April 3, 2016

Sunday - Rainy

A sad day.

I slept in this morning.  F was supposed to go out early to his mother’s but didn’t.  Instead, he waited until my alarm went off before he left the apartment.  I wasn’t too pleased, two days in a row he wasn’t around for lunch, but didn’t worry myself too much about it.  I had my breakfast and that was enough for the mean time.

When F finally did come home, he said that Gombei wasn’t able to stand up anymore.  He has gradually been getting more and more feeble.  This winter, mild though it was, was quite hard on the poor little dog.  

We went out for lunch.  My first pick didn’t have lunch anymore, my second was okay.  We went to Moku-Moku, the first time in ages, and had new dishes for us, donburi.  I had a teriyaki chicken donburi which was really nice, and F had a ginger pork donburi.  He didn’t like it that much, but he never likes things!

We went over to Yamaya to get a few foreign foods and while we were there, he got a phone call from his mother.  She thought Gombei had died.  I hurried my shopping as much as I could and then F brought me home.  He went over to his house while I put away the shopping and waited for news.

After a while, F came home.  He was so quiet when he came in the apartment that I just knew.  Poor Gombei, his little Shiba-inu had died.  F got Gombei a couple of years before we got married.  In fact, I think it was part of the reason I fell for F.  His teacher at the Eikaiwa asked him to bring his puppy to the school, and he did.  Since F was in class and my students were hardly ever there, I “puppy-sat” Gombei a bit.  I missed having a dog while I was in Japan, growing up, we’d always had dogs on the farm, so it was nice to be around an animal.  

Gombei as a puppy

Earlier this year.

Gombei was 17 years old, which is quite a senior dog.  He was mostly blind by this time, probably deaf too and had quite a hard time walking around so in some respects it was a release.  I’m not sure how F’s mother is going to be now.  They were good company for each other and she got out of the house to walk him when F couldn’t come over. 

Neither of us really felt like going out for dinner, so I suggested going to the grocery store and buying a few things for dinner and then watching a movie from the DVR or something like that.  We decided to do that.

At the grocery store I picked up a few things for the next couple of days and also some roast beef for tonight and my lunch tomorrow, plus veggie sticks.  F got sashimi too.  

We got some kerosene, but only one tank tonight. It is starting to warm up a bit, but I still need the heater in the morning and at night.  

We came home and watched The Lego Movie.  It was nice and light and bright and cheerful and a pretty good choice for tonight.  We watched and ate and drank a bit of wine and then I did some crochet too.  At 11 I watched the latest NHK English drama, The Musketeers.  It was okay, I’ll probably keep watching it.  

F was up for quite a while.  I know on one hand he is very sad, but I think he knew that it was time for Gombei to go.  Vets in Japan don’t seem to be in favour of putting pets to sleep or I might have suggested it a while ago.   

I’m not sure what I’ll get up to tomorrow.  I’m going to cook tomorrow evening, but I’ll have to use my slow cooker earlier on in the day and see what other things I can do.  Come back later to see what happens. Until tomorrow….