It started with this link to this blog I posted. The rest speaks for itself.

She didn’t respond to that… the last response to this all was:

His heart stopped beating at 1pm.

I just got in from burying him in my parents back yard.

large dog deaths are morbid (similar to any large mammal, id imagine). eyes glaze over, tongue flops out, bladder and bowels evacuated. and then curtains.

yesterday he was trudging along with a perky air.
now he’s in the ground.

RIP

I investigated a pot of meat and vegitables on the stove that smelled decent and was confused at its note-QUITE-fit for human consumption quality. the chicken was hastily shredded, the potatoes their skins on still the — oh my god… this is fkking DOG food…

Yes, my mother actually made a multi-ingredient chicken stew..for the dog. while her son starves. great. Buddy is also less thrilled about food lately so he doesn’t run to the bowl anymore, but instead of not caring like everyone should, my mom and my sister think thats a big deal and keep trying to shove food in his face.

In the bowl that he doesn’t give a shit about: hamburger, squash and asparagus…. ya…

I keep telling them to not worry about it and that he’ll eat when he wants it. He’s not gonna starve to death and you two are gonna lament through your tears “oh, if ONLY we pushed his food bowl closer to his face and tapped our foot near it to bring attention to it when he was alive, this would have never happened!”. no. dogs are scavengers. they’ll consume nourishment when they need it. but try telling that to the female instinct to nurture… nothin doin. they even go as far as to hand feed the mouhfkker if they think its been too many hours since he’s had their food.

this here would be steak…actual STEAK chunks, being prepared…for a dog…

In the mean time, I actually had cereal.. while the dog barely touched his steak and vegetables… this is life

Vet says he’s only got a month or two left of taking up space and breathing our air, but I think he’ll go longer. A few days ago he saw some walkers on the street and wanted to kill them just like back in the days when I used to have to beat him with a rusty shovel, so I opened the door to show him that it was okay, and much to my surprise, he sprung up and went running after them. except.. it didn’t end well… a few steps out, he lost footing on one paw on his right side, causing him to collapse and do a full barrel roll – legs in the air and everything. It would have been [more] hilarious if it wasn’t so near-fatal. but he was fine after. just nursed the paw for awhile and no big deal.

Although the motherfucker needs to seriously learn submission better. I did the “does this hurt? – does this?” thing poking and squeezing (oh shut up – it was gently) his allegedly injured leg and he growled at me with that low rumble that’s all “hey. back off”. except, like I’m really gonna back off THEN. that just makes me wanna squeeze harder just to show him I can. don’t fkkn growl at me, bitch. i’ll fkkn kill you.

But seriously though. he’s gonna die soon. just not SOON soon. but soon.

He has trouble getting up, so he only does so when he really wants to. We try to get him up more with persuasion and trickery (like using “walk” and “swim” as buzzwords to excite him into cranking his ass vertical again) but yesterday he needed to go out and pee some of his collected fluids out so I had to urge him up. the vet gave him a diuretic to get rid of the fluids built up in his legs that caused them to swell due to his weak heart. -cuz apparently if your heart doesn’t pump strong enough, you’ll get liquid in your limbs and be able to piss it out after taking a pill? whatever. he’s the dog-scientist.

So I gently moved him a little and he lets out a little yip to notify me that “oh, no no – thank you. i really don’t want to be moved right now”. Just kidding. the fucker growl snapped at me with tooth-to-skin contact. So slapped him in the face and calmly reminded him of the situation: “You can either live 4 weeks…or 4 minutes…what’ll it be sailor?”. I found out later that earlier in the day my dad tried to move him as well and with the same result, except his snap broke skin. mm NNNN. i dont think so…

The last time Buddy bit me I punched him in the face a bunch of times. I caught him eating a candy bar on my bed and as soon as he saw me he recognized that the warden had just caught him misbehaving and tried to hide it a little. As I approached, I gave him the slow verbal “noooo” scold and slowly reached to take the candy away. He showed fang and bit my hand – causing a large puncture wound in the fleshy area between your thumb and index finger. Within a fraction of a second (about the time it takes to pull an arm back for momentum) my attacker had received 2 return blows to the face and then one more just cuz I had to assert dominance since after the return-fire he snarled in response to try and intimidate me into leaving it at that. I don’t think so.

Whining about abuse or the old “he’s just a dog” line won’t get you anywhere. The man-dog relationship is as follows: You, wolf, will be loyal, alert me to danger, and defend and protect me and my family; in return, you will no longer have to worry about food or shelter.

So there’s no biting – even if its a primal response. and when there is, in cases where instict takes control, then you learn mans-instict to beat the fuck out of you immediatly afterward.

That’s more just a fun aside though. Buddy hasn’t gotten cranky in his old age and usually allows/appreciates being helped (especially when he lays on tile and cant get up because he can’t gain traction on a non-carpet surface).

Still though… tic toc…

My mom and I took him to the vet against my dads wishes cuz he didn’t want to get stuck with a $150 bill for a dog that’s just on his way to die. I agreed, but cast the deciding vote to go anyway since maybe we’d learn something that would at least ease his pain or make him more useful since he’s no good to me just laying there and occasionally eating. That’s what girlfriends are for.

Vet said he has phenomena and filled a small bottle with pills from a giant ass bottle that looked like it came from Costco. Good thing for my dads sake that it didn’t cost the $150 he complained about and we skated by with a total bill of only $260. awesome.

While waiting for a blood test to see if he had AIDS or whatever, I was looking around the room and took a few minutes to figure out wtf this sign next to the synchronized swimming bulldogs meant.

FOR YOUR SAFETY Please do not ask to restrain your animal? Why the hell would people be coming into a vet and asking to hold their wild ass attack dogs down and the vet being all “oh no no, we don’t want your own animal to bite you, so please let us be the ones to force it into submission thnx”.

Whatever. Buddy’s not breathing so hard anymore already and its easier for him to get up n stuff. Still an obese blog of gross, but when I’m not here visiting, my mom needs something to feed and nurture, so that’s not gonna change any time ever. He’ll die overweight and old. but not this week.

Sharp decline all around pretty recently. My dad enjoys reminding him that he’s going to die soon. He’ll walk by and observe him struggling to pick himself up or get out of the pool and will remark something like “yup… you’re not gonna be around too long” or “you don’t have a whole lot more time here ya know. you’re gonna be in the ground probably this year”. I think he’s got another 2-3 left on him though. If he kicks it before then, it will be because my mom enabled his morbid obesity.

He still looks pretty dashing, just like his old man though.
Cheers to graceful aging…

Picture: May 2009

same with animals i train him to kill. in Missouri he learned both “geese” and “ducks” to go chase away when they’d come up in my back yard (what, you dont remember that i lived on Lake St Louis? get your ass over the archives, bitch. wtf). but now he only knows “squirrel”. so rabbits, coyotee’s and racial minorities that wander into my back yard get called “squirrel” so his ears perk up and he knows to go run and kill it.