Love Story with CheeBii

My Love StoryWithCheeBii=)

How do you define love? What is the meaning and essence of this simple four lettered word? Wikipedia defines it as being an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.

I personally view it as something resembling air. A feeling that we humans, may never live without. Some believe that humans are created in God’s image and we closely resemble God. I think we are most like God in one way…the ability and compassion to love and give unconditionally to another individual. When God created us, He must have done so with so much love. We are never closer to Him than when we choose to love. To have the ability to be compassionate, patient and selfless.

This is a story about love. But not mine. I tried for many times to write this in the point of view of the main character. But I couldn’t, because it had seemed so cold and static. This is why, reader, as you proceed to know more about this love story, you will be reading this story from the view of a third party. I am merely the narrator to this beautiful true love story.

The main character of this story is Ron. And the love of his life, his soulmate, has many names. Ron and Santi (main character’s wife) had called her Baby, Seal, Ugly Seal, Babygirl, Lovely Seal, CheeBii, and many others that you, dear reader, would become very much acquainted to as you read on. So, you may ask, who might this Baby Seal be? She is what you may call, the greatest man’s best friend that ever lived (at least in the hearts of those that loved and remembers her).

Baby was a birthday present for Ron from Santi. Baby was the smallest of the lot when Santi bought her. The weird thing was, the match between Baby and Ron could possibly be called a match made in destiny? Baby was actually already sold to another person that has yet to come and pick up the little thing. Santi went through a great length of time trying to persuade the owner, her friend to sell Baby back to her. At the time, Santi was living together with Ron. And as you can guess, they were very much in love, so much that I remembered Ron’s mom naming them the Kissing Fishes. However, this love story is between our main character and his dog. We shall continue with this story.

Ron’s best birthday present should be the one on his 29^th birthday. He had many, but this would be the icing of the cake because this was the birthday that he got to meet and fell in love with our heroine, Baby.

Santi bought Baby from her friend and surprised Ron with her, with an intention that she would be a belated birthday present (As I was told by the main character of this story). Baby is a Labrador and a special one, as you may find once you proceed with the story.

Baby is the cutest little puppy you could lay your eyes on, and as puppies go, have a great pair of eyes that could melt diamonds. She had the cutest little nose that was just wet enough and the friendliest tongue that would lick the hell out of anybody that petted her. She was so small and delicate with the softest fur and the fairest tummy. Snow White tummy, if I wasn’t wrong…that was what Ron had told me a long time ago. He loved her and treated her as if she was his own personal favorite toy.

Both Santi and Ron fed her with the best food money could buy and the greatest affection any dog could have. She lived inside the house and had her own personal nest complete with a blanky^^ and the nicest little collar.

They had both named her Baby and later on upgraded the name to Baby Seal because of one particular picture. Baby looked so much like a seal in her adolescent years that they just couldn’t resist giving her that name. The best thing was that she seems to understand that both the names were hers and she would respond fondly to whoever calls her.

As times passed, the hardest thing was to potty train her. In this case, Paper Train our heroine. Ron and Santi laid down papers,(mostly Star Newspaper) on the floor and kept teaching Baby that the papers were meant for her to do her private business. It took weeks but she finally got it! Honestly, she was as smart as a real kid. The only difference was she couldn’t speak like one. After that, she knew her place to poo and to pee or in a more personal way, Ron and Santi prefers to call the two actions ShhShh and MMM MMM. Whenever Ron asked Baby to go to the papers and MMM MMM or ShhShh, our little heroine would rush there, sniff a little and turn a few rounds before letting it go. And let me share something funny about the way she goes, the little thing gets embarrassed almost like the way a human would blush when you look at her doing it. She would peek at you and turn away with a goofy look on her wrinkly face. Almost as if she was uncomfortable with the idea that somebody saw her doing something like that. What did I tell you, cute?

She did it the same way for years to come. The next funny thing about our heroine? Where do I even continue from?

Because she lives in the house together with Ron, she was the special one. Whenever Santi was not around, she would be the one that sleeps together with Ron on the same bed, share the same covers and wake up at the same time. As much as Ron was keeping her company, she was also keeping him company.

When Ron first got her, he knew she was special. There was always a special type of reputation associated with a Lab, and that was about their intelligence. But he had never been close to one and her intelligence surprised him. Both Santi and Ron bought her toys, all that she demolished and chewed to kingdom come one after the other. There was this toy that Santi had given her and she had asked her one day with him watching, “Where is ur toy, Bii?”

After a few more times of asking the same thing, she had given them the confused look that all of us had grown fond of whenever we asked her anything, she’d give us that rounded eyes, frowning forehead look, and at the time, she had scrambled under the bed and pulled out her toy, dumping the toy on the floor in front of Santi and looked at her. That was the time that they noticed how smart she really was. We always associate little things with names for our dogs but we never expect them to really understand what we say. But she seems to understand something and catch up pretty fast.

I have compiled a list of words that she had grown to understand, it was quite a massive load of words that it fascinates me how she could catch up so fast. And bear in mind that she only needs you to tell her the same words and teach her a few times to understand what you want.

List of Words that Baby understood:

1. Snack (this is a word you will truly want to avoid saying in front of her. Whenever you mention this, she would prick up her ears and follow you everywhere you go with that excited look on her face until she gets what you said. And she’s got sharp ears. Though she gets confused when you say smack.LOL)

2. Mum Mum. (Understandable because it means meal time)

3. Daddy Give Water, Drink water (She understands this action too)

4. Show me your toy (As mentioned above)

5. ShhShh.

6. MMM MMM

7. Naughty Girl (She dislikes this)

8. Chase your tail (This is something with the most effect and a lot of people are around and they laugh super loud at the action. She would be happy and would do it more to amuse the crowd. Believe me, she likes attention).

9. Clever Girl (She is fond of this)

10. Play Seal (This is when she imitates a Seal and tries to climb on your lap with her head buried in turns to your left side and right, all the while slobbering you with saliva)

11. LengLui Seal means Pretty girl ( She is very fond of this compliment, she practically grew up with it)

12. Where’s Daddy, Mommy (this works when she plays hide and seek with both Ron and Santi. The question would always be Where’s Daddy and she would go looking for her beloved Daddy in the room, dining table and everywhere a dog could possibly think of. Ron would be hiding somewhere new all the time, waiting for her to look for him and would tell her she was clever).

13. What’s that Bii (This would work if you want her do to a little survey in front of the door, looking for any signs of suspicious strangers in the place. Honestly, she’s not much of a guard dog, she was more interested spending her time amusing Santi and Ron and making them happy. The surveys she made were to make her Daddy and Mommy happy.)

14. Sit, Stay, Play Dead (The first two are common. But the third one was discovered when Santi asked what Baby was doing lying in that position for so long whilst I was resting beside her. After a few times of asking her to play dead, she only began to do it a few times but this didn’t stick)

15. Are you a Clever Girl or Naughty Girl (This works in a funny way because all you have to do is to hold up both your hands and tell her which ones represents naughty girl and clever girl and then held up both hands and ask her. She will lick the hand that represents clever and she would get this right 7/8 times out of 10 times).

16. Daddy wipe (This works when she’d gotten messy and had dirt in her eyes, when she hears this she will sit and wag her tail, waiting for her daddy to wipe her face clean).

Ron and her played a lot of games together as Baby grows up. They used to chase each other around and play hide and seek. When she does something wrong like bite the papers or swallow something dirty and make a great dirty mess, Ron would scold her and showed her a lot of disapproval. However, she would also give him a funny comeback. She would bark, but just a soft one and kept quiet just to show that she was angry with him for scolding her.

The happy times were the best and Ron loved every minute of it. They stayed etched in his mind even until this day. She was the special one. The dog that every dog lover would find one day and decide that it was the soulmate they’ve been looking for. Baby was the soulmate for our Hero, Ron.

He spent most of his time with her at home and would play with her before doing his chores. When he watched TV or surfed the internet, she was always there with him, staying as close as possible to her beloved daddy. However long he slept beside her, that was how long she would lay beside him.

Everything was routine to them. Every morning there would be some conversation between the both of them. Some would view it as being one-sided but between them, it was a mutual understanding that it was a representation of love. Baby loved and adored his voice. She couldn’t possibly bear a few days without him. It was a good thing that dogs have no sense of time. This lessens the pain of waiting for her beloved Daddy everytime Ron and Santi went to another place for a vacation.

When Baby was about 3 years old, the nightmare started and haunted both Ron and Santi for a long time. Baby was diagnosed with epilepsy. It happened after a short car trip to the convenience store where a piece of potato bun triggered her first epileptic fit. It was a common thing between them at night to have a short car trip to the local 7-11 to get some snacks or drinks. She was always along for the treats to come. But we all know that she would have gone nonetheless on the trip just to stay close to her beloved Daddy. All her life, she only wanted one thing and that was to stay as close as possible to her loved ones.

When I stayed in Ron’s house, it wasn’t uncommon to hear him pulling and laying down an old unused mattress for Baby. He would then tell her to “oioi” which means go to sleep in chinese (a local dialect).

As this goes on Baby caught up pretty fast knowing that the mattress and the words mean bedtime.

Baby had a short temper with anything that fought for affection or ever made her angry. There was a toy in the shape of a seal that Ron used to poke and bother her with. When he wasn’t around, she bit the toy and threw her on the floor as a personal vendetta.

Well, yes~she did retain some of her puppy qualities. Personally, I think she was The Destroyer Retriever. She bites and chew anything in sight. The first thing she chewed and swallowed bit by bit was a single slipper that Santi wore as a pair in the house which later became just one because the other one became a chew toy for her.

Santi and her relationship was funnier because Baby knows how to pick and choose who she will bully. She loves bullying Santi. Whenever Santi uses the loo, she will nudge the door open (Believe me when I say with her size and strength, she could do that in a jiffy) and sit staring at what Santi was doing inside. On her mind, possibly was why Mommy had to use a potty when there were enough papers outside to share with.

She was a good natured little (affectionate little, not physical) dog and she could get along with anybody. All dogs could bully her around but the thing was that she didn’t like going round with dogs. The only beings she loved were humans. She was brought up like a daughter and perhaps, in more ways than one, she had thought of herself as one. She was always more concerned whether or not Ron and Santi loves her and gives her attention and didn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not the other dogs wanted to play house with her. She was cute that way.

I guess you could now imagine how painful it was for them to find out that their CheeBii had an incurable disease. After sending her to the veterinarian, Ron and Santi had googled all about canine epilepsy and read every journal and forums they could manage in a span of a few days. It was in her genes. Baby’s biological father, Ah Boy suffered from the same genetic defect and on the day that he died, Baby’s adoptive Daddy, Ron was there to witness it, with an all good intention to help him make it through. He didn’t.

That night, Ron cried and for all those that were present, they had no idea why. Boy wasn’t his dog. In his mind, he was only thinking, that could be Baby. He had to prepare for the inevitable truth. Baby will have the same fate one day. But as optimistic Santi always did, she assured him that it wouldn’t happen. But both knew what the odds are.

The hard truth was that epilepsy could only be maintained with medication but impossible to cure.

It was like a terror to them after that and every time they heard Baby snorting or chattering her teeth they had to check whether or not she’s had an epileptic attack in the night. Leaving the house almost seemed impossible because they were so worried that she might have a seizure while they were away.

The epileptic fit didn’t only attack her body, it was mental as well, and she couldn’t recognize her own mommy and daddy after each fit. Simple things like her name and even commands were deaf on her ears. She even growled at Ron because she didn’t know him once after an epilepsy attack.

I personally saw Ron having a tough time after each seizure and the pain was written on his face even though Baby was the one suffering from the fit. That look was none other than that of a father being unable to bear the pain that his daughter was going through. For santi, it was a nightmare because she had more time in the house to look at her beloved Baby suffer from each attack.

Soon after these attacks subsided, they thought it was not going to be a recurrent attack and that she will soon recover from them. She began to catch up pretty fast like she did before and remembered every thing she’d ever been taught. Life was back to normal. Although, once or twice in a certain amount of time, she would suffer from another seizure.

Baby was the heroine of the story, as I’d said earlier. She was the one that brought Ron and Santi back together after one of the worst fights they’ve had and Ron had moved out of the house. At the time, Santi was packing up her stuff as well to move and Baby, our little heroine was still in the house. There was a psychopath that kept peeking in at her and she wouldn’t have realized it if not for Baby trying to be as matured as possible and barked at the intruder. She was only less than a year old. Everybody knows how good natured Labs are. On her mind, maybe she was thinking this was her chance to show Mommy I could be a real dog and chase the bad guy away. Little did she know that her actions would bring Daddy back too.Santi, terrified, called Ron and he came back to save the day. Cliché, I know but hey they did get back together and she gave birth to Baby Micah…but that’s another story for another day. After they were married, everything was pretty much the same. Baby was still there. Keeping the both of them company at night.

More good news to come, the new house that they bought was ready and they could move in. They brought Baby along and unfortunately, she could no longer stay inside the house and had to stay outside in the garden. The new baby boy in the house prevented that from happening. However depressed our heroine was, she sucked it up and began to get used to her environment. The only problem was she couldn’t stay away from her Daddy and Mommy. When they were in the living room, she had to stay exactly at the same area outside of the house to be close to them. This continued for weeks. Ron had a hard time adapting to this change and as far as tough Santi tries to be for the good of her son, she was feeling bad about letting Baby stay outside in the garden too. However, it was for the better now that Baby had her own garden to run around in.

At night Ron and Baby still played hide and seek. She even learnt a new trick. Ron would call her and pretend not to see her. Baby would rub her nose by his side to make him notice her as if to say Daddy I’m here by your side.

These games, sad to say didn’t last very long due to the fact that she had a recurring nemesis which we know as the epilepsy that attacked her when she was in her early years. It proved fatal. On the night of Monday, 2^nd August 2010, she had a fit that lasted for almost half an hour and she was completely paralyzed. Ron was the one there that watched it . He tried to cool her down with water as she was burning up. After the seizure slows down and began to stop, he fed her medication but somehow, it was slow in taking effect. In fact it only got worst. She couldn’t move and there was no response when he called her. Immobilised and unable to communicate, she could only roll her eyes and look up at her daddy. She probably wanted to tell him it was alright although she was in pain.

When Santi came home, she was completely aghast at how Baby was and the first thing she wanted to do was get Baby to a veterinarian as fast as they could.

Baby had already lost control of her peristaltic movements and had started to poo everywhere and vomited all her food out on the floor.

In his heart, Ron didn’t want to send her to the hospital, possibly knowing that she would not make it and didn’t want her to have to do it alone in a place like a pet clinic. But it was definitely the right choice because they wouldn’t know how to take care of her like a professional could anyway.

That night, as they left Baby there for her treatment and IV drip…Ron couldn’t bear to leave her alone in that cold unfamiliar place but he had to. The veterinarian assured him that she would be alright in the next morning. He went back and decided to take her back tomorrow first thing after his lunch meeting in Malacca.

During the drive to Malacca, he received a message that Baby had passed on and didn’t make it.

Words could only do so much in expressing his feelings. Probably, he had felt his heart being torn alive from his body. It was tragic. His soulmate, the only living thing that he could truly be himself in front of was gone. Santi could have suffered no less.

He would have let Baby pass on near them if he’d known that she wouldn’t be able to make it through the night. The only words that she’d heard from them that night before going on to a better place was that her Daddy would come and fetch her when she’s better the next day. She’d held on to those words and yet, there were no more fight left in her. The only possibility that could have taken her life away was probably another epileptic attack in the night when nobody was around her to tell her it was going to be alright and it was alright to let go if she was in pain. The first attack had left her weak and tired, she could not have made it through the next. She was a fighter and her Daddy and Mommy knew she would have held on to play with them again if she could. However, fate has a cruel way of taking away what is most precious and dear to them. The four years that they had together couldn’t possibly be enough.

The only thing that they could do now was claim the body back. However much I tried to understand the situation, I don’t think that I could possibly know what they both must have felt when they saw her body being wrapped in a bag like she was a piece of trash.

He felt like everything was a blur. He would now have to think of a place to bury her. BURY. That word was like a venomous sting on his heart.

Santi suggested the garden in their house, so she would be the first thing she saw in the morning that they woke up and the last thing they see at night. Baby had wanted to stay close to them and the best thing for her now would be to have a resting place as close to them as possible.

When the Goh brothers (Ron’s elder brother and younger one) came to help dig in the garden, they were holding back tears. With heavy hearts, they worked up a hole at least six feet deep. In the end, Santi couldn’t help it and had to cry. It was like a chain reaction and the others started to cry silently. Everybody loved Baby. And they knew Baby loved them. But she had to go. The only thing that she’d gotten together with her was her snack and a blanky that she loved to curl up in.

As I wrote this story, Ron and Santi were still in the process of a very long grief. They couldn’t accept the fact that Baby was now gone. The thread of the family that brought them together. They had managed to stay strong but it was evident from their eyes and their faces that they were depressed. Their daughter was now gone. There was nothing left to remember her but her photos and fur, which were now getting scarce. It was heart breaking.

There was no more chance to call her for a hug. Or even see her smiley face by the door. No white mound of fur hanging out at the gates when they arrived at the gates of their house. She was just not there. Ron and Santi had a final memento from her as a parting gift. Her paw print and a small packet of her fur from her ever swishing tail. Ron burned a disc of her pictures to keep. All her life.In a cd.A collar.A bowl. And nothing else but bits of fur that will never be there anymore as time passed.

There were so many things that they have yet to do. Too many words and actions left hanging. What he wouldn’t give just to have her back to tell her how clever she was and how pretty she was.

The love between a man and his dog, that One Special dog that he would call his soulmate would last forever in their hearts and this is one such story. Although Baby is no longer here, she would live on in their hearts and in ours, I hope because we’ve all grown very fond of her as the story proceeds and if you had read this far, you must have loved her too.

I believe she would tell both Santi and Daddy that she was going to a much better place and one day, they would be together in heaven.

In a way, she would have told him once more like they used to in front of the house as she rubbed her nose by his side, Daddy I’m beside you. Or when she’d stared at Mommy doing her work, Mommy I’m keeping you company.

She will always be there in our hearts and although she is now no longer here, her memories will last forever in our hearts.

This piece of work is a tribute to the Greatest Dog that ever lived inside Santi and Ron’s heart, CheeBii.

As I’ve said in the beginning of the story, I am but narrating this story for them. Do pardon my lack of love or emotion in this story as compared to the amount of love that Ron and Santi must have had for her. Lots Of Love CheeBii

8^th February 2006 ------2^nd August 2010