Estremera: First, do no harm

ALL except one of my pets are rescues. The only one who isn’t is a cat who moved in as a full adult cat and never left — Notmy, short for Not My Cat.

Dogdog, my only dog, was abandoned, tied with a plastic twine to a guava tree just a few meters from my apartment around five, or maybe six, years ago. She was around six months old, very thin and mangy, but very friendly. She was jumping around and wagging her tail when I approached to wrap her with a rag and bring her home — mange, fleas, and all.

Since I took her in and healed her mange, she has been greeting my visitors like they were her friends. She’d welcome anyone with tail wagging, tongue lolling, and a lot of jumping, maybe even a robber had there ever been. (There never was, thank God and thank the Lords of Karma).

I discovered a flaw, however, when my housemate left because I was also preparing to leave the apartment for good. (My housemate was the sister of my former staff who went abroad. I had them as housemates to help me tend to my pets when I needed to travel as this paper’s editor-in-chief at that time. But life was changing, and I was closing that chapter in my life).

Living a very busy life then, I didn’t notice any change in Dogdog until maybe two weeks after Maimai, my housemate, left. Dogdog has become sullen, was always hiding under the doghouse, would barely eat, and after the third week would growl at me whenever I try to coax her out. My first thought was — rabies. I asked Doc Bo to check her out as I didn’t have the courage to bring her to the clinic. Doc Bo, being the friend that he was, arrived and... Lo, and behold! Dogdog was jumping and wagging her tail like nothing was wrong. Still, Doc Bo checked her out, looked around my place, and ruled out rabies. The place is clean, he said, and the most likely source of rabies given that she’s just confined within the garage space of my tiny apartment would be rats. It didn’t look like I had any rat infestation problem, he said. Just observe, was his advice.

I did, and noticed that Dogdog became sullen again. And then a realization dawned.

“Doc Bo, could it be separation anxiety? My housemate left a month ago, and she was Dodgdog’s playmate,” I texted. Bo said it was most likely the reason because he couldn’t think of any other.

I treated Dogdog for anxiety using Pranic Psychotherapy and she quickly recovered. She was her happy self the morning after, no longer slinking under the doghouse, no more growling.

For me, Dogdog was just a dog left behind by its owner, tied to a tree apparently to make sure that she cannot follow them home again. To Dogdog, she was abandoned and a wound was inflicted in her psyche such that when my housemate left, that wound re-opened.

She’s still manifesting that quirk, whenever I travel and not come home for a day or two or whenever I miss our daily walks. Dogdog would become sullen, but now that I know what’s causing it, I just heal her and she’ll be okay.

We’re talking about a dog here. Think how it is for a child. The unspoken and many times unrecognized abandonment issues of children of overseas Filipino workers; the wounds in the psyche of a young adult who never had the chance to process emotions of being left behind or left out... How many are there suffering in silence, maybe even being misunderstood — like thinking it was rabies when it was separation anxiety for Dogdog or thinking it is impertinence when it is actually a defense mechanism against being left out? We will never know.

All I know is that, I have come to realize that even dogs suffer from separation anxieties and it can turn bad. saestremera@gmail.com