Of Dogs and Mortality

I’ve been mostly immobilized with back trouble the last few days, but managed to get out for work this morning albeit somewhat slowly. As I left, I noticed that one of my two dogs, Ninja, didn’t come out to say good morning. While not unheard of, it is unusual, but I was running late.

He wasn’t there when I came home, either, so I went looking for him. He was, unfortunately, dead in the bamboo forest behind our pool.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Apart from having lost a family pet, I had to machete a path deep into the bamboo which grows… well, like bamboo… to reach the body, which had been there for at least 10 hours in the heat of day. He was pungent, to say the least. Then I had to extract a nearly 40 lb. dog carcass and manhandle it into bags, all the while attempting to avoid the flies and the inevitable bodily fluids which start to exude from a decomposing body.

After all that, I got to go in and break the news to my daughter. She took it surprisingly well. She looked like she was going to cry for a few moments and then the sadness switched off like a light bulb.

Still, not a good day.

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