Cheeku's web site
guarding the house
This is as far as I know the one and only site dedicated to my
dog, Cheeku. Cheeku is the name of a fruit that people in this
country like to call a zapota or something. We got Cheeku when
I was in about first or second grade in New Jersey. His mom was
a really big strong husky who could and would jump over the five
and a half foot fence surrounding her house. His dad was a labrador.
Cheeku was the only male in a litter of six. He was extremely
competitive with me with everything. He didn't like it when I
hung around my mother too much, and he loved to play games where
he could prove that he was faster and stronger than me. When he
was young I was really mean to him and I used to hurt him for
no reason all the time for a few years. I finally stopped doing
that sometime after we moved to Houston. It took him about three
days to figure out that I had changed and he completely forgave
me. He loved my mother the most (I'm an only child) out of all
of us.
trying to blend in after our move to Texas
On December 17 1993, he was on a walk and I was at home. I was
the only one who could hold him with a leash, but I had work to
do. He saw a cat on the other side of the street and charged it
(my parents told me this part), but a Honda Accord came by at
about 40 miles per hour and couldn't stop. He got hit and flew
about 30 feet onto the base of someone's driveway. The car stopped
and the lady apologized and drove away. Her radiator was leaking.
My parents called me and I tried to rush over there, but I got
lost trying to take a short cut. He died fifteen minutes after
getting hit. We still rushed to the vet and found out for sure
that he had died.
black dog
A lot of bad things happened that day. I procrastinated and didn't
finish my work on time. I decided that finishing my work was more
important than taking care of my dog. My parents decided to take
him on a walk without a leash. That cat didn't try to hide when
it saw Cheeku coming. That lady was speeding. My stupid dog didn't
know that cars didn't care if they hit him or not. I made a bad
decision when trying to pick him up. If any one of these conditions
had not been true, he would have been ok. It was only the intersection
of these things that did it. I can't avoid guilt in his death,
but I'm sure that he would forgive me as before.
helping my mom read a book
You can't micromanage people. You can do it with animals though.
You can take over their lives for their own safety and they won't
care. People need their freedom. Whenever you have the opportunity
to minimize the risk that someone you love will get hurt, it is
ok to do so. No one ever says you should avoid being overprotective
of a dog. I hope that whoever reads this will take advantage of
the great amount of control that a pet will allow you to exert
on them. It can manifest itself in such an obvious thing as a
leash going around their neck.