Fat, not so beautiful but loved nearly to death
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A grossly overweight dog makes her presence felt on a small soi
AS I take my dog for a walk, the soi somehow feels a bit empty. Someone is missing – the two community dogs who lived on the soi. People complained about their aggressiveness, called the BMA Animal Control, and within a day or so, the dogs were gone.
I didn’t find the dogs aggressive. They were always friendly to me and my poodle pup Wan-Wan, but after the two were taken away, people told me how these boys attacked their dogs, in one case so badly that their dog needed more than a month of treatment.
Perhaps because Wan is a girl, we never suffered such attacks.
For awhile, I also mourn the disappearance of another dog I’ve named (in my mind) “Miss Piggy” although the people on the soi called her “Daeng”, I think. Another community dog, she usually lay on the side of the soi somewhere, waiting for a meal or a treat.
It’s impossible to know how old this dog was, but she was certainly big, so fat that she had trouble standing up, but when she did, rolls of fat dripped down from her shoulders, obscuring her skinny legs.
Unlike the two boys who were taken away, Miss Piggy was never aggressive. She was too fat to be aggressive. She snapped at Wan once as we passed by, but Wan was being disrespectful to a much older lady and had to be taught.
Miss Piggy was certainly well-loved. She was not really a pretty girl, but with all the double-double chins, it was difficult to tell what she looked like in her younger, slimmer days. Perhaps people saw a sparkle in her eye that I couldn’t see. Perhaps they loved it that Miss Piggy was always around. Perhaps they loved watching how much she loved her food.
Everyone knew she was too fat, and when I asked the people who fed her how much and how often they gave her food, everyone said, “No more than once or twice a day.”
The problem was, I suppose, that Miss Piggy had several different dinner-stops. People were feeding her once or twice a day, but I counted three dinner-stops, which meant she was being fed three to six times a day.
Did the BMA take her away too? Surely they would have seen how harmless this fat girl was.
In my household, I worry a lot about weight. Elderly cat Phantom has lost weight from all the illnesses he has suffered, but now he holds steady at a bit under six kilos, a good weight for him.
Wan, on the other hand, has weighed only 3.5 kilos for years, but she may now be a bit too heavy as she enters her senior years.
Just a few days ago, I noticed that she has begun limping on her front legs. She still likes to go out for walks, but only short ones, and then she asks me to carry her part of the way.
In a day or so, I’ll take her to the vets for an X-ray, just to be sure that she’s not dealing with any injuries to her bones or ligaments. She may just be too heavy, but I’d like to be sure. I’ll get her liver and kidneys checked too.
Depending on what we find, she may or may not have to go on a diet.
As I take Wan on her daily walk today, we see a very strange mound in the distance. At first, it looks like a huge pile of wet sand, but as we get closer, we can tell what (or who) it is.
It’s Miss Piggy! There she is, lying around, waiting for her next three-to-six meals.
