Putting Down the Doggy, Thrifty Chinese Style

Yes, it has been some time since last I blogged: I still have two jobs, I sing with two bands (one is over I think but I'm not sure) I've spent two weekends filming a pilot, still have two guinea pigs the size of overweight chihuahuas, but I have only one doggie, my beloved original model. The other doggy started having seizures--a hell of a thing to watch--and given his advanced age and the growth on his junk (his favorite toy) I took the horrible step of having him put down. 

The walk to the vet was a nightmare--my ayi disapproved of spending any money on putting him down, and offered to poison him for free, with a quick chuck of the body into the rubbish bin. Then, a stay of execution occurred when my Chinese granny's Peke passed away and she asked me to let Bobby live for another week or so as she couldn't bear to have two Pekinese doggies go to heaven in the same week. Finally, I knew it was time, asked Ayi to come with me, and set off in the rain with Bobby on a leash, trusting us and trotting along with his wide Peke smile. First, for some reason known only to Ayi, we began to trot in the wrong direction. "You'll see where we're going," she promised. We ended up at a dog grooming place where, on the doorstep, she asked the dog groomer (and I swear to God I am not kidding) if the groomer had anything to kill the dog with as (again, no kidding) "The vet costs 500 kuai and we're looking for a thrifty way to get rid of it." A thought ran through my head--this is not the woman you should run to with an unplanned pregnancy for sure--and even the groomer was appalled. After receiving a firm "No" ("Are you sure there's not a heavy brick or something lying around that you're not using?") we headed off in the cold and rain to the vet's office.

 I was furious and even Bobby lost his customary good humor and seemed to slink unhappily towards his fate. Once at the vet's office, Ayi explained what we wanted. I spoke to the vet, described the symptoms, and had the vet's approval --even approbation--for what we were about to do. They allowed us to stay with him while it happened, so we were holding him during the first injection which knocked him out, his head lolling like a sleepy teddy bear, and when the final injection was added and he passed immediately, without pain, Ayi reared her head back and howled, adding a heart broken wail of "Booobeeeeeeee!" I couldn't believe it--this is a woman who offered to cure his testicular cancer with two bricks and wanted to off him with rat poison, but there she was howling like a Klingon performing a ritual for a comrade killed in action. It was only fitting. There was some stir in the outside office (Look, a foreigner crying over her dog!) but to my surprise it wasn't like that,  it was more of a feeling of sympathy for us, and a wave of fear for the time when their own beloved doggies would pass. 

Princess doggie number one has felt a little lost since that day and we are not planning on replacing Bobby. I figure another rescue dog will turn up one day and I'm not in a hurry to replace my lovely smiling companion. He was a darling little thing and I am glad he's out of pain now. I sleep better without his grunts and snores under the bed, or the constant barking ("Someone's on the stairs! The stairs! The stairs! Now they're gone!") and I can walk around barefoot without someone trying to lick my feet. Still, a work to my friends: if I have seizures, don't let Ayi take me to the hairdressers, and check her hand bag for bricks. There is a thing known as being TOO thrifty and I am not taking any more chances.

If Wishes Were Horses, I'd Get to Ride

I grew up lower middle class, and this meant we despised the people immediately above us as well as those below us, namely people with horses.   Horses were, I was told, nervous animals and people who loved them were crazy. In fact, all animal lovers were nuts, and people with exotic pets were not only crazy but probably neglectful of their children as well. I can attest to some extent on the last one--I have yet to meet someone with a pet monkey who was a good parent or even a decent pet owner, and I recently dated someone with a snake. (Not a code word here, he really had a snake. And I wouldn't have gone out with him but I had recently met a kind of interesting co-worker who had a tattoo and snakes but was versed in Anglo Saxon poetry, so I thought, what the hell, give the guy with a snake a shot.) For those of you who care, it was a python and he raised it from a tiny snake from an exotic pet market he found here in Beijing. He made the mistake of bringing it to my house and threatening to feed the guinea pigs to it. I am not that fond of my guinea pigs but I am their owner and treat them very well and was not going to see them being terrified and teased and turned into dinner, even if it would relieve me of spending over a hundred bucks a month on guinea pig feed. So out he went. Both guinea pigs are now about half the size of a football and getting bigger by the second, so perhaps it was my loss after all--but I couldn't bear the thought of Squeaky and Snowy feeling panic or distress or pain. BTW, the dogs were out getting groomed so they missed the excitement, although they freaked out when they got home and smelled his patchouli that lingered in the air like the image of a  bloated corpse burned into your retinas. (It's still there.)

As to horses, well--in truth, I loved horses and when I had enough money together would try to organize a trip with other friends to rent a horse for an hour. I didn't have enough money for a lesson, mind you, so most of my time on horseback was spent trying to giddy-up, but I felt the most tremendous guilt for liking horses, a liking that began well before I read National Velvet or Misty of Chincoteague.  I still like them, I still wish I could ride properly, and I still hope that some day I will learn how. I boosted myself into middle class with the dint of my college education, and I lifted myself out of middle class morality by dint of having absolutely no money, no social security, and no social status in the form of a husband or even at this point family. I get to like what I like, and if that means taking in rescue dogs and a rescue guinea pig (and getting that one a guinea pig of its own so it wouldn't be alone) then so be it.  I'm not neglecting my child--hell, she's in a good university and doing well--and my dogs don't have more clothes than I do, although I do kind of envy one of her this little pink coat that has the sweetest pink bones embroidered on the collar. Here's the benefit of being the crazy single lady on the block: I can do whatever the hell I want, and like whatever I want, and there's no one here to look down their nose for my doing it. Yay me.