Lessons From Little Spirit

I found her at the Mola Mola Express Harbor on Nusa Penida while waiting for my speedboat back to Bali. It had been a fantastically fun and physically intense weekend away from home, exploring the island of Nusa Penida and scuba diving off the coast. I groggily pulled up to the harbour, returned my scooter rental and sat down on a bench in a crowd of people waiting for the Idola Express, munching on a freshly baked jackfruit pancake made by my hotel manager’s wife. I had only had a few hours of sleep the night before. Mindlessly staring at the floor in front of me I saw a withered little thing make it’s way around dozens of feet in the crowd. She was just a puppy, noticeably weak and terribly shy. She looked like she hadn’t eaten for days and was barely able to stand up once she slumped over beside a garbage bin.

I’ve wanted to puppy for a very long time but my nomadic lifestyle hasn’t allowed for a dog. I rescued one in Ubud almost four years ago and had it adopted. Since then I have always said that I wouldn’t go out looking for a dog but if I found one in need, I’d take it with me. I figured the moment had come. I tried to look away from the little thing but there had been something between us, I knew I had to take her and I knew if I didn’t, by the looks of it, she likely wouldn’t have made it through the day. I got up, walked over to the boat office and asked if I could bring a small dog with me to Bali. They granted me permission. I took off my backpack and pulled out my beach sarong, walking up to the puppy and gingerly wrapping it around her. It was one of the two elephant print sarongs I had purchased in Thailand 5 years ago. Ironically, thinking about it now, I realise that the first puppy I had rescued, I had also wrapped in the other of the two sarongs. A little mundane detail repeating itself. She didn’t struggle and surrendered into the swaddle. I made my way down to the pier overhung with bags, with a puppy under one arm and used my free hand to pull myself up to the top deck of the speed boat. Interesting turn of events - I thought.

The ride back to Bali was unusually bumpy. As we navigated the choppy waters I clutched the little swaddle I held in my arms and planned what I was going to do when we got back to Bali. “I wonder”, I thought, “… if dogs get seasick” … just as the thought had escaped my mind, the puppy in my arms moved upright opened its mouth and vomited all over my shorts. Because she hadn’t eaten for must have been days, it was mostly water I gave her at the harbor and bile. There wasn’t much I could do so I just made peace with the fact that we’d both be covered in puke for the next hour. This radical acceptance seemed to help and by the time we got off the boat I had almost forgotten it happened. During the ride I came up with a name for the puppy … it sort of just popped into my head, '“Spirit” , so I went with it. Once off the boat I made my way to the parking lot and found my scooter, covered in flowers and leaves from two days of sitting under a tree. I put Spirit into a cotton grocery bag, hung it over my dashboard and gingerly made my way over to Canggu, stopping at the market for canned puppy food and water.

Once we got home I escorted Spirit to the bathtub and gave her a little bit of food from the can, which she frantically gobbled up, and a much needed shower. Upon closer inspection I discovered that she was covered in fat silver ticks. I have never in my life seen that many ticks on an animal, they were everywhere, 15-20 between each toe, on her back, under her paws. It took me almost an hour and a half to bathe her and remove about 95% of the ticks from her body with a pair of tweezers. I’d pluck them off and drown them in a cup of water, trying to keep myself from gagging. By the time I was done the cup was bloody and a quarter filled with ticks. To keep her still I was intermittently feeding her. The poor thing, she was very weak and such a good sport about it. Didn’t give me a hard time at all. After the bath I gave her some more food and made her a bed on the floor out of my pool towel. She completely passed out. As she lay there I noticed more ticks crawling out from under her. Great. I was barely keeping my eyes open having had barely any sleep the night before. I still had to take her to the vet and I couldn’t take a nap myself in case the ticks I kept picking up off the floor made their way out and into my living quarters. Deciding it was best to go to the clinic immediately, I picked Spirit up and drove her to Central Vet in Kuta. I have never been to a veterinary clinic in Bali so this was a completely new experience. The ‘vet’ examined her in front of me and gave me three packets of pills, for deworming, ticks and her skin condition. The vet bill was about $15 (a far cry from what it would’ve cost in the States or in Canada). I asked for blood tests but the vet said she was fine so we ended up leaving. I took Spirit with me to a cafe. I had yet to have a meal that day. My energy levels were crashing and I still needed to figure out what to do with her. I had just received a message from my landlady that I couldn’t keep her in the hotel. The next few hours were absolute hell. I messaged dozens of friends and every single animal shelter and boarding house in Bali trying to place the puppy. We had spent just a few hours together but I was already attached to the little thing and as I was searching for her new home I was wiping away tears. While I was frantically typing messages on my phone she threw up all the food I had given her. It was almost 6 o’clock and no one could take her. The shelters were packed full, even the the one I donated to a few years prior said they had no room.

Having no luck and unwilling to leave her out on the street I started searching for a new hotel, this time for myself, (one that would me to keep a dog). At about 6:30pm I received a message from 2ndhome4paws , a dog hostel and adoption agency who were willing to board Spirit at their home for 1,000,000 IDR (roughly $71 USD) a month. If we managed to have her adopted before the four weeks were up the deposit would be refunded in full. Having finally found Spirit a temporary home, I cried, mix of relief, exhaustion and sadness. It took roughly 30 minutes to drive to the family’s home. They run a dog shelter facility, but for special cases like Spirit, who still need to undergo treatment, they host them at their family house to be able to keep a closer look at them. When I arrived at the house I met Teena and Marianto, who took Spirit and introduced me to their big happy family of adopted pooches. One of them, Boots, a puppy roughly Spirit’s age was already running circles around Spirit, trying to get her to play with him, but she was absolutely exhausted, crawling under a chair in the garden to hide. After speaking with Teena and Marianto for just under an hour I felt incredibly grateful that I was about to leave Spirit in good hands while nursing her back to health and trying to find her a permanent family.

The next morning I got a text from Teena informing me that Spirit was throwing up and they couldn’t get her to eat. We bought her some colloidal silver and specialised food and hoped for the best. She seemed to eventually warm up to the food and get better by the evening. She took her meds. Throughout the day Teena would update me on Spirit’s wellbeing and we both hoped that the puppy was on the road to recovery. However the next evening Spirit grew increasingly lethargic and we decided that it was best to take her to the vet again. As we were making the arrangements over the phone I received a heartbreaking text from Teena. Spirit had just passed away.

I had just parked my bike in front of my hotel when I read the text. My heart sank to my stomach. In the back of my mind I had feared that hundreds of ticks I removed from Spirit’s little body 48hrs before had done lasting damage. It could’ve been that her liver and kidneys couldn’t handle the reintroduction of food and the medication the vet put her on. I was also angry at the vet for not administering the blood tests in time. Depending on what they would have shown, maybe we would have had more time to save her. I sent a message to Central Vet informing them that their negligence may have contributed to Spirit’s untimely death. They apologised, but it was too little too late. We lost her.

I got back on my bike and drove to Teena and Marianto’s house in the dark, wiping away tears to pick up Spirit’s little body. I was going to find a tree somewhere in the jungle and bury her. My thoughts went back to my childhood. I had a lot of pets, all of who I loved dearly. But my parents had always shielded me from the tragedy of their eventual passing. It wasn’t until I was 14 years old that I held a dying pet in my arms for the very first time. She was a hamster I kept for over 4 years, she died of old age, her name was Nike. I remembered how devastated I was when she grew heavy in my palms. I had wrapped her in a little towel and put her in a tissue box, got on my bike and rode down to Flemington Park, where I buried her near a tree by the Don River. I would visit that place for years. Not long after, a little bush with white blossoms grew over her grave.

I arrived at the house and a teary eyed Teena opened the gates to let me in. “I’m so sorry. I really thought she’d get through this”. I gave her a big hug and started crying too. “You did everything you could”, I whispered. Teena led me to the garden where Spirit lay on a chair wrapped in a little yellow towel. I picked her up and sat down hugging the little swaddle, tears streaming down my cheeks and dropping onto the little bundle in my hands like rain. I felt so incredibly sad and at the same time looking down on the lifeless body in my arms I felt a peace come over me. She says “Thank you”, I turned to Teena and Marianto … I said it because that’s what I felt, I felt this love envelop me and I kept getting this message in my head, “Thank you …. thank you for taking care of me”. We couldn’t save her, but in the past 48 hours of her life, a street puppy was taken on a boat by a stranger, cared for, fed and loved by three people. She had a name and she slept in a safe, warm home surrounded by friends. When she died, she was mourned by a family of strangers brought together by a unified desire to care for her, and a family of dogs who longingly looked on in the direction of where I was sitting with Spirit’s body. They cried too. Teena and Marianto didn’t want them to see that Spirit had died so they were locked behind the gates, but they felt it, and they were heartbroken too. There was a massive difference in their expressions now from the happy and bubbly dogs I had met two days prior. And then I was hit with this realisation, that little Spirit came into our lives and for 48hrs had reminded us all about what unconditional love was. I picked her up off that harbor because I couldn’t stand to watch her suffer. I did everything I could for her before having to let her go because I wasn’t in a position to give her the full time home and care she deserved. And two days later I had to make peace with the fact that our collective care for this little creature couldn’t change her fate. I sat with her and said my goodbyes. Teena and Marianto offered to bury Spirit under the frangipani tree in their garden. I was so grateful to them for everything they had done. Marianto offered me back the cash I paid for Spirit’s boarding but I refused to take it back, hoping it would be able to save another puppy, like Spirit in the near future. The couple buried her in the yard and scattered flowers over the little mount of dirt under which she lay resting.

As I drove home I felt the heaviness of despair and defeat, but my heart was full knowing that Spirit didn’t die alone. She was loved, and what a feat it is to make three human strangers care for you so deeply in such a short amount of time. Maybe that’s why, I thought … the only name I had thought of for her on that boat was “Spirit” … maybe because she had already chosen to cross the boundary of physical life and she was here to spend the last two days of her life reminding us all to navigate ours in the fullness of our hearts. If that had been her purpose, she had been successful.