RIP Patches Ng

Check out Lyn the Bimb's blog as she blogged about our BKK trip... from her Bimbo perspective. AND when she is busily kutuk-ing me like mad... she's known as Lynnie the MEANNIE!!

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It was not to be a normal day.

As I have been dubbed as an antisocial, of late, my fellow colleague- Anne made asked me to go for another colleague's birthday lunch celebration and I did. I enjoyed myself and it was quite a fun lunch time with loads of jokes followed by laughter.

However, on our way back to office, my mum called, saying that there was sad news. It didn't feel as if it was such tragic news as I could hear a hint of smile in her tone. Unfortunately, it was.

My dog, Patches died. It was a hit and run case with no eyewitness. It felt so sudden. There were no preparation. Just in the morning, I was joking to my mother that Patches was merajuking because we didn't let her out of her cage. If only I had known that would be the last time I saw her.

As I heard the news, I was shocked. Stunned. Aggrieved and felt like tearing but had to control them. When I reached office, I just felt utterly down. It was the opposite feeling I experienced during lunch time. I wanted to just drive home, curl under my blanket and cry for my loss.

Sounds so dramatic, right? I didn't expect to feel this so acutely. I mentioned it to Anne and started crying. That felt really pathetic. I felt the loss acutely, strangely.

Sigh.

Patches has been with us for 8 human years and she was truly the best dog I ever had. My dad found her as a puppy roaming the streets of Ringlet town (Cameron Highlands) on her own. She was absolutely adorable and he took her home for us.

I was surprised my mum let us keep her as:

No.1 - She was a FEMALE dog.
No.2 - She had long FUR... AND
No.3 - She had FLEAS!!

Naturally, Patches won mum over with her intellect, her alertness and her human-like behaviour! She tends to look at you and behaves as if she understands what you are saying to her. I wouldn't be surprised if she actually does.

Since then, she has been a source of amusement and joy with her antics such as digging and burying her bones, exasperating us endlessly with her disappearing and appearing magic tricks of sneaking in and out of the house.

She has always been such a lovable creature that people would stop by the house just to visit her, call her and play with her. We even had neighbours throwing over sweets and cheese! It's a good thing they never threw her a bone, if not, she very well might have followed them home!

As Patches grew up, naturally my mum wanted her to mate to have cute, adorable babies just like her. Patches, however, had other ideas. She was picky and only loved to hump puppies... especially the male ones. We were a bit concerned that she might have been confused with her gender. She was also smart enough to sit on her bump when a HUGE dog comes sniffing her for potential mating!

To cut a super long, chiong hei story short, she finally mated with our other dog, Oreos (who disappeared in Cameron Highlands... possibly dognapped by orang asli's and eaten) and had a litter of puppies. However, it would seem that motherhood did not agree with her. Only four out of I think, six of her puppies survived which we named Duchess, Benji, Chopin and Princess.

However, after several days, Princess passed on to doggie heaven as she was too weak to survive. We gave Chopin away to our relatives. No offense, he turned out rather ugly despite his handsome albeit stocky looking father and adorable mother's genes.

Duchess and Benji was eventually exiled to Cameron Highlands as we did not have enough place for them to roam. Unfortunately, Duchess did not survive birthing her babies last year. Apparently, she did not inherit Patches' intelligence of NOT mating with TOO huge a dog!

Sigh.

There are endless stories I could blog about Patches but you would understand what i mean if you had ever seen her, taken care of her or just played with her!

There are endless things that we could have done to give her a better life and also endless measures that we could have taken to prevent this unfortunate incident.

But it's too late. It's always too late.

I don't know if I would want another dog. Just going through my pictures of her and blogging about this makes me tear again. Well, just a little bit.

Just so you know, Patches Ng, you will forever be in my memories and despite your erm.. loose morales... I still love you and will miss you, you cheeky little imp.