Vaping only

I got my first dog, a dachshund, when I was 3 years old, and our family continued with the “hot dogs” for years.

Chichi came in 2017. It was my granduncle who had asked me to find a dachshund (hot dog) for him. I gently tried to dissuade him, pointing out he was in his 80s and it would be hard, regardless of who would go first. He already had stage 4 cancer, but he insisted, and I figured I could take the dog if it was “orphaned.”

I ended up with two dachshunds—one for my granduncle and one for my own growing human brood. I was heading out for Japan on an official trip and warned my son, the youngest, that we were not going to take another dog, but he managed to get his way, through his granduncle, to smuggle in Chichi.

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Of course, she melted everyone’s hearts. Our security guard said she was “kuba” (hunchbacked) and had bad breath, etc., but she quickly became a princess. Her arrival could not have been more timely—at the University of the Philippines (UP), the students had been clamoring for an animal welfare program that would produce dog training to include rescue dogs, and, plain and simple, just “good dogs” that went into full mobilization during the crisis periods that plague all schools: midterms, finals, term papers. At Guang Ming, there was much more canine-human interaction.

Chichi was a natural for all this. At Guang Ming, intended for low-income students, we discovered hidden talents for dogs, for example, providing emotional support for students from different fields.

We had students who were flying through ballet steps with no previous exposure to ballet, with National Artist Alice Reyes coaching them. Bo Perasol, one of the country’s premier varsity players, coached students whose previous basketball experience was in barangay cement grounds. Within a few months, they were off to Taiwan to join international competitions.

And we had “four-legged” coaches—the dogs trained at UP, all too happy to join morning marathons. Some were assigned to the dorms to watch over the students and to call out the students for morning reveille.

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Chichi, legs too short for the kind of sports played in varsity, helped anyway in her own ways, barking her cheers. The only limitation we had was not being able to bring her to Taiwan for the international competitions. She did have some skills for the pep squad.

Chichi turned 9 last July. Everyone knew her. Chichi spent long days with them from early morning workouts to lights out at the end of the day, when she’d go back to Manila with me. In school, she did assume many other official functions, welcoming visiting teams and university officials. She went everywhere in Luzon with us. We were talking about the possibilities for her and the basketball team’s first interisland RoRo trip this coming season.

Chichi rarely stayed overnight on the campuses—I needed her as my bodyguard. And she did set a good example by waking up early in the morning.

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And she helped in establishing a no-smoking, no-vaping policy, which applied as well to my residence in Manila. It was always difficult explaining why, despite our generally liberal policies, we were firmly opposed to tobacco, shabu, and marijuana. It just wasn’t healthy.

But the rule was violated in my own home when my son moved in. He had a son with him who is not even 1 year old. I knew he was breaking the rule all the time, but he was stubborn in resisting my smoking ban. I wasn’t surprised—the Duterte war on drugs was all threats, but it never had athletes supporting the policy.

Two weeks ago, Chichi’s respiratory problems worsened, and I told my son he would have to move out if he couldn’t quit vaping. I was taking steps to do this, but last Monday, Chichi jumped into bed with terrible wheezing. I called my son and told him he was not welcome in my room. It was to be a long night of struggling with Chichi’s respiratory problems.

Chichi died shortly before dawn, and one of the first things my son said was, “Now that she’s gone, can I vape?”

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michael.tan@inquirer.net