Walking The Dog

 

     I was walking out our dog, a beagle, yesterday morning when an acquaintance approached me and engaged me in a tete-a-tete. We live in the same neighborhood, he’s a pedicab driver who would sometimes take us to our dog’s vet. He watched our dog play with another dog (a Chihuahua owned by my cousin) and then he said, with a face blanketed by amusement, “It’s so expensive to maintain a dog.”

    And I said yes even without mentally computing our dog’s expenses. But yes, it’s quite expensive to keep a dog these days. There's the dog food, the treats, the vitamins, the veterinary expenses, the medicines when they get sick, the accessories, the grooming expenses, etc. And then, he proceeded to tell me  with a chuckle in his voice and melancholy in his eyes how he got sick last month, how he shivered and had high fever, and how his wife wouldn’t give him money for his medicines because they had--she alleged--none. He was just able to buy some paracetamols when he knew he needed more medicines, and probably a trip to a clinic. Luckily, like Wolverine, he was able to heal himself.

     Then, two weeks ago, their pet dog got sick, and his wife immediately took it to the vet, without care for the expenses it would incur. Their dog's half aspin, half some breed he doesn't know but I'm guessing husky based on his descriptions of the dog: looks like a wolf, always looks grumpy and mischievous. He doesn’t know what illness it got but I’m guessing parvo, based on the symptoms he described. Before it got sick, their dog was yet to visit a veterinarian. Luckily, it survived. Ironically, her wife spent more than 8K for the dog’s medical bills (the dog was confined inside the vet’s clinic for three days), and another 3K for a kennel, which the vet advised them to buy. Aside from the weekly trips (for vaccines and deworming) their dogs (they have two) are now making to the vet starting tomorrow.

     “Sometimes, I sleep outside because it’s too hot inside our house,” he chuckled, while staring blankly in front of him, “the dogs hog the electric fan.”

     I just smiled, and didn’t say anything against the wife, or the dogs, but at the way his smiles distorted (he'd take his mask down every now and then like he was having a hard time breathing) while we were talking, I'm guessing he was wishing that he were a dog.

     Another thing, the missus only started buying mineral water when they got the dogs.