still from a lying position, barking. A constant, steady back which will last as long as it takes for me to collect any toys and exit the kennel, then assure her that her food is on its way.

Her food? Once she got a taste for the wet stuff, she never went back. Unfortunately, my wallet can't sustain her fancy palate, so she gets a mix of canned and dry food, which works best for my budget, her chewing issue (as in, she doesn't), and her poops which get too watery when she eats only canned food. Candy is however very particular about the process in which she eats. I'm not sure how it started, or why she wants it this way, but she never goes right for the food in her bowl. Instead, I have to lure her to it with the exact same food but served on a spoon. Yeah, exactly like feeding a baby by playing "Airplane." I've gotta entice her to eat the exact same food she eats everyday by tempting her to first lick it off a spoon before she says, "Yes, this is acceptable," and sticks her face into her bowl. After dinner, I'd leave her to lie down and rest, knowing I'll be called back later in the night.

Always at around 9:00pm, she'll start calling for attention. Typically, it's just to get me outside to watch her drink water, or sometimes to poop, before she lays back down as if she simply requires an audience. I don't know why she likes to have someone around when she poops, but her "drinking water" quirk is definitely my fault. Back when she was younger at one of her vet visits, the vet told us Candy was suffering from dehydration which is crazy since she always has water in her bowl. From then on, I was forcing her to drink water whenever she had the chance. In fact, one of the very few commands she learned (as I am, in fact, a shit trainer) was "Drink Water," to which she would lap up at least a couple tongues of water (or more if she was actually thirsty).

I put Candy to sleep on March 16th, 2024. Wow, umm, I wrote out all that other stuff about her day in one go, off-the-cuff, but that one line just stopped my pen as my eyes started to water. Umm, okay, so I put Candy to sleep on March 16th, 2024. She would've been 16 years old this month. Despite starting like any other, I think she might've known something was going on. For one, it was the only time I can remember she handled a bath without issue. No fighting, no fidgeting. I got her into the tub and she stood calmly for her bath. I let her walk around the rest of the day except when I kept her in the garage for a bit. There, she decided that since I was scratching her, she might as well lie down on my feet where she dozed for a bit. As cute as this sounds, I was crouched in a kinda uncomfortable position, and needed to pee, but ... I mean, you can't move when an animal falls asleep on you, right?

Then, it was time to go. Again, surprisingly, she didn't give me too much trouble when getting into my car. Usually it takes a couple of tries to get her into the passenger foot-well of my car, but this time she simply settled into the spot and waited for us to go. My sister and I got her to the vet on-time only for them to tell us they didn't have an appointment for Candy. Hearing that, part of me thought about throwing Candy back into the car and driving away, but we waited and they figured out the scheduling issue. Inside, after fitting Candy with a catheter for the drug administration, they let us spend some time with her to say goodbye before letting her go, which, of course, is never long enough. 

If you're curious, the "sleep process" involves three different injections to stop your pets heart. Pretty simple, right. Well, it was at this point that Candy decided to live up to me being her owner. As I said, it's a pretty simple process, but, if you know me, I can always find a way to make things harder than they should be, and Candy chose that moment to keep the tradition going. So, Candy got the first injection, and, instead of circulating through her system, it just stopped and bubbled in her leg. "Huh, she doesn't appear to be getting sleepy," I thought as the vet had this look that said, "Huh, that's not supposed to happen." The vet needed to bring in another person to help take Candy out of the room and get the issue resolved.

Finally, the vet brought her back into the room, gave her the final two injections, and then Candy was gone. The vet let us stay in the room to sit with Candy for as long as we needed. It felt comforting to hold her head in my hands the same way she would sometimes fall asleep in them, and to say, for one final time, "Okay, you be good," as I walked away.