Death in the Family

Honestly, I'm not much of a dog person. Dogs are stinky, poop all over the place, and eat all of my important documents whenever they get a chance too. However, there was a dog that did hold a special place in my heart and his name was Dan.

Dan was a doberman that my mom had found wondering the streets of upper Puna. We had nursed him to health and took him into our family. He was also retarded. I don't mean to sound harsh, but saying that Dan was retarded is putting it lightly. He would often get his head stuck in the fence and manage to bite his ears in the process, an act I originally had thought was physically impossible. He would also often eat his own poop and poop in his food bowl on top of the food we had put in there, as if his poop accentuated the taste of the wal-mart brand of dog food we gave him. Dan would also make scary coughing noises that sounded like an alien popping from someone's chest. Supposedly, those scary coughing noises that Dan made, also scared the kids living next door to us.

Unfortunately, Dan passed on yesterday morning due to unknown causes. I will miss his hilarious shows of retardation. More importantly, I will also miss his companionship during the times I spent with him, pulling his head out of our fence and bandaging his ears.





And sadly, as I comb through collections of family photos and my computer, it seems that during the 5+ years that Dan was a member of my family, we have never took a picture of him. Weird.