At 10:56 a.m. today I get a text from my brother letting me know that the dog is dead. I immediately tried to call, but didn’t get a response back, so I sent him a wtf back. I am still at the wtf state and will be for some time. This post isn’t about life lessons nor about we are all going to die one day, it is just about a dog. A dog I loved, my brothers, my mom really didn’t care for him much, and especially my dad. He was truly my dad’s “best friend”, it was so hard seeing him today, but I do believe it helped him get through the rest of his day. No one wanted to tell my dad because we didn’t want to mess up it, but once I told him he was devastated.
His name is/was AJ, I had several names for him because he had different personalities at any given moment and it was so cool to trigger them anytime that I wanted. He would chase you around the couch and would want to keep on going and he loved barking for no reason at all. You knew not to touch him while he was eating because he will bite your finger (he has bit every single person in my family, including my dad and 8 year old nephew). He licked his balls and cock with pride and ironically I have tons of pictures of him doing so. AJ can jump really high, at least 2 feet, which is pretty impressive for a wiener dog. He had a couple of spots in the house that he stayed in which were my brother’s room underneath his desk or on his bed and in the living room floor right next to my dad who usually lays on the couch.
The routines will have to stop. Letting him out every morning by enticing him with some form of meat that my dad gladly does, letting him in when he scratches the back door that everyone does, listening to him bark at the neighbor’s dogs a couple of times a day, him running and then leaping towards you as you are laying on the bed, him protecting everyone except for me and ready to attack if I dared touch who he was protecting, and him just being him in general. I call it at times bi-polar, napoleon complex, craziness, or just being who he was that he saw fit around different people.
Like I said, this isn’t about life this and life that, but just about a dog, a pet, that became more real every single day that I got to know him for the past 3 years. Yes I know that we will probably get another dog, but this one was really special and ironically seeing him for the last time tonight helped me know that I can go on. I have had dogs die/get killed but it is always a different pain with all of the time you spent with that animal. I can see why people take care of their dogs the way that they do.
This post is for you AJ.
