Olive morte

[RH] Despite this being a real eventful time to be in Kosovo (what with independence and Serb upheaval and so forth), the stray dog situation around here is what continues to hook me most viscerally. Why I should feel more empathy for the poor Kosovan dogs than I do for the people is an interesting question -- one that could be examined ethically, philosophically, psychoanalytically, or even from a cultural anthropology standpoint. Concerning the latter (and fairly or not), I tend to see three characteristics of modern Kosovo as symptoms of a broader malaise and deficiency of cultural character:

- Animal neglect
- Extreme lack of environmental consciousness
- Absence of public space

I'll elaborate on these so-called symptoms somewhere down the road. But right now, I want to hone in on a specific example of the first one by recounting the sad fate of one of our favorite stray dogs. I wrote Laurie (sister) about this, and I'm going to paraphrase what I told her:

We've been sort of adopting certain stray dogs around here, as in regularly feeding them and caring for them. This is such a horrible place for the homeless critters -- the culture here towards dogs ranges from apathetic to fearful to outright hostile. And especially in the winter, the poor dogs are freezing and starving and desperate. So, there was this one particularly sweet dog, Olive. (Olive was a male, but Chelle's quasi-dyslexia is bizarrely fixated on the gender of animals; so, she tends to perceive the male dogs as female and to give them female names, and vice-versa.) Chelle had found him while I was in Seattle in January, and when I got back and met him, he really bonded with me too. He had a bad surface wound on his rear leg, and I started putting antibiotic salve on it when I'd feed him. And pretty soon it healed up nicely, although the leg injury seemed like it might be permanent. He ran around joyfully on three legs, even though he was still too skinny and in a bit of pain.

Anyhow, it was just last Sunday that we found him in his usual spot, but he was real sick -- unable to eat, puking yellow bile, dehydrated, like he'd consumed something toxic (like anti-freeze, perhaps). He drank all the water we gave him but barely ate a thing. Still, he seemed slightly improved on Monday, so we were hopeful. But when he still wasn't eating on Tuesday, I had a bad feeling about his prospects. I went and saw him around midnight Tuesday -- he was laying there kind of listless on the ratty old blanket we'd wrapped him in the day before (over in a bushy area near the national library where Chelle teaches). Since it was cold and wet out, I wrapped him up in it again, tried to get him to eat and drink, and finally went home.

We went back to see him the next morning, and I could tell from 30 meters away that the life had gone out of him -- he looked peaceful, but his head was leaning at a strange angle. And as we got closer, I could see a number of flies on him. It's such a sinking feeling to call someone's name ... even an animal's ... and see that kind of absence of response. You kind of know what the score is, but you continue to call their name as you walk closer, each time a little sharper and more anxiety-tinged. It was so wrenching. We covered him up under some cardboard from a trashed box so that the groundskeepers wouldn't just throw his carcass in the trash; and then we came back around dusk and buried him right there. That was just this past Wednesday. He probably died a couple hours after I last visited him there that night. Strange how a creature can go from seemingly fine to sick to dead in three or four days like that. And at some crucial juncture, they just breathe their last breath. I guess that's how it will be for all of us.

It's only been a week now since we buried him there. I've walked Hazel by the grave about every day since then. She was right there when we buried him, and now she's a little spooked about going up to the spot. I'm going to plant a small tree right over him sometime soon. A living tribute to a good dog.