shiba raze the two of you were born a year apart. i always thought you were brother and sister. you weren't. you were mother and son. i didn't know dogs worked that way. i didn't know about the soft pockets at the end of your ribs. how they fill with cells that work to strengthen the connective tissue and become extensions of the bone they've helped to build. that's when breeding happens. when those pockets close. sometimes you're not even a year old before you give birth for the first time. your name was the chinese word for the number eighteen. you didn't live that long, but you lasted longer than your son. you were a black lab. in the summer your coat was almost too hot to touch. at the end, all you did was lie in the tall grass beside a picnic table and breathe heavy while flies ate the back of your neck. you didn't have the strength to shake them off. you would look at me with your big brown eyes, the dark curves around them gone grey, and i couldn't tell if you were smiling or crying without making a sound. as cruel as the heat and your owner were, you were gentle. my sister rode you like a horse. she pulled your ears and grabbed your tail and screamed. she didn't know any better. you never snapped at her. you let her play, a smaller, wilder animal than you, with pale skin and curly hair. you'd been that small too once. you knew what it was to be young enough not to understand what an ending was or why you should fear it. if you'd been mine, i would have brought you inside with me where the air was cool and kind. i would have scratched behind your ears. i would have told you every day what a good girl you were. and maybe you would have made it to eighteen after all. 220225 what's it to you? who go blather from