Vina Apsara (A Boxador, and a very good girl)

Vina Apsara was a Boxador, part Boxer, part Labrador. While her brother favored his boxer ancestry, Vina looked like a yellow lab with only the faintest trace of boxer linings in her face. She died on a Monday because she was sick and I paid a veterinarian to put her to sleep. She could hardly walk but she was so brave at the end. She tried to avoid the room where she had two weeks earlier endured an ultrasound, so I picked her up and carried her to the table where the injections would be administered. She did not cry. She did not yelp at the catheter injection. As the serums were administered, I was upset and held her face in my hands and she sensed my pain and lifted her heavy head to lick my face a couple of times. I know it was her sense to comfort me. I hope I gave her some comfort. Her last 24 hours or so she could not go up and down steps and her back legs collapsed just from walking. The vet said that since nothing was discernible from the ultrasound or the x-ray, and since she wasn’t throwing up other than a time or two, that even though her stool had been black indicating internal bleeding, but had then started to turn back to brown when I got her on the prescribed diet of chicken and rice, (but then turned black again and liquid,) and since she had gone through the medications including the anti-inflammatory and the prednisone, given her age at the low end of her breed’s life expectancy, (eight to 12,) he recommended not breaking the bank. At the last minute perhaps because I was emotional, he said we could try the prednisone again and see if we could get her weight up. I did not want to go back into that level of discussion as I had already began the process of letting go of her. I dismissed it quickly and the vet got right back on the page I was on. We proceeded to put Vina to sleep. She was gentle and sweet right until she went completely to sleep. Mark was there on the other side of the table petting and comforting Vina along with me. He was also emotional. It’s hard to let go of a friend who never challenges you, only wants to play and eat and sleep, best of all at your side. I went to bed last night in a house that made all the same noises as when Vina was alive. I’d always attributed the random noises I’d hear from my bed to her switching her sleep positions or whatever out in the living room. Vina wasn’t out there though. She had ceased to exist earlier in the day. I roiled in bed for some time before sleep came, thinking about the chicken breasts I’d been boiling for her for three weeks, buying them in bulk at Costco. She had stopped eating completely for two days. When I saw the vet, he said: chicken and rice. Vina wasn’t fond of the rice. Some days she ate a little bit of it. I mixed the chicken in with the rice and she picked through it as best she could trying to get the chicken and not the rice. I was giving her half a breast twice per day at the end. In retrospect it wasn’t enough to get her weight up. She would only eat so much on her own but if I sat there and fed her by hand she would eat more. I’m cursed now with the feeling that I should have hand-fed her more and more. I had no idea the reason her legs were collapsing was the weight loss and I do think that makes me an idiot, but what do I know about these things? Had the doctor told me that sooner than about one minute before we put her to sleep. perhaps I would have brought her home and hand fed her five times a day. This is what is tormenting me. I could have done that. I would have done that. Vina deserved that. Maybe she would have gained weight. We knew she had high kidney levels and really high calcium from her bloodwork which feels like an eternity ago, (it was all of $2k ago,) but it was only three weeks ago. Given these factors and the internal bleeding maybe I get a pass for being a dumbass. I don’t know. She was a dog-not a human. Still, this dog was the absolute sweetest, gentlest, good-natured dog I’ve ever known. We got a puppy 18 months ago because my daughter is. The dog is a picturesque Malamute-Husky with piercing turquoise blue eyes. She was bad natured however and fought with Vina. For her part Vina tried to avoid her but did learn to fight back. She’s a short-haired dog so the scars that wild animal gave her on her face stayed. For me they were reminders of what I had subjected her to with that little beast that wanted to dominate her. Mika, (the husky,) fought from the ground and she has that long, pointy face that seemed to confound Vina. Still, Vina got her down there a few times and they drew blood from one another and Vina outweighed Mika by a good 30-35 pounds but she wanted nothing to do with that violence. She was happy to stop when I stuck my hand in there and pulled her back because she was a gentle creature. (For her part Mika was essentially a good dog, and is a good dog though she’s moved to my daughter’s other house with her mom. She’s great with people, still does not like other dogs.) Out in public Vina shied away from other dogs. When she was a puppy she yelped like a stuck pig when we tried to take her to the bark park. Her senses overloaded and we had to disappoint her brother, (Eddie,) who was ready to make friends and dominate. Eddie bit Vina once on the side. It was my fault. We were out walking and Eddie was the clear alpha, but I made them sit side by side for a picture but Eddie felt like Vina was trying to get in front of him. He was fierce and had her on her back so quick I acted from shock when I gave Eddie a roundhouse slap because he refused to heed my call to back off. It was a half hour later when I realized Vina was bleeding from her side. She had about a two-inch wound and she required stitches. Once the incident was over, she went right back to being Eddie’s sidekick. Vina loved humans and maybe trusted too much. I wanted her to be formidable because at 75 lbs. she looked the part from over the fence into our back yard. Any hand that reached to her she gave a sniff and was only too happy to get a pat on the head though. When she was young we used to joke that she wasn’t the smartest. That was just her follower nature though. Eddie led and made decisions until he met his demise too early at the hands of dogbane. At mealtime Vina got to her bowl and ate like crazy l’est Eddie finish first and want some of her food. In turn if for some reason he did not finish his portion and walked away she was always there to eat it when he wasn’t looking. Eddie stayed close to his fighting weight. Vina was a chow hound. She was always ready for a bone, a treat, a meal, dry food, wet food, heck-once I caught her in my room eating Scramble’s, (the cat,) food. I gave her a stern talking to and it never happened again. It’s been eight days now since Vina went to sleep. The emotions remain so close to the surface. I miss her. When I come home from being out, I always walk to the back of the house because I always did that, to look and see where she was back there and if she wanted to come in. In the morning I only take care of myself and its heartbreaking losing the rhythm of that routine that was letting her out, filling her water bowls, making her breakfast. I removed her bed yesterday. I cleaned it and put it in the garage. I gave her treats away to the German Shepherds next door. There’s more to do but I can only do so much at a time. Vina’s demise punctuates this strange season I am living. About 4-5 months ago my 19-year-old son followed his sister’s lead and decided he prefers to live primarily at his mom’s, though he comes over for a day or two here and there. My daughter left nearly two years ago, and she does not come and stay the night whatsoever, hence why I converted her bedroom into my office. She knows she’s welcome and always has a place here just like my son knows. They both went to high school over that way. Their friends are closer over there. Their jobs are over there, and their current school is about equidistant. In the case of my son he far prefers his computer for gaming at his moms to the one he has here. Such is life. About a month after Mark left, (the son,) Scramble passed. She was our cat and she was with us for 15 years. She was sick and in the last couple of months, she was a real handful to care for. It was easier to let go of her than Vina though, perhaps because she had really been sick for a couple of years. Letting go of her included some relief. By the time Vina passed, about three months after Scramble, I sensed the empty nest. My house was cleaner. If I wanted to, I could leave even overnight without concern. Ultimately though, this is a mean season I am living right now. My emotions remain so close to the surface, primarily tied to Vina because she was just the best dog ever. It wasn’t her time yet, either. I feel like the sparrows made her sick. They thought her outside water bowl was a bath. I bought a bath for them and refreshed it twice daily, but it did not stop them from finding her bowl and luxuriating in it and finally secreting in it. The vet refused to confirm this notion but what else? A few days ago I woke to a text from one of my best friend’s wives. Tim and I were inseparable for several years in my 20s and we were close friends from high school all the way into my 30s. The river of life ebbs and flows and the sediment below shifts and Tim went south after he got married and established his business in south Orange County, while I stayed based up here in the San Gabriel Valley. We texted every so often and got together on odd occasions. I was working in Newport Beach and Aliso Viejo in the late aughts, and Tim would come to my office at lunchtime, and we’d go to a nearby park and play basketball like it was 1993 all over again. That guy and me-we lived to play basketball. His wife told me he had started having some health issues in January. In April he’d finally gotten a diagnosis of stage IV cancer, and the cancer was wrapped around his pulmonary artery. She said he was in the hospital, intubated, and he did not have long. Loss man. What the fuck? When I was young I was incapable of emoting. Literally, I could not muster up a good cry no matter what. When my mother figures passed, three in three years, I feigned being upset. It’s not that I wasn’t bothered but when you grow up with childhood trauma you enter a certain survival mode that shuts emotions down. I do remember having a good cry once, alone, (which was a problem for my uncle who raised me from 11 on,) the day after our dog Bear died. I was 15. I had a part-time job on Saturdays only and I came home around 2:30pm and no one was home and I went to the back of our driveway where Bear had been rolled up in an old carpet for some reason, awaiting the Humane Society. He was gone. I sat out of view from the street, and I sobbed like nothing I had ever known. Maybe its dogs. They depend on us. Bear favored me of anyone in the house. At the end I was the only person he would let pick him up and he would still growl some of those times. I guess he had cancer. There is a line from Bear to Vina. Bear hurt but I got it together when my parents pulled into the driveway. My uncle met me in the living room and said he was bothered that I had not cried the night before when Bear was passing. My Aunt said look at his eyes, Mark, he’s been crying. I had been. Losing Bear hurt a lot. Vina was the same but different. I found Vina when she was a puppy out in Redlands through Craigslist. I found Eddie, I should say. Almost as an afterthought I asked the sellers if they’d like to give me a discount if I took two? (There were three,) They said no but I added Vina anyway. One should not buy dogs off Craigslist but I had become disenchanted with the process for “rescuing,” a puppy or two. My kids were 11 and 13. I grew tired of all of that and the pricing so I found these Boxadors, (Boxer and Labrador Retriever mixes,) and Terra, (the daughter,) and I took a drive out to Redlands. These dogs were so cute, perhaps Eddie in particular. We took them straight to our veterinarian and had them checked out, then we went to Mark’s after school program at the Y to pick him up. The place sprang to life over these two little cuties. We batted around some names that evening. Eddie, after Eddie Vedder, was accepted quickly and easily. (I’m not sure why but of course I liked it.) Terra wanted to name Vina Daisy, which I liked but Mark did not like. At some point I said Vina because I was thinking of Vina Apsara, a character from a Salman Rushdie novel: The Ground Beneath Her Feet. She was an Indian popstar in the story and I remember being sort of mesmerized by the character. Terra and Mark agreed and Eddie and Vina it was. I got them both these great matching collars I found online with their names and my number engraved on them. Well, that was later actually, as they reached full size. I had Vina from the day she left her mother. She was always secondary, the afterthought in ways, but she was sweet. Most people mistook her for a pitbull because she had that big square jaw. When they all left it was just me and Vina in this too big house with these too big yards, and more rooms than necessary. It was kind of perfect though, while it lasted. I lost some weight, nothing to brag about, maybe 10 pounds when it all settled out. I did it by walking with Vina. I can’t walk at present. It just makes no sense to me. Vina and went down Cypress to Citrus, down Citrus to Badillo, back up Badillo to Azusa then up to San Bernardino and over to Lark Ellen before turning to home on Cypress. We often went the other way on Citrus, up to Arrow Highway, over to Hollenback, down to Covina, over to Azusa, back to Cypress to turn for home. She loved the walk. I guess all dogs do. The smells bring them to life. All these other dogs with all these other smells. Vina was my willing companion who always started our walks trotting like a show pony. I’ll always remember that energetic version of her, once I get past the version that reached up and licked my face to console me as she was getting her injections. That one is hard to displace. I called out and jumped in the car to go visit my friend in the hospital. His eyes got wide when he saw me and he smiled and he squeezed my hand hard. This season is hard and while it feels good to be able to feel, this season is not welcome. I’ve had enough.

Vina (in foreground) & Eddie