family dogs

So when I got here, the Lavie family dog was dying. His name was Floy, and he was a big Rottweiler. Except he was so sick and old that his ribs were all showing, and his hip bones stuck up like those of a cow. He could barely walk, and spent his days either on the floor of my bathroom or in the corner of the kitchen, looking really sad. Sometimes he drank some water out of a bowl held to his face, and every once and a while he managed to eat a few bites of steak, which had been grilled and seasoned to perfection just for him. It was really hard to watch him die, laying under a tattered towel for a blanket, slipping and sliding and falling on the tile floor whenever he tried to stand up. I started to wonder why they were keeping him alive and letting him suffer.

Every night, halfway through dinner, like clockwork, he´d summon up the strength to hobble into the dining room and plop himself down by the table. And every time he did this I lost my appetite. Someone needed to hold his head while he lowered himself to the ground because he didn´t have the energy to hold it up himself. It made me feel really sad. Sometimes he smelled, and a few times he threw up on the floor. My host mom Carmen cried every day about her perrito negro (little black dog), especially when he wobbled in to lay next to her during dinner. I rubbed his ears and stroked his nose sometimes, and he seemed to like that.

Then one day I came home and Lourdes told me that Floy was gone. I couldn´t understand if he was at the animal hospital or if he had died, but I finally figured out he was just at the vet. But then the next day I learned that he was dead - they had put him to sleep. I felt mostly relieved, because he was clearly in a lot of pain, but also sad, because he seemed like he was once a really sweet dog. Carmen was upset, but surprisingly more stoic than I thought she would be. I suppose when you watch something or someone you love suffer, that part is sometimes more difficult than actually letting them go. Somehow I´ve managed to live 24 years without experiencing this. I consider myself very lucky.

So I figured that was the end of Floy, until Lourdes called me into the kitchen yesterday. ¨Veni! Floy está aqui.¨ (Come! Floy´s here.) Hmm, I thought, this can only mean one thing. And sure enough, I was right. They had cremated him. And his remains are now stored in a fancy little box on a shelf where they store their wine. I´m not sure how I feel about this. Never having experienced the death of a pet, I don´t know if this is normal practice, or something done for dogs who belong to rich Argentine families, or just something the Lavie family felt they needed to do. But Floy is with us once again, and every time they serve me a glass of wine with dinner, I think of him sitting in that little box on the shelf.

Then last night I had a dream that I came home from Argentina and Andy had bought a Yellow Lab puppy, and it was already seven or eight months old. In my dream I was pissed - not because he bought a dog that sheds (this is an ongoing discussion between the two of us - whether we will some day end up with a shedding or non-shedding dog... you can guess which side I, the one who cares about home cleanliness, am on) - but because I wasn´t there to play with it when it was really cute and tiny, and I was worried that he hadn´t implemented as strict of a training regimen as I would have. But it was still really cute, and Andy had waited for me to get home to name it, which was nice of him, so we debated over Huey, Hubert and Howie and finally settled on Howie. But then Howie got away and ran down a busy street and we panicked and chased after him, and when we found him he had hurt his paw, but was okay. I felt really relieved and gave Howie a hug.

I think the conclusion of all of this is that Andy´s persistence that I learn to love dogs as much as he does combined with the sympathy I felt for Floy have finally softened my cat-loving heart to the canine world. However, I don´t see myself ever cremating a family pet and keeping it in the wine cooler.