plunk

Throwing him [the dog] off Zhongshan bridge into the Danshui might be easier [than having him cremated in a buddhist ceremony]. Then again you wouldn't want poodles washing up at yu2ren2ma3tou2 so I dunno, like, I just dunno, you know? Anyway, I saw a show about Vernasi last night and they were talking about how if you got lucky with the gods or something perhaps the cycle of suffering, birth and death and all that can finally come to an end, but only if you are cremated at Vernasi and thrown in the Ganges which of course is nothing like being a dog and thrown off the Zhongshan bridge in a paper bag. Your dog might come back as hello kitty if you threw him in there.

gao_bo_han - bob,

Don't you think this post was just a *tad* disrespectful? The OP's pet has not even passed on yet, and you're making crude jokes?

bob - I was going more for profound with a despairing nod toward reality than disrespectful, trying to bring a little perspective like, but if I failed I apologize. People love their dogs I know.

hannes - And it's "Varanasi" not "Vernasi".

I buried a dog and a cat back in Germany in our own back yard when I was about 12. The cat wasn't even ours. I remember watching the cat sitting besides the road in front of our house (I was looking out the window of my room). Knowing that the cat -- cats aren't really that smart at times -- would cross the road the minute a car would pass by, I stormed down the stairs, ran out the house and when I arrived a minute later at the spot where the cat had been sitting before, it all had happened already. Man, was I made at the cat. I still remember how it felt to carry the stiff body of the lifeless cat to the back yard.

bob - You probably chased it. I know that people often block these kind of memories as a defense mechanism but the energy still exists and eats away at your soul regardless. The only thing you can do is own your guilt and strive to be a better person in the future. No more drinking, no more chasing cats in front of traffic in ill-fated attempts at kindness, no more correcting spelling mistakes with sentences that begin with the abusive "and" and so on and so forth etc.

hannes - I did help to slaughter a sheep once, I admit. But I didn't make the cat trying to outrun that car.

And Bob, you are mean, and I mean it.

bob - Like innocence, guilt is universal. Sometimes they are the same thing. I, for example, was badly raised and therefore became evil and a bad speller. Is this my fault, am I to blame? Who blames who? Sometimes it is the guilty who blame the innocent come guilty and then what? It is a mess only understandable through the abstract nonsensical and even then only vaguely. At some point one gives up and this is the beginning.

hannes - Innocence, guilt, good, evil... whatever.

The question here is, what to do with a dog that has passed away. I'd say, try to pay the dog your respect by properly saying good bye in one way or another. Throwing it into a river would be evil, and surely make you feel guilty some time afterwards.

bob - Yes, but I would not really throw the dog in the river, at least not without first securing something heavy to his feet. I would purchase a bottle of cognac for the occassion and weep appropriately as the insignificance of his "plunk" into the river reverberated in mine empty soul. Later while contemplating the pervasiveness of evil in the universe I'd pause for a moment at my own guilt. Bleh, I'd say, you can't begin to imagine the shit I've seen people do.