## Rest in peace, Toby Toby was a small, angry and horny dog. He was part of our family until quite recently, when he had to be helped cross the bridge. => ./img/toby.png picture of Toby when he was already not feeling well He was my grampa’s dog, a chihuahua. He lived in a piece of land my grampa had, half of it covered, but with an opening to a yard. My grampa would visit him, bring him food, let him free to walk around the village, and be with him for a while. Then, almost ten years ago, my grampa died. That piece of land has a well, and it is perhaps a ten minute drive from where we live. We would every other day go, fill a jug of water, bring him (and apparently, a cat from the area that seemed to share quarters with him) food, and such. As life goes, my grampa’s brother inherited my great grampa’s house, across the street from Toby’s quarters, and his daughter’s family would come on weekends and whatnot, and let Toby roam free all over the village. It was thus how Toby fathered many pups in that area. Anyway, some years ago, we decided that Toby was not having human contact enough, so we moved him to our house. He spent his days in the back yard, and slept inside at night, and all was well. He got more in shape (he got to look like a small four-legged barrel before coming here), and… such things happen with chihuahuas, kept losing teeth. There was one problem: we already had ‘adopted’ three other dogs, two females and a male. Toby being the natural born Casanova he was, would lose his mind when the ladies were in heat. Full days he spent howling like the magnificent beast he surely was in his own chihuahua mind, profoundly lamenting the gates that would keep him separated from the ladies. But, last thing we needed were more puppies to take care of, truth be told. Astute readers would have noticed that the word ‘adopted’ was put between quotes in that previous paragraph. These ‘adoptions’ presented themselves under a variation of this story: dog is found on the street, dog needs a place, dog stays. So goes life in the semi-rural part of the world where we live. One thing Toby kept until the very end: his hatred toward me in particular. I won’t say it was totally unwarranted (after all, I did try rubbing his belly that one time, and he didn’t like it), but I feel the scale of it might have been a bit undeserved. Seriously, that was all it took. And I only tried to rub his belly because I thought he would like it. He held that grudge until his last days. If I tried to pet his head, he would start growling. If I had to pick him up to bring him inside because he was taking too long, he would try to bite me (thank goodness for his teeth scarcity)… But we mostly got along, and he still would, in his magnanimous grace, accept the small pieces of meat I would chop for him everyday. He was a voracious eater (and, sidenote, because I wouldn’t be doing his memory full justice if I didn’t mention this, had a disproportionately huge penis. That might have helped him become the ladies’ dog he was, who knows), so when he started eating less and less, we knew something was wrong. A visit to the vet, and we got the news: kidney failure. He was an old dog, although I have been at times convinced he was immortal and would outlive us all. Maybe his internal ‘hate’ gland was keeping him alive, out of sheer desire to wake up one more day and growl at me. He was old, and this was no surprise, but it was still a sad day when we went back to the vet and helped him sleep one last time. Rest in peace, little fucker, I find myself writing with a couple tears running down my cheek. Anyway, let these words honor the memory of Toby, a trembling sack of anger and nerves that was very loved in this house. Tags: animals, dogs, sad => tag_animals.gmi animals => tag_dogs.gmi dogs => tag_sad.gmi sad ```simple horizontal line --------------- ``` => index.gmi gemlog index => ../index.gmi Capsule index => / Site root