biography: rip lola

I've had dogs as pets from as early as I can remember. When I was a little child, my family owned 2 chihuahua's named Lucky and Prince. We liked to say they were married since they had kids together. Lucky was white and she was the nice one who loved people whereas Prince was the mean one who hated people and would bite you if you came too close. Anytime I would put my finger in their cage, Prince wouldn't hesitate to bite my finger.

Once my parents divorced, we had to move out of our house and because of that, we gave Lucky and Prince away. A few years had passed and my mom's friend gave us the opportunity to have her dog for free since she was getting married and couldn't take care of her anymore. Her name was Lola and she was a pug. I was so excited to have a dog again and even though I didn't like pugs at first, I grew to love Lola. She was this fat dog with a wrinkly face that always looked so happy.

I loved Lola, I really did but my sister and I were in elementary school, my mom was a single, working mother and none of us had any time to look after Lola. As we all grew up, we became more and more occupied with our lives and she was constantly ignored.

One summer my family and I wento to Vietnam for a month to visit family and we left Lola with a family to dogsit. When we came back, we found out that Lola had died after the family left her in a car while they went into a grocery store. It was traumatizing. I was in shock. It was the first time I had ever experienced loss and even today and I still get upset over it. I'm not angry at the family who killed her though, I'm mostly angry at myself. I'm angry that I didn't give Lola the attention or love she needed, that she was probably much happier dead than living in our house. I'm so angry that we took on the responsibility of having a dog but couldn't even take care of her properly.

Ever since her death, I didn't want another dog. I felt so bad and I still do. Even thinking about it now, I'm filled with so much sadness and guilt. I knew that I didn't have the time or energy to take care of another dog, so I never allowed myself to get one.

I don't know if heaven exists or if dogs reincarnate, but either way I hope Lola is loving it up there or that she ended up with a much better family who showed her so much more love.

This isn't a photo of Lola. I couldn't find one because I had her such a long time ago before thebig use of technology and social media, but this is basically what she looked like. Picture Source.

Author's Note: I decided to write about this topic because Lola isn't something I've ever talked about while in college, but it's something I still think about. I decided to write out this story very informally by writing everything down as I felt it, no filter.