Another Goodbye

My parents had to put their dog to sleep yesterday morning. My parents had to put my dog to sleep yesterday morning.

Yoshi was diagnosed with lymphoma on December 23rd, which kinda put a damper on Christmas. Treating with Prednisone, he was supposed to have six-ish reasonable months. Even with that (apparently optimistic) timeline, this last month has felt like a deathwatch; the lumps on his chest that first indicated something was wrong grew horrifically large in the first week, and other signs just kept cropping up to indicate that the end was going to be sooner rather than later.

At least my folks fed him well for his last month. Like all dogs, Yoshi loved food.

Yoshi was a bright, gentle, socially awkward boy. He loved my folks, and my sister and me to a lesser extent (we moved out three years after my folks adopted him), but was never terribly comfortable around most other people. He wanted to play with other dogs, but never really seemed to know how (the result of his backyard-breeder early years?); he liked to chase bikes—at least until he actually caught one, the way my dad tells it.

He fit my family extraordinarily well.

yoshi

Yoshi’s distinguishing feature was that underbite. His eyes were brown, and did not glow like a vampire. I’ll miss him.

Oregon’s Racist History: I’ve lived here my entire life, and I never learned anything about this—but it explains so much about our demographics. (To be clear, I’ve experienced damn little racism in my life; hopefully things have changed for the better…)

powered by wordpress