✯Sincerely, Me✯

☯LivingWithMyself☯
2016-06-08 20:57:42 (UTC)

Cookie


Dear Reader,

It was Easter Sunday when we found them.


We were getting ready to leave and go to my aunts for dinner,
and I was clean from the shower that I had the night before.

I was told to not go outside because I'd get dirty, and have to take a shower.

But there was puppies outside, and I wanted to see them.

So I did what I was told not to do.

There were five of them, except I wasn't able to get a good look because of how fast they were all eagerly chasing me.
They each desperately wanted all of my attention, and I walked backwards as I pet them, dodging their tongues as they tried to kiss me.

I remember being told off as I returned to the house,
I sat on the side of the chair waiting for the bathroom to be open for me to shower,
As a bead of sweat formed on my nose.

And after I bathed, we left. I was dressed in a one piece, blue dress with thin straps.

And we returned from the party earlier with my cousin and aunt who lives behind us.
We played outside with the puppies, and I held each of them up to my cousin so she could tell me which was a boy,
and which was a girl.

Two girls, and three boys.


Eventually they all had temporary names, and then official names... and we learned their personalities.

Sparky was immediately my favorite.
He was black all over with a little bit of white on his tummy.
He had thick luxurious fur.


Snowball wasn't actually all white.
She had black splotches all over.
Why we named her snowball, I don't know.
She was the meanest out of the litter.


Berry was the runt. He was thinner and smaller, almost looked like a different breed.
He had the same color scheme snowball did.

Chewy's name explains his personality pretty well.
He liked to bite.


And then, the sweetest and most overlooked of the litter.
We called her Rosey first, but then later changed it to Cookie.
She was black, brown, and white.
She and Chewy were nearly twins.

She had white that surrounded her nose in a circle,
And little sock-like white on her feet.
A joke we came up with that is that she had stepped in "milk"

She had a habit of wandering away from the pack sometimes.

I remember once we had to chase her into our neighbors yard because she was straying to far,
And we must have scared her because she "screamed" and fell over when we caught up to her.

The names Sparky and Cookie were recycled names from a litter of puppies that were on our property previous.
They were my cousins' dogs' babies.
They were never domesticated because they were too afraid of us.
They were eventually given up.

The puppies were all short with long, medium sized bodies.
Minus Berry that is.


My cousin's dog, was named Girl.
She was a German Shepard.
The puppies all thought that she was their mother, and she hated it.

She taught them to chase cars.
To go to the river below my aunts house.

She'd try to take them off, but they always managed to find their way back.


I remember one summer day,
It was pouring down rain.
This was probably the most intense rains I can ever remember.

We got a call from my aunt,
and the next thing I knew,
My grandfather and I had to go out in it,
And help get the puppies out from under my aunts trailer.

They had dug underneath it looking for shelter.

Once we got them out,
We packed them all in an old dog house in her yard,
and placed a board and a cement block in front of it (With a space at the top. It wasn't a tall board. It was tall enough to keep them in.)

I came inside completely drenched.
I remember changing clothes.
I always hated pulling off wet clothes.

We made a pen for them to stay in at night.

We had to shovel poop out of it ever so often.


I remember one morning I went out to feed them,
And as I reached over the side and poured the kibble into a food dish,
Snowball just attacked Cookie for no reason.
They were in the back of the pen away from the food, so it wasn't about the food.

It scared me, and I fell off the block in front of the door of the pen and onto my butt.
Hearing Cookie scream.
I was afraid... I had a fear of big, aggressive dogs, but I hadn't seen these puppies get aggressive.


But suddenly, I became angry.

I jumped back onto the block, reached over the pin and grabbed Snowball by her front legs and pulled her off of Cookie,
and outside.
And I spanked her.


Soon after that,
Chewy had bit my cousin bad enough to draw blood.

And we were told we had to choose two puppies to keep, and three were going.

We decided on Cookie, and Sparky.


I remember going with my grandma and aunt as we took Berry, Snowball, and Chewy to the animal shelter.
I remember trying not to be sad.
I picked each of them up and hugged them close.
My way of saying goodbye.

And we handed them off, and left.

I was told I did a good job not crying.

And Cookie and Sparky remained outside dogs for awhile.


Until one day, when E and I came home from school.

Sparky was barking at us frantically, and something inside me felt I needed to follow him.
So we did, and he led us to Cookie.
She was laying underneath the gas tank, and she was happy to see us,
but she couldn't stand up.

We picked her up and brought her to the side porch and examined her.
She was skint in several places, and we were scared for her.
We waited until our grandmother came back.
R went with her to the vets office, and it turned out that she had been hit by a car,
and had broke her leg.


She came home with a cast that was too big, and fell off right after they got out of the car.
She had to go back and get another one.
And she began staying in the house.


The first night she hobbled around on her cast,
Banging on the doors to let her in our rooms.


And then she and Sparky were both fixed, and both had to stay inside longer.

Sparky stayed with my aunt.

And that's how they both became inside-outside dogs.


Cookie learned to "knock" on the door when she wanted inside.
At night when you opened the door for her, all you could see was the white around her nose.
She was incredibly derpy.

Her nickname was Cookie Muncher...
And we had an inside "joke".
I'm sure other people do it too, where they give their dog a "voice"
or "trait."
We gave cookie this thing where she just had this epic "Yus!"
I wish anyone who is reading this, could hear how we said it.

All three of them wandered around, and would come back.
Sparky was afraid of my aunts air vents, and Cookie loved laying on them.

They both had thick, almost winter-ready fur.

Whenever it rained, Cookie always stayed outside, and waited until she was soaking wet until she decided to "knock" on the back door.
She always had the funniest expression on her face when we opened the door to let her in.
We called her a "soggy Cookie"

One Christmas,
She sniffed out her gift, and tore it open herself and began eating her treats.
It was the funniest thing.


And then, something horrible happened to Girl.

We heard a frantic knock on the back door, and when it opened,
My cousin was there on our porch crying hard.

She had gone missing, and they found her that night under the building.
She was tore across her torso.
We don't know how it happened, but it was more than likely done by a car.

They rushed her to the vet, but she was beyond helping.
They had to sew her up with a shoelace.

If she healed from it,
She would never walk or bark again.

Three days and more trips to the vet, they eventually decided that they just needed to put her down.
She was suffering, and was constantly tearing back open...
She was in my cousins's bathroom, and we were told to go and say goodbye.
Girl was in so much pain. You could see it in her eyes, and the way she held her ears back...

My cousin was crying so hard that her face was red.

They didn't charge much her since she had already put so much into trying to save her.

After that,
I remember how down everyone was..
How much I wanted to help everyone feel better.

I tried giving my cousin a little picture I had of her,
but she wouldn't take it.


I remember asking my aunt the stupid question "What's wrong?" at the dollar store.


I'm not sure why,
but I remember scooping up Cookie and Sparky and holding them close while laying on the side porch and looking up into the clouds.
For some reason I thought it was only a matter of time until we lost them too.

And I was half right.


Sparky was hit so hard by a car,
that it knocked his collar off.
He was killed by it, so he didn't suffer like Girl did.


Despite being hit by a car,
Cookie continued chasing them, and we tried stopping her when we caught her.


I remember hearing dogs barking outside at night,
and hoping she wasn't one of them.


One day, she was.

She had a gash or a hole in her side from a tooth..
We took her to the vet for that.

At some point..
I guess I just started detaching myself from Cookie.

The more she showed signs of aging...
The more I distanced myself.

And I know that's horrible to say...
But it's the truth.

I was afraid of keeping her close, because I knew I would lose her eventually.

And then, Trouble, our Chihuahua was put down because she was getting too old.

Cookie progressively became a dirty dog.

She liked rolling in stuff, and smelling terrible.
We all washed our hands after petting her.
Giving her a bath was a difficult and basically a fruitless task, because she immediately made sure to get dirty again.

Later that same year, we got a puppy named Rocky.
He's taken up with me.
That was nearly five years ago.
That made Cookie four years old.


It took awhile, but eventually her and Rocky got along.
They even played together.

I remember the first time they started playing together finally.


And then over the last five years...
Cookie began aging more...
White hair crept up her face...
Her bad leg started crippling with arthritis,
as well as her other ones.

We had another dog named Bella for a short time, but we had to give her up because she was too much to handle.


While I was in my floral design class in my first semester of my senior year,
I noticed on Google Earth on the street view of my house,
Cookie can be seen sitting in the front yard, watching the Google street car pass.


Last Summer,
My aunt got out her clippers and shaved Cookie's fur the shortest it has ever been...
Because of how thick her fur is, summers have always been brutal for her.
We always gave her haircuts, but it grew back in no time...
And we couldn't ever get it short enough.

Well, her fur didn't grow back after that.
We didn't know why.


She started going downhill after that.

There was a snow here that lasted a day.
It was completely unexpected, but it was beautiful.
Cookie loved snow very much, and she stayed outside in it that day..

I remember once when we were younger,
It had snowed and I ran outside in it, fell to my knees and started bunching some snow together,
And she ran passed me, and jumped in the little mound I was building, ruining it and ran off.
It was cute.

That was the last snow she got to see.


She began drinking lots and lots of water at a time.

Her eyes had glazed over, and she always seemed to just not be all there.

She didn't clean herself up after she used the bathroom outside anymore..


She was just so deteriorated...
And we had brought it up every once in awhile,
About having to put her down.


And last week we gave her a bath.
We noticed that her foot seemed to have been mashed..
Her toes were all bent out of shape.. and were red.


Monday I was woke up, and was told we were going to take her to the vet.


And in my half asleep state, I knew what was going to happen, and I was distraught over it.
She didn't have a collar on, and I wanted her on a leash,
So I looked around, and found Rocky's old collar.
As I was trying to adjust it, grandma took it from me and adjusted it wrong...
When she gave it back, I fixed it and put it on her and got a short hand leash we had.

We got her into the van, and I got into the backseat with her.
And I petted her a few times...
I was scared to touch her for some reason...
In the car, I fought back tears.


When we arrived,
She got out and went inside first to check her in.

I told her she was a good dog, and I petted her more.


Two nurses came out and helped us with her.

I had to walk behind her to keep her going. She was never good at walking on a leash.


I helped her on the scale, and it was around 37 pounds.

We were taken into a room immediately..

And the two nurses talked about what our options were with her.

She told us we could pursue the answers to her issues, or we could put her down.

Keep in mind,
She was 9 years old.


We told them that we wanted to decide after she saw the vet.

He came in and examined her.
He recognized us from bringing our two new puppies there...

And he looked over her,
We told him about all of the symptoms she was having,
And he said it sounded like a kidney/liver problem..

And then he told us that pursuing what's wrong with her,
would likely come up with something we couldn't fix,
because whatever is wrong, was due to old age.

My grandma was straddling between putting her down, or pursuing treatment...
And she nearly decided to just pursue treatment,

And then the nurses brought her leg to his attention,
And he was shocked by it..
He felt it, and said that it was very badly infected,
And that it had already spread up her leg,
And that once it reached her heart,
It would kill her.


My grandma decided it was time to put her down.

We didn't want her to suffer anymore.

They left the room to prepare for it,
And as soon as they did, I couldn't hold it back anymore.
I burst into tears..
I started pulling off paper towels and dabbing my eyes with them..


Grandma tried to give me the keys to just go to the car,
But I couldn't... I couldn't leave Cookie.
I wanted to be there with her..

The first time in years my grandma's seen me cry.


The vet came back in gave her a small sedative, put her onto the table and wrapped her in a blanket.

And she layed down, faced away from us.
I could only see her ears and the back of her head.


And I saw the syringe filled with a pink substance,
And he injected it into her.

And grandma had her hand on her the entire time.

And after a little bit under a minute..
The blanket stopped rising and falling..

And the vet nodded and said to us softly: "Alright... she's gone."


And it was hard to believe it...

Death is so strange and hard to grasp to me.

It was hard to believe that everything just stopped...
That the life that was within her body was gone...

The the dog that had been in my life for 9 years was gone..
and that all that remained of her was her fluffy body, laying lifeless on a table.

As I write this...
I'm crying...


And we stood up, and he asked the nurses to walk us out.

Grandma gave me the key,
And I awkwardly walked out through the lobby of the vet's office.

Where lots of people were...
That didn't know my name, whether or not I had a cat or a dog...
but they all knew that I had just witnessed an animal pass.

And I tried avoiding eye-contact...

And I bet that they all held their pets a little closer...
Seeing someone leave a hospital or vet's office crying..
Isn't a something you forget...

I left the building,
And I cried more as I went to the car.


And as I sat in the car alone, waiting for grandma to pay them,
I whispered a silent goodbye...

I stopped crying as we left.

And we talked about how it was all we could have done for her...
She wasn't suffering anymore.

And we got home, and I sat on the couch.

When my grandpa came into the livingroom and sat down,
He asked me
"What did they do to Cookie."


And I whispered
"We put her down."

And it took him a second to process what he heard,
And he nodded.

Later, my aunt came to our house for dinner.
And she asked where Cookie was,
I gave her a look, not knowing how to tell her....
And she knew from my look what had happened..
And grandma and grandpa told her.

She didn't say anything for the rest of the meal.


It's been two days...
And I'm doing better.


I knew I needed to write this...

It's just hard to grasp that now when I go outside,
Cookie won't be in the yard somewhere...
When I hear a twig snap, or a crunch around me,
I'll think "Oh it's Cookie" and then I'll have to correct myself...

It's hard to grasp that now when we come home,
She won't be sitting in the driveway or on the porch waiting for us...


It's hard to grasp that she's gone...
That a part of my childhood is gone.

I have a picture hanging up on the wall behind me,
of my brother and I holding her as a puppy,
Where she has a derpy expression on her face...
Her fur is black where the white had been for a few years now...
And she's so much smaller than she was.

In that picture she looks happy...
and healthy...


And I have to remember that we tried giving her the best life we could..
but I wish that I could have been nicer, and loved her more... and made her time here better...

Even though I wasn't as close to her as I wish I was....
She was part of my everyday...


And now she isn't anymore.


Sincerely,
Yus!





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