Animal Insting

Yesterday a very sad and horrible thing happened, which was that my brother Gabe died.  And how it happened was that Gabe got really sick while Mom was at the shelter, playing with the poor, homeless dogs.  And then when she came home, she found out that Gabe had peed and made diarrhea all over the floor in the back room where the plants live.

Then Gabe went outside and he was having more diarrhea, and when Mom went out to see about him, he just kind of lay down in the grass, like he couldn't even stand up anymore.  So Mom went back in the house to get a muzzle because she has learned her lesson about trying to pick Gabe up if he is in pain, and she has the scars to prove it.  So she put the muzzle on Gabe, but he was too sick to even try to bite her.

Then Mom brought Gabe in the house and laid him on the rug by the door, and he just lay there and kind of did this heaving sort of thing and looked really sick.  And that's when Mom remembered that it was Wednesday, which is Dr. Patricia's day off.  But she called the office anyway and talked to Nurse Allison and told her everything Gabe was doing, because Mom thought maybe it was a seizure or something, and that Gabe would get better if she waited a little while.  But Nurse Allison said it didn't sound like a seizure, and she said Gabe was probably very sick, and that Mom should take him to Mission MedVet.

So Mom took Gabe over there, and the doctors looked at him and took x-rays and they found out that Gabe had a bunch of nasty fluid stuff in his abdomen, and the fluid was full of bacteria.  Which meant that it was leaking out of his guts someplace.  And the fancy name for this is a "perforated bowel."

The doctor thought that it was probably Gabe's inflammatory bowel disease that made him have a hole in his guts, but it might also be because he had a tumor there or because he ate something sharp.  And the doctor said that the only way to fix Gabe was to do surgery, which she wasn't sure he would live through, and Mom asked if maybe Gabe should be put to sleep, and the doctor said that if it was her dog, that is what she would do.

So Mom said goodbye to Gabe and told him what a good dog he was, except when he bit her, and she told him she loved him and stuff like that.  And she stayed with him while the doctor gave him a shot that made him go to sleep forever.

Then Mom came home and told us what happened, and I was sad that I didn't get to say goodbye to Gabe, but mostly I was glad that Mom had come home to feed us because it was past our suppertime, and we were hungry.  And now it seems weird that Gabe isn't here, and I keep expecting him to show up and get grumpy with me, which he did a lot lately, but Mom said that was because Gabe didn't feel good.

And this morning, when we were eating breakfast and I thought maybe I could sneak close to Mel's dish and get a little bite of something, Barry attacked me.  So I think Barry is feeling like it's strange not to have Gabe here as the beta dog, and he wants to make sure that he, Barry, is still the alpha dog.  Which he is, I guess, unless I decide I should be the alpha dog.  But Barry is bigger than me, so I will probably have to settle for being the beta dog, like Gabe used to be.

Anyway, I will miss Gabe because none of my other brothers likes to snuggle with me like Gabe did.  I tried to get in bed with Mel last night and snuggle up, but he just got up and walked away.  Mel is weird like that.