We said goodbye on Friday. But Buboy chose to stay.
Buboy wasn’t supposed to survive.
Not after the hunger. Not after the abuse.
Not after being forgotten and left for dead like he didn’t matter.
Like a lot of other aspins (local/native Philippine dogs), Buboy came to us — broken, sick, and in pain — and I couldn’t turn him away. None of us could. Our little circle of animal lovers scraped together what we could to get him help. We took him in, fed him, cleaned his wounds, brought him to the vet.
I planned to formally adopt him.
And then he crashed.
Last Sunday, his face swelled. His fever spiked. He could barely stand.
I rushed home from a trip and took him to a clinic — but the urgency wasn’t met. If not for my neighbor (a human doctor and animal lover), Buboy might not have made it that night. We turned my home into a makeshift ICU. I set alarms every 2 hours. Checked his breathing. Monitored his vitals. Cleaned the wound. Administered meds. No sleep. Just survival.
And still, it wasn’t enough.
He underwent two surgeries.
First debridement (the least graphic post-surgery photo)
Post-debridement and after the broken catheter.