So Long Soo (An Angel With A Tail)

THERE was great sadness in my home last week.

Soolam, my senior service dog, was put down. He was thirteen.

The decision to euthanize Soo, as my other dogs and I fondly knew him, was not at all easy.

The move was quickly reached when the Golden Retriever could no longer stand or walk. He could not even eat his meals normally without violently throwing up.

However, everything about Soo’s final journey on earth turned out to be as intriguing and incredibly uncanny as on the first day when he arrived.

He was barely two months old. The pup was a gift from a couple who were doctors. The purpose was to see how well a retriever would make as a service dog.

He needed to be fed as many as four times a day. I had to clean up after a dog that seemed to have an endless supply of poo!

The most difficult part, however, was to grab the pup and put him back in his crate. Fortunately, his senior canine partners literally lent their paws to solve the problem.

Soo had a knack of chasing the big dogs around the house. One of them would cleverly use the situation to dash back to me in order to grab Soo.  

The experience of raising and training Soo helped to tremendously improve my own psyche. And as for Soo, he just went on to become a service dog that was paralleled to none.  

He was the perfect companion to attend meetings with. He’s been to church numerous times and even stayed completely unnoticed at government meetings.

Some of the chairpersons discovered his presence only after the event.  

He has helped me in unusual places too. These include in the toilet at the United Nations building in Kuala Lumpur (when my shoe was out of reach and the soap fell on the floor).

He also sat through a serious discussion with people with AIDS at the Malaysian Aids Council.

On top of all these, Soo has appeared scores of times in the media which includes newspapers, TV and radio.

He even was the main star of a special video which featured my service dogs.

Once when I was caught in a 30-minute thunderstorm in a forest, Soo chose to get drenched with me in the heavy downpour rather than to vamoose and seek shelter elsewhere.            

  

On that fateful Sunday morning an extremely feeble Soo looked straight into my eyes. It was as if he was telling me to be strong for him and do the right thing to painlessly end his suffering.

He never once whimpered or flinched. He took every opportunity to lay his head on my shoulder or hands whenever I was by his side.

In my darling boy’s more than a decade of service to me, Soo relished his car rides the most – so much so that I became his “private chauffeur”.

We must have travelled hundreds and even thousands of miles over the decade and only once, in my memory, in all those years did he throw up in the back seat.

Our journey took us to every nook and corner.

Once our adventure even led us all the way up to Penang on a gruelling 24-hour trip where Soo performed and wowed several hundred people at a major dog event with his service dog skills.

Despite the pain, Soo remained resolute and dignified in the back seat of my car during his final ride and journey to the veterinarian. He was on my lap with his head held high as I wheeled my wheelchair into the clinic.

I made sure that my hero fell asleep before he entered into “eternal sleep”. The clinic didn’t charge me anything for putting a great dog down. Amazingly another doctor, who is also an expert in dog show winning breeds, offered to bury Soo in his house.

My king, I’m proud to say, is now privileged to be the only retriever laid to rest with other national and international champion Doberman and GSD breeds that have crossed over the rainbow bridge before him.    

And even more amazingly still, Soo is buried in the home of the mother of my latest and youngest service dog candidate Dobe Ace Zhar the Doberman.

Last Saturday, Zhar and I were at an international championship dog show in KL with more than 200 dogs of a variety of breeds from all over Asia.  

And although I was the only person in a wheelchair there, Zhar stuck close to me like glue – much like Soo used to do during happier days.

And in a very strange coincidence, Zhar kept climbing up on my lap several times as if to say, “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. I’m with you.” 

 

Angels don’t always come with wings; sometimes they have tails – even if it happens to be a rather short one.

 The End

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