The Dog

Warning! This post includes graphic descriptions of injury to an animal

On Tuesday, I finished my homework, and I took a shower. Coming out of the shower I heard my host sister wailing, stronger than how she had before when her and grandma fight. This was an urgent wail that needed attention. I came to my front door and saw grandma and my eleven-year-old host sister (Kam) staring at the family dog on the ground surrounded by blood. First thing I did was grab hysterical Kam so she wouldn’t have to look at it. She smelled like puke and cried on my shoulder. I thought it was dead, there’s no way it wasn’t with its head split open like that. Mom went back inside to finish her massage while the dog tried to crawl away probably trying to terminally burrow. I had no idea what they were going to do because there wasn’t immediate action, so I got even more distressed. Kam then went next door to get a number for a vet and I went with her because there’s no way that girl should have to do that on her own. She is the most courageous girl I’ve known. Even just a few days later and she’s back to normal, playing and smiling and appearing happy, will only tell me she misses him once. Coming back inside she called the vet, and from what little Thai I knew and how short the conversation was, the vet definitely knew my family by name. Everyone knows everyone.

Once the vet pulled up half an hour later, she poked its open head and dragged this poor dog to the table in front of our house and chained it there so it couldn’t crawl to peace. I hosed down the bio-mess while the vet gave it four shots. I was praying under my breath that one of those were to put it down at least, but they weren’t. The shots didn’t even sedate him. He kept crying and bleeding and pulling away. I went back inside to watch Japanese game shows with my host sister, and she distracted me from the noise the dog made more than I distracted her. The vet went away and I told them it needed to die, it was going to die. But they were going to try to save it. Mom pantomimed stitching up its head and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t go to bed until 1 am (may not sound that late, but I typically go to sleep before 10 pm) and didn’t sleep that night. I played music as loud as was necessary so I didn’t have to hear that damn dog crying. When I woke up in the morning, Kam’s poor head was buried in a teddy bear bigger than she was. I ate breakfast with my headphones and got ready with my headphones so I wouldn’t have to continue listening to it delusionally wailing. I went to training, again praying it would be dead and gone by the time I got home. 

It wasn’t.

 Instead it was relocated to our outdoor kitchen in the backyard. Head stitched up but still screaming like it wasn’t one of the dogs that gets to go to heaven. My older host sister, mom of the younger host sister, was sitting over it and crying. I’ve never seen her act so affectionately towards this dog except when she dumped our leftover rice into its bowl. This I couldn’t believe, one that it was alive and two that they would try. But I desperately wanted to put that dog out of its misery, for my sake and the family’s sake. They couldn’t go on listening to a dog they love scream like that. So I looked up how much Ibuprofen it would take to kill a dog that size and my hands shook until I decided not to do it. My decision was that experiencing the death process with them on their terms was the best choice, because I was a guest and had no say over the life of their pet. And they thought they didn’t either. Everything falls from the tree in its own ripeness. And the night it got hit was not its night. Neither was the entire next day.

From what I could learn about this viewpoint from my Thai trainers, In Buddhist belief, you build up merit, a kind of karma, and when your good deeds are run out then you’re done, and when they’re not you keep going. That evening I gathered dinner and helped my host mom set it up in the living room. This was around 7pm, and the dog finally quieted down, but it was still breathing--panting hard. It pawed towards relief until 10pm the night after the accident when it finally died. My prayers were answered and my family’s weren’t. They wanted it to live, and my older host sister got drunk for the day after until she felt she got it all out. And I’m so glad its over. But now in times of hardship, I have learned how Thais view death, and it is strikingly different from an American view. This lens will be invaluable, but damn I hated learning that lesson. Learning that I have no control, even when it may be merciful to me. To my Thai family it wouldn’t have been merciful, it would have been stealing karma, good luck from the dog. I cannot control the soul cycles they believe that dog has lived through. And my culture cannot even define death. To my beloved Thai family, it would have been crueler to put it down, to not even give it a chance. That is how we love differently in death. It is not worse, it is not better, but it is a different definition of life itself.

The morning after it died, its body stayed in the kitchen while the entire family and me ate breakfast next to it. That afternoon Kam told me she helped dig the grave. My skin grew an inch thicker that day. But my heart softened to them even more. The weirdest part is that the homework I wrote a mere 10 minutes before the accident was all about how I didn’t like that dog, it got hit a couple weeks prior and had a bum leg, and I didn’t see my family get it any help or attention then. I feel like I cursed it, which is weird knowing all you do about my family through my “Ghost” blogpost.

But now I’ve been trying to process how to get those images out of my mind, how to think of it, and how to support my family. Now I have to think about how real this is--what is more real than death. Hopefully this will at least be the hardest thing I have to face while here. I can take professional hardships but damn, this was intense. Now I have a better idea what this job will take, and it will take being hard in order to be soft.