It's Pretty Ok » The Great Sandino

If You’ve Lived in Japan

Lisa — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:16:47 +0000

I know, you’re thinking I never post and here I am going on a 3rd post about the dog. I promise this is the last one, and this one is really only intended for those of you who have lived here because I’m not sure anyone else can appreciate this in quite the same way. We opted to have Sandy cremated which was, I don’t know….a bit traumatic? on an already emotionally charged day (the place wasn’t open when we called so we had to sit and wait and wait with our deceased dog in the sterile vet exam room….crying, waiting, more waiting. The vet tech told us we could just leave Sandy there “for up to two weeks” (sob harder at the thought of Sandy sitting in a fridge (?) for two weeks). When the place finally opened the vet tech (she was Japanese) informed us we had to take her there. And, I dont know– I wasn’t envisioning like a doggie hearse or anything but I was all “we have to put our dead dog in our car and drive her there? Ourselves? That’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever heard….” (sob, sniff, cry). So, I left and PC did the hard part on his own. He told me they offered him a box to put her in. What kind of box? Like a special “pet box” or is it like an empty cardboard box that was once used for Frosted Flakes? And when PC said that, both of us had this image of sort of stuffing her in there to fit. You know- like that part in the movie Overboard where Goldie Hawn is cooking a chicken and trying to stuff its feet into the pot with the lid but it just wont fit? Oh, gawd I know all this is so morbid and maybe even borderline crude but you know, we’re trying to find some small humor in the situation.

Anyway, despite our horror at having to drive our deceased dog to the cremation place, it was all handled very nicely and we had “Sandy” back the next morning and she’s been sitting on the washing machine since. We’re waiting for a nice sunny day to go spread her ashes at the beach.

Now, the part where you current and prior Japan dwellers come in. Obviously you know how well the Japanese do things- you know the extra touches they put on things and that elegance usually comes from ‘understated’. So it should be no surprise that Sandy’s ashes were put in a pretty pink satin bag with her name and the date. It should also come as LESS of a surprise that said pink satin bag was then put inside THIS shopping bag:
What kind of work are you doing now? Something lost in translation? Does someone interpret this different than I do?

Man’s Best Friend

Lisa — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 09:35:49 +0000

Things around here are getting back to normal, just with less dog hair. I think we are all faring well, its been hard to adjust to the little things that had become so much a part of daily life. I left everything as it was for a day and then on day two I vacuumed, and instead of just vacuuming up dog hair I felt like I was vacuuming up Sandy. The hardest thing for me to do was dump the water out of her bowl and put it away. Every single time I walked past it I kept saying, “oh yeah, I need to fill it, its almost empty” because it was just second nature to fill up the dog bowl a few times a day.

But now, a few days later I am just reminded of what a great dog she was. I’ve been scrolling through our pictures and looking back at old pictures of her made me realize, she hasn’t really been “Sandy” for a long time. And that probably more than anything else gives me some peace about our decision. PC and I have been swapping favorite Sandy stories and all the little quirks that made her her- they’ve been gone for awhile now.

We got Sandy at the humane society in 2003. I had had a yellow lab growing up and thought they were the greatest cutest dogs on earth. Thats all I wanted to get. Pure bred labs were hard to come by, so my husband, being the computer nerd that he is wrote a program that monitored the humane societies web page and every time it was updated with a new Lab for adoption it emailed us. And that is how we found the Great Sandino. The family that dropped her off filled out a sheet about her personality and life up to that point, and it is just about the most depressing thing ever- she spent 14 hours a day in a crate in a garage. The family gave her up because they moved and didn’t want to put a fence in their new yard (riiight- because she spent so much time outside?)

I had big hopes of renaming her something “colorado-ish” like Aspen or Summit but Sandy had always been her name so who was I to change it. After having her for only 1 month I decided I was tired of being an apartment dweller with a dog (need: back yard for dog). So, we bought a house a month later. For the first two years we had her she went with PC to work everyday. While she may have started out my dog, she quickly turned into PC’s best little buddy. When we moved to Virginia she was our little backseat companion the whole way cross country. Despite so many people questioning why we would move a dog to Japan, we never even thought twice about it. She was part of our family and she was coming with us.

When I was trying to pick out pictures to post I was trying to find ones that most captured her spirit. She was a great dog; a little high strung, scared of everything and sort of high maintenance, but loving, great with kids, always wanted to make us happy and wanted to be loved. Above all else she just wanted to be with us. We were the family she always wanted. I know it.

This is how I’ll always remember her: big brown eyes, big smile on her face, tail wagging, ready to play and always, *always* happy to see us.

Heartache

Lisa — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:08:26 +0000

For as casual and lighthearted as I have been about the whole Sandy issue, I had no idea that I would be so grief stricken. We put her to sleep this morning and its the most awful thing I’ve had to do in my entire life. I mean that. I can’t even write a post for her yet. The house is all of a sudden so lonely without her, I really miss her.

The Dog That Won’t Die

Lisa — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:27:07 +0000

So….yeah. Um, as it turns out Sandy isn’t going to be put to sleep. First of all- thank you all for your heartfelt comments. I’ll remember them when the big day finally arrives. PC took her to the vet yesterday where all of her ailments got “cured.” She has a bladder infection which is supposedly supposed to help with the peeing in the house and slurping up water. She has medicine to make her fur stop falling out. The reason she hasn’t been eating is because her rotten teeth are so bad, so now she gets wet dog food. She has painkillers for her hips. Her kidney and liver function are fine. The vet said Sandy is one of the very few dogs that they have seen in such excellent health (for her age). Well, now I feel like a winner.