Lets go back 14 years. I was 9 years old. Life was great, our family decided to get a dog. ...ok, fast forward to now. Two weeks ago, my mom calls me up and we are having a little chat, when she brings up our dog, Kumo. Mom says -we need to put her down, she has all kinds of health problems, and we decided it was time. Holy, drop a bomb on me mom! Kumo lives out at the clinic as a guard dog, I hadn't seen her in a while so, I went out to see her the following Saturday with my parents, Marly and Jarett.
Seeing Kumo like that made me so sad, she could hardly get up, her breathing was labored, pretty much she was in rough shape. It was a moment. Usually seeing pets die doesn't phase me, but with Kumo it was different... See, usually when pets die, its either an accident, or they die after a long, nice life of being loved. This wasn't the case with Kumo. See, we all loved her, but we couldn't/didn't handle her. We got her when she was a puppy, she lived with us till she grew up, she chewed everything, no one spent time with her to try and train her. We had good times, and we loved her, but the novelty of having a dog wore off after a couple of years... and my dad, being a vet/owning a clinic, we all decided that Kumo would make a good guard dog. Us kids worked at the clinic so we saw her pretty much everyday... and here is where it gets me. Because she grew up with us, and now she lived at the clinic, I felt like she didn't think that the clinic was home. We saw her everyday, and every time we left, she wanted to come with us. ...shes a dog, and I know that dogs follow, but its just what I thought. There was just something about it that made me think that she thought that one day, she would come back home with us; where she belonged. I felt like When we went and saw her that Saturday, its like all these feelings came crashing down in a single moment... We spent about an hour with her in her dog-run. It was hard for me to see her in such bad shape, and to see how happy she was to see us. All I could think about was how we had all kind of abandoned her, and yet she still loved us. Years. When I say it had been a while since I went and saw her, I mean it had been about 2 years. And I wasn't the only one, no one went to play with her, to see her. There were the people that worked at the clinic who fed her, and stuff, and im sure they cared about her, but, to me- she grew old alone. The moment that got me? We had to go. ...and she wanted to come. She thought she was coming, the way she was walking with us. She thought, 'well, I put in my time, I get to come home now.' But thats not how it was going to be, she didn't understand. And you could see it in her face. She was so happy when we were there, and she was sad, watching us leave. It killed me knowing that this was going to be the last time I ever saw her. And she had no idea. And because my imagination hates me, I thought about a week from now, how they would bring her inside, like any normal day, and they would lead her to on of the surgical rooms, where she would first sense something was wrong, they'd put her up on a table and this is when she'd start to get scared, she knows something is wrong... and i've seen dogs get put down before, and its called being 'put to sleep' but its not like going to sleep...
Stupid imagination...I hate you.
So we put her down on Friday afternoon, and we buried her Saturday morning. And because we didn't have anywhere to put her in the mean time, she sat in the back of the suburban, in a black garbage bag...good thinkin Dad.
This is how Saturday morning went. We gather at my parents house, waiting to drive out to the farm, one of us asks "hey, where IS Kumo?" My mother answers "In the back of the suburban." I ask "How long has she been there....?" Answer? Since yesterday afternoon... Now it wasn't really hot out, but at the same time, it was NOT cold. SO... dead dog smell? Yup.
Because our parents felt like we needed some bonding time/we wanted to save on gas/thought it would be funny?...we all decided to pile in the suburban to drive to grandmas together, with the dog in the back...I opened the door, jumped right in and took my usual seat in the back left. It stunk. Everyone else took a little more convincing to get in the car. It was pretty bad, but not unbearable. The thought of it was worse than the actual smell.
Now we show our true colors...(Don't judge us, its how we deal with things) We start making dead dog jokes....and stink jokes.
Marly- "there is a dead dog... in a bag... right behind the seat...ewww"
Annalise started making gagging noises. Pretending to throw up. Steph freaking out, cause the fact that Annalise was making those noises was making her feel like throwing up.
The smell was actually so bad, the longer you were near it the worse it got.
Tanin, "Ok everyone just take a deep breath," Annalise "NO, thats the opposite of what we want. I don't want to breathe it!"
Dad asked if anyone wanted an apple, Jarett said he could go for a big juicy hamburger, Tanin was like, naw, id rather have a hot dog... then my mom chimed in and suggested you get it to go...in a doggie bag!
We then pointed out that this smell wasnt as bad as Marly's feet. Which is a true story.
Tanin asked if it was going to be an open casket.
We we're laughing and joking and it was good.
we were trying to figure out how we were going to get it from the burb to the hole, Jarett suggested making it into some kind of competition, see who can throw the dog the farthest, I said we make it a series of games...dead dog Olympics, Jarett commented that its not unlike dead baby Olympics... we all agreed. And it went on like this for about 15 minutes...
We got out there, finished diggin the hole, plopped the dog in it, and when i say plop, it was definitely the sound of a dead body falling into a hole....not that im familiar with that sound. We covered her up, chucked a couple big rocks at the head and laid a bunch of branches over it and that was that.
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