Survivors and Celebrations

A.J.- my best friend's Story

As I looked at his picture tears started to collect in my eyes. All I wanted was for him to come back, for him to be with me, my best friend here again. I just wanted all of this to be a dream. Unfortunately I would never wake up to see him. He would never wake up again. When I started to cry I started remembering a long time ago, about seven years ago, when all this started. It was late April when my mom, sister, and I went to find a dog. We had been searching for a new puppy since Christmas. That was when my dad told me I could get a puppy. I was the most excited and happy girl in the world. After months of begging my mom and dad to let me get a dog they finally gave in. as you could imagine, any seven year old going to look for a dog would be ecstatic. While we were on our search we decided to stop at a Doberman rescue called Second Chance Dobes. There were so many dogs there but most of them were older. I had told my mom hundreds of times “I want a puppy, a baby boy, and his name is going to be A.J.” She would always respond saying,” Well, honey what does A.J. stand for?” “I don’t know. It doesn’t stand for anything, just A.J.” I would respond thoughtfully. Then my mom would say, “What if you like, or get attached to a girl puppy?” I would say angrily, “No, I want a boy dog and that’s that!” “Ok sweetie, whatever dog you want you can have” she would say lovingly. I just knew what I wanted, and I knew what I was going to get. At Second Chance Dobes most of the dogs were older, but they had one litter of puppies in the back. As we made our way towards the puppies I started to hear high pitched whines and barks. I was jumping up and down with excitement. Then right when we walked in I knew what puppy I wanted. Not any of the ones pawing at the pen wall, begging to be held. I wanted the cute little chubby one sitting in the back corner looking scared, staring at me with those big, brown, sad, puppy eyes. As we walked closer all the puppies started yelping with excitement. I could tell they all wanted a home. Then I made my way to the back of the pen. As I reached down to pick up the little chubby guy he backed up a little bit because he was scared. Then I picked him up, and someone he knew he was A.J., he knew he was mine. Now that I think about it I couldn’t have picked a better puppy. As he licked my face and snuggled into my arms a huge smile came across my face. Then as I looked around I noticed my sister had found her dog to. It was A.J.’s brother. The whole carried home with them we laughed and had a great time. My sister Halley even came up with a name for her dog. His name would now be Butch. As the years went on A.J. became my best friend, my one true companion. He was like a brother but, I was like a parent to him. We did everything together. From playing fetch (even though he never brought it back), to having races, to even playing soccer, until he popped the ball. Throughout the years A.J. and I only grew closer. I had come to learn that anything A.J. could eat, he would. We had to bungee cord the fridge shut and put baby locks on the door to wear the garbage is so he wouldn’t get into the garbage. He was known to my mom as the best, worst dog ever. I got to know A.J. very well. He even had a favorite treat that we would give him if he did something good, or if he didn’t do something bad. It was peanut butter and a slice of banana on top of a Ritz cracker. A.J. absolutely loved them. A.J. and I were best friends. When we went out for a walk he would chase after anything that moved or made a sound. He would even try to run into ponds to catch the little peeping frogs you can hear in the spring time. I would get extremely angry at him, but now that I look back at it, those times were some of the most memorable times I had with him, because eventually me and mom my actually took him to ponds so we could listen to the frogs that we called peepers. Every year we would ask A.J. if he wanted to go peeper hunting, even though we never really killed them. No matter where we went, we always had fun. We didn’t know the exact date of his birthday but we decided to say it was on April 12th. On every birthday of his I would bake a cake just for dogs and his brother and he would devour it. We also gave him presents. He had become a part of my family. Then one day after school my mom told me she had noticed A.J. wasn’t eating his food. You could tell he was defiantly getting thinner. My mom did everything she could to get him to eat; she even let him eat our food. At first she thought he had something stuck in his intestines. She decided to do an exploratory or cut him open and look to see if anything was wrong. Since she’s a veterinarian she knew what to do. During the exploratory she noticed his liver was as hard as a rock so she did a biopsy or got a sample of his liver. After the biopsy she told me she he thought he had liver cancer and said that if it was liver cancer he had about one to three months to live. She wanted to be sure it was liver cancer so she sent the sample of his liver to Michigan State to be tested. The days after the biopsy A.J. started to get worse and worse. His face became swollen from lack of protein. He had to wear some of my old t-shirts because we didn’t want any seepage from where his stitches were to leak onto the floor. Slowly and sadly I saw my best friend dying before me and I knew I couldn’t do anything to help him. Every night before I went to bed I would carry A.J. from the living room floor to the foot of my bed because that was his favorite spot to sleep, and because he was getting so weak it was hard for him to walk. Every night I would whisper in his ear, “Everything is going to be ok, I promise.” Every night I prayed he would survive, and I always thought at least he has a few more months. Still every night I prayed he didn’t have liver cancer. Then one day before the results for the liver sample were due, a week after they were sent to Michigan State we were watching TV and I had gone into my bedroom to watch something other than the old time movie my mom was watching. About halfway into my mom’s movie she yelled “Maris get in hear fast!” I got up as quick as I could and went into the living room. When I looked to see why my mom was yelling my heart skipped a beat. It was A.J. My mom was kneeling next to him as he was gasping for breath. His swollen face from lack of protein had swollen around his throat and he couldn’t breathe. There was no way my mom could save him. I started to cry as my best friend took his last few breaths. Then I whispered in his ear for the last time “Everything is going to be ok, I promise. Just remember I will always love you.” Then as my best friends body went lifelessly limp, I laid there with my head against him, his collar in one hand, and his favorite toy in the other. I waited for my nightmare to end, it didn’t. I wrote this story a year ago for my english class... i will never forget A.J. he was my first dog and my best friend and i lost him to liver cancer R.I.P. <3