While walking my three Pekingese a couple of months ago, I started noticing a black and white dog rushing from one place to another on a daily basis. It had its head lowered and walked as if it had an important chore to do.
Then one day, I saw her playing with a teenage girl in front of a house. The Pekingese of course stopped and we walked towards them. The girl told me that the dog was a stray dog. She sometimes fed her but her father did not allow the dog to be brought into the house as it is un-Islamic.
I pass that house while walking the Pekingese and started noticing that dog sitting across the girl’s gate as if guarding the house. I once called her by the name `Wee Wee’ and she came rushing wagging her tail. It then became a routine. I would call her and she would come, and literally touch each of my Pekingese with her one paw as if saying hello to them individually. She however was reluctant to come near me which I could understand. It is normal for Pakistanis not to touch dogs as they are considered impure and one is not permitted to offer prayers after touching them. Most thus typically either shoo away the dogs, whether domesticated or otherwise, or even throw stones to keep them away.
Wee Wee, however, was an intelligent dog and gradually started to comprehend that I wanted to be her friend. She started coming close to me and we became friends and sometimes she would even hug me if we met after a gap of a few days. She then started following and eventually leading our 'dog walk' up to our house. I started feeding her ground beef which she relished. She however refused to touch dog food. It had to be only meat or milk. She would not take anything else.
I tried bringing her inside the house but she was always reluctant. Once, I succeeded and bathed her which perhaps was her first bath in her life-time. Mostly, however, she would come up to the car porch, eat, sit at the gate for a while and then leave.
Then she vanished. I enquired from the security guards who sit in front of almost every second house in Islamabad nowadays and they told me that she perhaps had gone with the gang of other stray dogs as she was on 'heat'. I was worried as it is a normal practice in Islamabad for the municipal authority to shoot stray dogs and this was one reason I never wanted Wee Wee to remain on the road. I had once put a collar around her for this very reason but it got stolen.
Then Wee Wee reappeared one night on a cold rainy day. She was in a bad shape and pregnant. She then again reappeared a few days ago, when I was leaving for office. I called her but she had trouble getting up. She was stinking as hell and there was blood on one of her hind legs. I tried to look for an injury but could not find any.
I got her into the car which was perhaps her first time in a car and drove to the vet’s clinic. Wee Wee decided to sit on the passenger’s seat next to me. An awful fluid was oozing out of her, getting dropped all over and I was thus trying to drive as quickly as possible, cursing each red light and slow drivers on the way. I had taken her to Islamabad’s most expensive veterinarian thinking that he would be the best.
However, I think I made a mistake when I told him that Wee Wee was not my dog but a stray one. I say it was a blunder because he initially did not pay her as much attention as he should have done. He gave her a rabies shot, an anti-biotic one and within seconds told me that she had puss in her uterus and thus needed surgery. He asked me to collect her in the evening.
Wee Wee was a changed dog by the evening. She could hardly get up and refused to acknowledge me for the first time. The doctor told me that he had removed her uterus and ovaries. By next morning, she was in a worse shape and was being given a glucose drip. The doctor had now discovered that the oozing was actually from a tumour in her vagina which remained to be treated. I then wondered as to why he had to remove her uterus and ovaries. I again visited Wee Wee late in the evening and she was in a bad shape; she was not eating anything, was very weak and shivering.
The next morning, the vet called to tell me that Wee Wee had died. When I picked her body, she looked the same friendly Wee Wee but was motionless, with her eyes closed. I opened her eyes to see if we could communicate but they were grayish, although there was still some Wee Wee-ishness in them. I brought the body home. My servant told me to throw the body in the stream. I just looked at him in disgust. We dug a grave for her in my small lawn under a tree and buried her there.
Wee Wee is gone and a part of my heart has died with her. The only consolation is that she will always be close to me in my lawn.
The author is a lawyer, based in Islamabad, Pakistan.
