A good boy, the rain, and greetings under the stairs.

I recently felt grateful over taking care of Onyok, our dog. He was faced with the challenge of survival after losing enough blood from ticks and fleas. He passed away today. I woke up with the news, dad told me. I felt a slight growing attachment days earlier. It’s true I felt like questioning life again and it’s meaning. I had hoped and I didn’t want him to die but he’s such a good boy that he passed away even before that feeling grew much more. I knew that if Mom was here, she’d probably take him to a vet or hire someone to go and take care of the problem. I had understood everyone in this situation. Including myself, dad, mom and all dogs. While I just took care of our dogs and watched them all slowly dying, I knew that they didn’t deserve us. Now, everyone left, it’s really just me and dad. But, I still had found love around. I experienced human emotions and it was beautiful. All four (Mom, Spikey, Molly, Onyok) won’t feel all those emotions but, they won’t feel their pains anymore either. All I could be right now is grateful.

A tropical typhoon went past the Philippines this week. It was raining hard and waking up to the fierce crashing of raindrops on my window, I remember about the dogs. I was conditioned to think and worry about them when it’s raining. I would typically risk it to get them on dry land. The feeling subsides, I no longer have dogs to rescue in the pouring rain. It should lessen the burden, because it really does but at the same time, it leaves me feeling a little empty inside. People should be more grateful for their pets. They fill up hearts.

When I come home and make that sharp turn next to the stairs outside our house, there’s a small cage big enough for a dog. I already lost all three of my dogs for more than 3 months now. I had them since I was 14 or so. One of them I was around 8 or 9 years old when we adopted him. I keep being remembered about welcome barks. I call them that because that’s what they are. For more than 10 years, I had welcome barks every time I come home from school, or from the mall. My dogs didn’t care, they just wanted to greet me from anywhere. All of a sudden I could no longer hear those welcome barks. It had been deeply ingrained to me that I felt safe or secured because we had dogs around. They would do unwelcome barks to people they are not familiar with.

As a person who gets too vulnerable to changes and stress, this was supposed to impact me. I’ve grown even resilient since Mom died, and now this. Or maybe it’s my psyche brushing it off, or that I’m just an ungrateful brat to my dogs and didn’t care a single thing after 10 years with each other around. Yet again, it feels empty. What the mind thinks and what the eyes see isn’t quite aligned. To have devastating news after news in even less than a year, I'm quite surprised I could still tolerate things.

I can’t believe I shared most of my life with my dogs and all their life with mine. After this experience, I made it a point to convince myself of adopting a pet only when I could afford providing for myself. I know the advantage of having a fellow around in the house but I also still believe that I don't deserve owning one yet.