Rest in peace, Nola

"Be strong, Hannah. This is part of what it is to be a human being," my neighbor and friend Olga assured me as I wrapped Nola in a sheet and handed her to the man who, for 10 quetzales, was to go and bury her.  To a Guatemalan, my crying over a dog is hard to understand.  Dogs die here everyday.  What's more, people die here everyday.  Death is a part of life here, and people treat it as such.  Things happen, puppies get sick and die.  It's all just a part of life.  Even Dillon, Olga's 4 year-old son, who for the past two weeks has shown up at my house daily to play will Nola, didn't shed a tear.  He just quietly asked me if I could lift the sheet so he could see her face.

When I arrived home from a meeting in Coban yesterday, I found Nola curled up in her usual spot on my stairs in a pool of bloody vomit.  In a few short hours she had gone from being a happy, energetic, spunky little puppy to an anorexic and non-responsive one.  It being market day, I rushed her over to the Agroferia where Jaime, the veterinarian, could take a look at her.  He told me it could be parasites, hepatitis, parvo virus, or that she could have swallowed a tooth or bone.  He sold me canine antidiarrheal and gave her an antibiotic shot in case of hepatitis.  He told me he could bring more antibiotics within 15 days.  I took her home, and as the hours past she got worse and worse.  I've never felt more helpless...all I could do was to make her comfortable, try to force fluids down her throat, and wait.  By morning, less than 24 hours after her first symptoms, she died quietly on my floor, most likely from extreme dehydration. 

Nola's death has been one of the true tragedies of my experience here.  Not only because she was my pet, my companion, and my first puppy, but because she represents so many other chucho puppies that suffer and die similarly miserable deaths in this country.  And I couldn't save even one. 

Nola, I will miss you.