colombopetrescue

A TIME TO RUN ONCE MORE

Last Saturday morning was rainy chaos in the Yours Truly household, as the fabled Picky (short for Piccaso* De Mott) our ten year old , half- lab- half -unclear, and usually unfaithful Visiting hound ...chose the early hours of the morning to pass... discretely and surreptitiously... away for good.
I discovered his glossy black but now somehow small looking remains hidden considerately behind the family vehicle, and was just in time to direct offspring around the other side when they disembarked on their usual weekly visit, but from my face and the fact that I was forcing them to keep left they figured something was wrong and cheerfully queried “ Who died?” since pet death is quite a natural and accepted phenomenon in our family.
Picky it was that died. And a dog, an ordinary dog and nothing like an ordinary dog was he. Picky’s passing away actually marks the end of an era, since my life is marked in timelines named after various components of my menagerie.
Picky was a legend in Wellampitiya. Something like Robin Hood in reverse, much smellier and more practical, he lorded the streets hogging all the good takeaway joints and bitches**, and marking territory all over the place including on the coconuts in the pola, with a devil may care attitude of a tattooed underworld thug. He was un-forgivingly harsh with the weakling mongrel population of the town and would drive little rivals into the path of oncoming container trucks to either toughen them or end their pathetic disease ridden existences in a sort of One Dog Culling operation. …
In spite of the Road Character of wild, untamed honcho, at home he was the gentlest of pooches, and would play tenderly with month old kittens without eliciting so much as a squeal from them. He loved children and was found sometimes walking dazedly around in side the local pediatric clinic trying unsuccessfully to look harmless. My four year old son poked him in the eye, long ago in one of his experimental stages and Picky who could have taken a hand off a four year old, simply bore it with hardly a whimper.
In fact, no matter how much pain Picky has been in, with his scalp practically gashed, I have never heard Picky cry. Except in his sleep, one recent time when he was operated on for a broken leg.
Picky was afraid of nothing, and no one, but crackers drove him nuts and he ate his way in through two of our backdoors before we decided to give him permanent entry permits on all New Year , Christmas, General Elections and any other Sri Lankan firework holidays.
For a few years Picky went totally missing and we thought one of the lorries had flattened him but one day when I was practicing on my new bike on a residential street I heard a strange deep familiar barking and went closer for a look- it turned out he had been living in pleasant retired idyll in a neighboring home with an entire family of his own- his fluffy half poodle lady friend and their brood of oddball quarter labs . He was delighted, totally thrilled to bits to see me again (and a little shy about something.) His new “owners “ told me they called him Kalu and they told me tales of a wonderful and very special character…from here we picked up one of his sons, skinny, long boned and very strange looking but, a son of Picky nevertheless and he is now our link to the past…
Picky was involved in numerous street brawls with rival gangs (read- it was him against the gang since the cowardly hyenas on our streets would never dare fight one to one with him) almost weekly and on two occasions had his skull split by Manne- wielding humans who took a dislike to him on principle perhaps due to his jet black color and insolent attitude among other factors. Keeping him at home was almost impossible unless you tied him and our household has a principle of never infringing on the right to freedom of its animal members so tying was not done. Result: although some people knew he was our dog he was never home, except on weekends (when the kids visit) public holidays (when the crackers drove him crazy ) and during his periodic health retreats , when he felt he really needed a bath or a de fleaing or had a tummy bug he wanted treated. To the constant disgust of Wellampitiyas long suffering local veterinarian, we would regularly bring this flea bag over totally crawling with vermin , only to be treated at our expense and released on to the road to be promptly infested by fleas and ticks within a week of roughing it .

Dog though he was, Picky was a character of great dignity. From the day he was brought in at 6 months of age, he has never messed the household premises – holding on sometimes for impossible hours until he was allowed to torpedo out onto the street and show everyone who’s the place was. Old and blind but still dignified, only during the last month of his life, crippled by a broken foreleg, did I even spot him hiding discretely among the household bushes to relive himself very apologetically.
The blindness of complete double cataracts did not put a stop to his adventurous streak but unfortunately somewhere up the road a driver of some small vehicle would have carelessly pushed him aside, resulting in the broken leg, which finally grounded him.
Nine years of running the sunny streets of this town, of sniffing a vibrant doggy kaleidoscope of smells , of adventure and excitement behind him, Picky was now blind and lame and , totally grounded although we would never tie him. Dignified to the end he would not dream of soiling the area he lay in but dragged himself stumbling to a corner and in fact only on the last days of his life did we ever have to clean up after him.
Picky needed freedom, he needed to run, to chase, to stand sniffing in the sun and to howl at the moon. These last few days of blindness and hobbles would have taken his will to live, if he had dragged on for years more it would have been a terrible kind of torture. Therefore we are relieved that he left with the suddenness he did, mysteriously , but still with characteristic grace.
We think his happy arrogant black ghost is now out there on the streets of our town, once more running wild and free and perhaps occasionally giving the local mongrels a vague sense of unease…wherever he is, knowing him, he is sure to be having a good time …J
Mickey, son of Picky, stays with us, and though people have asked for him, we can’t let him go because he is…. family. It’s as simple as that.
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* the actual spelling of his name would be, uhm, somewhat different
** lady dogs, I mean. Sorry.

posted by aljuhara @ 4:38 AM