My Dog Kobe

It was Christmas time in my college freshman year when my mother brought home a black puppy. The dog has shiny black coat. He was awesome. That was the first time that we will own a dog with some kind of breed. Although we don’t know what exactly his breed is, we know he is part dachshund. He is not pure because he does not resemble Stock, the dachshund own by Aunt’s family in Marikina. It doesn’t really matter. We loved that dog. My mother also bought dog food for him. We never do that before because all our previous dogs are all mongrels.
Kobe learned tricks. That was really cool. He also loves to play fetch. It kinda took about three months before we gave him a name because we waited for my father to come home from Davao. We like him to be the person to name our pets. The dog jumps a lot from the surface to surface and varying heights. It was the playoffs so my father named him Kobe. I don't like the Lakers but the name is okay for a dog's name.  

I walked him all the time. Even in wee hours of the night. He knows that we are going out if a TV show or movie I am watching is over and I stood up from the couch. I actually caught some kids stealing from our neighbour’s sari-sari store once; I saw two neighbors secretly meeting in the dark. I did not catch them kissing or whatever but they were on the dark and it was about midnight.  
We own that dog at the time when our family were not well-off. When he got hit by distemper, we did not have the money to send him to the vet. My oldest sister who was a student assistant at the Dean's Office that time gave some money to my mother to be used for Kobe but I don’t know what happened to the money. The dog survived but he lived with distemper his whole life. His left eye was blinded. 
The illness brought a lot of changes to the dog’s attitude. He bites. He hates it when my sister is going to leave the house. He always had to be on a leash.
Things began to change when I had a job and were out of the house most of the times. One Saturday in October shit went down. Every dog has his day. He got loose and people in the house can’t catch him. I am the only one who can carry him anyway. My mother was worried she will get bitten again. When I got home, I caught him instanstly because that's what dogs do, welcome you as you enter the house but it took a more time until I got to put him in a newly bought collar and chain. At one point my mother even thought of drowning him. That night was really sad. I was crying. I did not care that some neighbours are watching. I just didn’t care. Some time that week, my mother has sent the dog to the city pound. Yes I did cry some more that week. That was 2007.
Before that dramatic episode happened, my friends and I had some discussions on would it be good to work abroad or just stay in the country. That question has lingered in my mind. I was thinking I can’t leave until I have Kobe because nobody else can take care of him. Then that thing happened. We lost him. Three months later I was in Taiwan for my first fourteen days off-site assignment.
I really loved that dog. The first gift I ever gave Chast is a stuff toy. It is black dog of course, in the likeness of Kobe. I call the toy Hower, the other name I call Kobe. Hower the stuff toy has been everywhere: Taiwan, Singapore, USA, Japan, Hongkong and some other places in the Philippines. Healso has his own facebook page.

New Year's Day 2009

Mt. Tapyas

 

We are not Facebook friends yet. I don't own the account

From time to time, I dream of Kobe and in my dreams I still cry. It is bittersweet to see the dog again and I know it is just a dream. Last night I had a dream of that the he stinks, and I am giving him a bath. I still cried in my dream. I woke up not in tears like some dreams before, but felt like it. Kobe is in my psyche I think. The person who can cry.
I told my sister about the dream. She did some interpretation:

Kobe maybe is the part of me singing my comfort song from D'Sound and Portishead when I need it.