Well, I’m about to tell you the story of one of my best friends ever. However, this one is not a cat. I know I’m breaking the rules a bit here, but I’m sure I can get away with it. This is the story of Skip, our best friend for 13 years who incidentally is a dog. Nobody’s perfect, right?

Skip died in October 2007 at the age of 14. And his story is well worth telling.

It all started in the summer of 94. We had gone to Spain for the holidays, where my grandparents have a little cottage. We didn’t have a lot of money and this was a cheap way of holidaying. I was about to turn 13 that summer, and was there with my nephew Kim and my parents. Kim and I were about the same age. He was three months younger as he was born in October, and my birthday is in July. That was the only thing we had in common though. He had black hair, I was blonde, he was skinny, I was chubby, and he tanned beautifully whereas I only turned red to then turn white again. He was also rather hyperactive compared to me. Six hours in the pool wasn’t enough for him, he had to go play badminton afterwards. You can imagine ;)

I was to celebrate my birthday in Spain and for that occasion we went to a restaurant. It was the 23th of July, and two days later we would return to Belgium. When we came back from the restaurant, my dad decided to drop by an uncle of his who also has cottage there. He’d be back later.

At home, my brothers who were about 20 and 18 at the time were enjoying their freedom back in Belgium and taking care of the cats. We only had cats since my dad didn’t like dogs. My mom had always wanted one, but already had enough work with kids and being a part-time nurse. They knew we would be back soon and were making the most of it.

When my dad returned, he called my mom. She was about ready to go to bed since it was already late and we still had to pack in the morning. The first words out of his mouth were: “Didn’t you always want a dog?” My mom’s jaw dropped to the floor, coz behind my dad she saw a young shepherd dog looking at her with his big puppy eyes. He was clearly starving. And that was not all there was wrong with him. But, he had the most gentle eyes, and a strong will to live. My mom looked at my dad and sighed: “You have got to be kidding me!” Apparently, the dog had followed my dad all the way to his uncles place, waited there, and followed him back to our place. Clearly, he was at the end of his rope and looking for a way out.

My mom was the last to be on board with this though she did like dogs herself. She set firm rules: the dog was to pass a test at the vets, and the decision as to whether or not he would return home with us was yet to be made. For now, he would spend the night on the terrace. The table and chairs there were placed in such a manner that he could easily escape from the terrace if he wanted to. We fed him some milk and bread since he was starving and we had nothing else in the house. Little did we know that his stomach had been ruined from eating out of garbage cans for months and his digestive system was messed up (not to mention that milk is never good for an animal unless it is the milk of the animals species).

All set up, we went to bed. At five am though there was a very loud howling to be heard. My mom shook my dad awake and yelled:” Your dog, you get up!” They let him off of the terrace and he rushed through the house. Not even a meter further, his bowls caved and the diarrhea sprayed everywhere! We were all stunned…We had noticed that the dog had received some training the morning before, since if you asked him to sit, he did and immediately also his paw followed on your lap. Someone had clearly taught him that sitting involved greeting as well with your paw. And someone had made it very clear to him that emptying ones bowls was done outside.

The next day, we went to the vet. The result was staggering: his teeth were in bad shape since people had thrown rocks at him (some of his teeth were actually broken off because of this) and eating out of garbage bins. He had been shot at with hail. The wound was at least 20 cm in diameter. He had cleaned it out himself though by continuously licking it. He was underweight and not big enough for his breed, which the vet incidentally determined to be ‘Belgian’.(Apparently he was a Belgian Malinois with other Belgian breeds tossed in there). He was also covered in parasites.

The worst part was that one of the parasites was the heartworm. This is a worm which resides in the heartchamber. As the babyworm grows, it cuts of the aorta and other veins flowing to the heart, eventually causing a stroke. This disease is transmitted by mosquitoes. They first draw blood from one animal, then the worm hatches inside them, and then they inject the worm into the bloodstream of the next animal. The medication needed to treat it was to be injected into the hips ( a very painful procedure), and it did not exist in Belgium, as the mosquitoes and therefore the disease didn’t like the cold climate there. And, if the dog had some collie blood, he could resist the drug. Apparently, collies attack the drug instead of the disease and therefore die from it. We were to take the drug with us, on ice, back to Belgium, where a Belgian vet would administer it, without knowing how to. My dad ended up translating their phone call where the Spanish vet explained what needed to be done.

The day of our departure was upon us and we had decided to take the dog with us. We had decided to call him ‘Skip’ as his face resembled that of Skippy the Bush kangaroo, a rather popular show at the time. We had bought food, my dad had spend half a day building a fence between the backseat and the trunk, and my mom had carefully stacked the stuff so that the dog could be seated next to the luggage. We were good to go. But, after 500 meters, Skip decided he wanted to sit next to us, and since he was so skinny, he crawled through the fence my dad had built onto the backseat. I was sitting there with Kim, and my first thought was..he is going to attack me. Turns out that all he wanted was to sit in the middle.

So he spent the rest of the trip with us on the backseat. Trust me, when it is hot in a car, and you have no AC, and the dog next to you is drooling like crazy, you get inventive: you put his newly bought drinking bowl underneath his drooling mouth, and you keep a towel handy in case he decides be nice and swing his head your way, causing the drool to fly at your face. The towel was our life shield against the drool. Also, when my dad needed to sleep on the backseat while my mom was driving and Kim was navigating, Skip wanted to sit in his lap since he considered him his boss. I took it upon myself to lift him onto my lap, so he’d let my dad sleep. That night I slept under 25 kg of dog which was panting from the heat causing me to go up and down with him. But it worked. He let my dad sleep. All in all Skip was a good sport, spending two straight goddarn warm days in the back of a car, going somewhere he didn’t know, with people he hardly knew.

When we did get home, and my dad wanted to take him for a walk, he refused to jump again in the car. He continued to refuse it for two weeks. Somehow he knew we had arrived and he wasn’t about to get into that bloody car again. He never ever refused while we were still on the road though.

Despite the fact that we had never had a dog, and he had a traumatized past, we somehow managed to make it work. The cats weren’t too happy. A truce was formed: they got the upstairs and Skip the downstairs. He carefully checked every one cat that came in, and they were only let in if he was sure they were our cats.

He clearly enjoyed his new life but his past has always haunted him. In the beginning, he was scared you would beat him when you wanted to pet him. That passed though. But other things, such as kicking a ball, still showed his past. He would want to run after the ball, but was too afraid he might be the next one to be kicked. One thing that never went away was his fear of being abandoned. Though he had no problem with staying home alone, he would sit in front of the front door till we came back. And if you went out walking with him, and wanted him to wait for you while you went into a shop, he was a nightmare till you got back.

As he was already a year old, and he was rather dominant (something he had to be to survive in Spain), we were afraid to take him to puppy class. I taught him most of the commands myself, but since I was the youngest, my word didn’t carry the weight that my fathers or my brothers did. And not everyone was consistent with him, since we had no clue on how to raise a dog. Skip clearly became a dog with a manual. And since we lived in the country, he was able to get away with all his quirks. He could get the blood from under your nails by pulling your arm like mad, and being all annoying to other dogs, or by constantly being in your way. I’m not proud to say that the frustration did cause us to punish him in a wrong way, since we didn’t know any better. Sometimes, it worked. Most of the times he just had one thing on his mind: don’t leave me! I think you could’ve yelled at him, thrown stuff and even beaten him to a pulp. It wouldn’t have mattered to him. As long as you didn’t abandon him. He just got a glazed look in his eyes when you yelled in frustration, a mental block and teaching him at that point was impossible as he just mentally shut down. He waited till the storm was over and then he’d cuddle you to death just to make sure he wouldn’t be left behind. Sometimes I think he would’ve been better off with a family that knew something about how to raise a dog. But we did our best, and we gave him a home. He didn’t ask for much more, except for lots of cuddles.

As he grew older, he surprised us by living longer than expected. The expected age of a dog like this is 10 to 12. He lived a lot longer. Two whole years. The vet told us that it was because he had been on a diet his whole life. His stomach didn’t digest anything else but turkey and rice, which caused him to stay slim. The fact that he was a nervous dog caused us to walk him three times a day or go mad, which kept his muscles working and toned. It extended his life with two years, though in the last year, the arthrosis that is so common with big dogs did kick in. Ironically, the illness that had caused him to live longer, now caused him to have more pain. He couldn’t digest the painkillers he was given. Finally, we resorted to cortisones to ease his pain. He clearly felt better. Unfortunately, this drug takes away the symptoms, but not the cause. And because he no longer experienced the pain, he started doing movements which made this arthrosis even worse. At some point, the drug can’t be built up anymore and even the highest dose doesn’t mask the pain anymore. At the end, he was wobbling in pain, and getting up was a nightmare. You felt guilty if you got up yourself, because you knew, he would do the same, just to be with you which was so frustrating.

In the end, he didn’t want to go outside anymore. It was clear he was about to let go. My mom was with him when it happened. She slept on the couch to be with him and at 4.30 in the morning he passed away. My dad took it very hard. I haven’t been at home for a while now so I wasn’t that close to him anymore, but I did take care of him every year when my parents were on holiday, and I had said my goodbyes already then. Since I worked at a clinic, I knew this year was going to be the year. He held out longer than any of us thought though.

We will definitely miss him. Although he made our lives a lot harder, and gave us tons of frustration, it doesn’t weigh up against the tons of love and the utter devotion and gratefulness he gave us. My little gift of Mother Nature, I used to call him. After all, he came to us on my birthday, out of the blue. I just hope we did right by him.

May he rest in peace, now that the pain is finally gone.
You will be missed as much as you were loved.
Farewell, my baby