Generational compassion

It has been a week since I lost Chichi, my dachshund, to vape poisoning after three weeks of struggling with a stubborn son who had moved in uninvited and a bad vape addiction. Suffering from asthma myself and reacting to people’s tobacco use and, in our era of vape, to substances—many unknown—in vape, I could literally smell and see trouble as the vape fumes wafted through the house.

I told my son he would have to move out. After all, at risk too was his own 1-year-old son. I did give him time to work out the scourge, but it became clear he was in denial and, quite bluntly, just didn’t care.

I won’t go into the gruesome details of our war with vape, which I’ll do in time because I think there’s much more about vape addiction that needs to be explained. It’s also difficult to write about the long ordeals involved, from daybreak to the end of the day.

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Instead, let me do a piece to highlight one of the strangest and most paradoxical afflictions we face today.

In the background have been claims about dependence on substances ranging from tobacco to “hard” drugs. (My stand is that we now face a mad jumble of psychedelics, all of which are hard when you mix different circumstances that blur the distinctions between “recreational” drugs and dangerous drugs. In the blurred spectrum or range are claims that many of the substances are even therapeutic, capable of bringing relief, if not therapy for various afflictions; not an easy topic to discuss.)

Enter the problem of using these psychedelic substances on pets, dogs, and cats in particular. And because dogs and cats cant “report” back what they’re going through physiologically and psychologically, you put them at even greater risk for suffering and lethal overdosing, as I saw and agonized over with Chichi.

But, as I explained at the start of this article, I’ll do a sociological piece first, and this is about how societies are responding to the psychedelic drugs’ effects on pets, particularly their deaths.

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The day after Chichi died, I brought her remains to a Buddhist temple, which includes educational facilities where I teach. For several years now, we’ve been including subjects on how humans interact with animals and how we are obligated to care for the whole range of nonhuman and human animals, especially as the environment changes and complicates the challenges.

When I brought Chichi’s remains to a special place for funeral rituals, which accommodates humans and nonhumans, I was surprised at the complicated setup: provisions for incense and for chanting. And, as with humans, there were provisions for food, all vegetarian, of course.

My Chichi had been cremated the day earlier, actually aquamated. Instead of using flames for a cremation, the deceased pet is soaked in a solution of sodium hydroxide, which helps to speed up the remains’ breakdown into a liquid solution, ecologically friendlier than cremation, and the remains are kept in an urn similar to that for cremation. You can then bring home the solution for burial or for keeping in the house, or even take it around, as I did to two of the schools where I teach.

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All this allows for a mourning period and other rituals of transition. Everything is flexible; a time for mourning and for remembering. Chichi was very much loved by the school community, having been trained as an emotional support dog, mostly keeping silent and being available to students.

Changes of this kind are happening in many parts of the world. What seems to be happening, at least among the Chinese, is allowing in modern times, a chance to grieve in a process described as thinking and feeling. In a way, it provides the “ultimate”: I’m thinking of you, and this is my way of grieving.

In the context of a school setting, many students have become very close to the emotional support animals. Our track and field students, for example, start their days the earliest among students because they need to jog and they have their own emotional support dogs for this combination of exercise and bonding. When one of the jogging dogs was sideswiped by a car last year, she continued to join the students, limping through the early morning exercise. There was also palpable concern from the students about the dog’s recovery (which went quite well).

I was not quite prepared for the students’ reaction to Chichi’s death, an outpouring of empathy. Two students teamed up to produce a near-life-size painting of Chichi, and several came up to me, patting me on the shoulder in a combination of deference and compassion.

I don’t know how I would have managed without the school community’s outpouring of compassion. And I know I will need their continuing support for the next few weeks. Meanwhile, I found the breeder where I got Chichi nine years ago. The kennel actually had two puppies born three months ago, and offered their puppies right away. They didn’t want to sell, grateful that their Chichi had contributed to the school’s “lessons” in animal-based compassion and comfort. The two puppies now with us are Chichi’s nephew and niece.

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michael.tan@inquirer.net