copyright comidacomida 2025
Ever since I could remember I've had a dog in my house. When I was born we had a Canine Corso named Bello. Technically he was in the house before me; my parents got him from the pound a litle before I was born and I grew up with him by my side, until the day he got hit by a car. I was playing in the road and, as the story goes, he ran into the street to headbutt me out of the way of a drunk driver. I survied and he didn't. Little did I know but that became something of a theme in my life... in an increasingly strange trend.
Several years later when we had a German Shepherd named Schon, some friends and I were ice skating on a frozen lake. Little did I know that the ice was much thinner out toward the middle of the lake. Before I was aware of what had happened I'd plunged through and was completely engulfed by the bone-chilling freeze. According to my friends, Schon sprang into action, streaking across the ice to dive after me. I guess I'd lost consciousness by that point because I don't remember her doing it. Long story short: I got pulled to safety, and my family couldn't collect her body until after the thaw.
I suppose if all of the stories I had about losing pets were in my pre-teen years then I could have counted myself lucky but, like I said, I'd always had a dog in my house and the one consistent thing about dogs is that their human companions tend to outlast them. I suppose it's little surprise that I have a lot of stories about lost pets, but, by the time I'm done explaining maybe you'll see why I consider having dogs in the family to be a most horrible blessing... and in a way that most people might sympathize with, but I don't think anyone can fully empathize.
The next dog we had was named Valliant, and he was a full sized poodle (about 70 pounds-- not one of the toy ones). We got him shortly after we lost Schon and we had him for the next three years and I think he was about six when he died. Yeah, I know poodles normally live a lot longer but, aside from the fact that all dogs seem to love me, I have this horrible trend of not having them in my life very long. When I was in my early teens I had really bad asthma and, during one particularly horrible asthma attack my parents had to race me to the hospital and I went right into the ER.
For awhile the emergency staff were really worried about me but, after a few hours, my airways opened up and I haven't had a problem breathing since. They discharged me about an hour later-- it was about midnight. When we got home we found Valiant dead-- he'd somehow got a plastic bag wrapped around his head and he suffocated. My mom and dad chalked it up to human stupidity, blaming themselves. They never left the kitchen trash out again after that, but, by that point I'd started to wonder if there wasn't perhaps something else at work that nobody seemed to notice except me. That seemingly unwarranted, out-of-the-box hypothesis was put to the test a few years later.
I had just graduated high school and I'd had my license for a little over a year. My parents got me a really old Jetta as a graduation present and I was out cruising around in it with a few friends; Funke, our Rottweiler in the back of the car with Chris, one of my friends while my other friend Jon was in the front. Maybe it was just because I was a new driver, or maybe it was just not paying enough attention, but I wasn't ready for the pickup that ran the stop sign in front of me-- I ended up t-boning the truck doing about 65.
The front of my Jetta was pretty much pushed into the back seat. To this day, nobody is sure how I survived... Jon didn't. Chris had some broken bones while I walked away with barely a scratch but Funke, directly behind me in the only part of the car that hadn't been smashed up, had died from massive trauma. I don't know if it's clear or not by now, but there's been something of a trend in my life about dogs dying around me and, by that point I was starting to not just feel it was a coincidence; I was almost sure of it.
By the time I finished college my family had been enjoying the company of Radist, a Siberian Husky my parents got from a family friend who couldn't keep him. By the time we'd lost Funke I had become distant from dogs, not wanting to get too attached or too close, but, damn it, Radist was a hard one to say no to. He was full of energy and life and vibrant joy and he was really hard to not like... and he LOVED the hell out of me. It wasn't long before my parents surrendered the idea of keeping him since there was no doubt in their mind that he needed to go with me after I graduated.
When I moved out I got a small apartment and walked Radist every day-- he helped keep me in good shape. Things went really well for awhile. I got a great job, made a name for myself in the industry, and started saving up for a house. Radist was maybe three when we got him, and he outlasted all of my other dogs-- he was around nine when I went in for a routine check up and the doctors found something that they said was probably nothing, but encouraged me to go to a specialist. As it turned out, it wasn't nothing-- it was metastatic... stage IV.
My family rallied around me, promising support during chemo and that I shouldn't lose hope. I was set to see another specialist and have a ton of different tests done. The healthcare folks weren't too rushed about it seeing as I guess they'd probably realized by that point that there was no saving me... just prolonging the inevitable. About two weeks later at my next follow-up the new specialist was confused because she couldn't find traces of anything my prior scans had showed. She even went so far as to claim that my records might have been switched and that the scans the other specialist thought were mine had belonged to someone else.
They didn't manage to find anyone else they could have belonged to and the first specialist was certain that the records had been mine so there was no real recourse except to chalk it up to a case of unexplained, spontaneous remission. I brought Radist to the vet three weeks later; they couldn't explain the rapid cancerous growth that had all but destroyed him in that short time but there were no real options except to help ease his passing. Sure, I suppose it could be an impossibly 'convenient' coincidence, but, then again, there's a very good chance that it wasn't.
After that: a Bull Dog, a Schnauzer, a Beagle, a Weimaraner, three Labradors (black, golden, and chocolate), a Pit Bull, and a Rhodesian Ridge back. I know, I know... I must sound crazy, but I just wanted to be honest. So what's his name? Bishop? Okay.. and you said $100? Right. Here you go. Let's go, Bishop.
Hey, Bishop... who's a good boy? You are... you really are. And, in case I don't get a chance to say it later, thank you for your sacrifice.
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