When I was a little girl growing up in the sloping valleys of Montalban, I had a dog named Chuwwey.

BY JAN ATANACIO

IMAGE BY ANILSHARMA26/PIXABAY

When I was a little girl growing up in the sloping valleys of Montalbán, I had a dog named Chuwwey.

BY JAN ATANACIO

IMAGE BY ANILSHARMA26

When I was a little girl growing up in the sloping valleys of Montalbán, I had a dog named Chuwwey. Though, I suppose I should also introduce his real name—Spice.

At the time, we had four dogs: Spice; his sister, Sugar; an older dog, Honey; and eventually, dear Brandy. They were all called by their names, except little Spice. I had a special name for the puppy who howled in misery whenever I went somewhere he couldn’t see. A name that my family members found odd, and therefore refused to imitate. I called him Chuwwey.

Chuwwey, pronounced like “chewy” /ˈtʃuːi/, as in the adjective form of chew. My nine-year-old self had derived this from chu-chu, a Filipino endearment for small dogs, pronounced like the sound of a train in English. Choo-choo.

Like the rest of their mismatched pack, Chuwwey was an aspin, or a local mixed-breed dog. Although he and his sister were from the same litter, Chuwwey didn’t have the same long torso or droopy ears that Sugar had as proof of their basset hound ancestry. Sure, he had stocky legs and sleepy eyes, but he was much shorter and had uneven ears. A shorter left ear that pointed up, and a folded, longer right ear that flopped around whenever he moved.

In his barely-two-feet glory, Chuwwey was indeed the smallest of the pack and yet the most likely to bark away at anything that moved near our fences. In the absence of a doorbell—something my family didn’t believe in—a visitor would have to politely call out: “Tao po?” (Is anyone home?) at the gates, and hope that the wind would carry their voice past the driveway and into our house. It usually worked. One of the perks of living away from the city was the quiet that allowed for these old ways to remain. That is, as quiet as the clucking hens and gossiping neighbours allowed. A visitor’s call, followed immediately by the rattling metal of the front gates, courtesy of Chuwwey’s huffing and puffing, was easily heard through the concrete walls of our house. If someone was home, they’d have to come out and convince the dog that there was—depending on the visitor—no need to fuss. It’s a task I was particularly good at. Even the neighbours knew to call for me in the event of a tiny curly-tailed mutt disrupting the peace over the poor mailman or some stray cats.

I only had to say one “Chuwwey!” and he’d happily come running back, ignoring the threats to his “territory.” We were close enough that he somehow trusted my judgement on which things to worry about. I was close to all our dogs, as anyone who grew up around more animals than humans would be, but Chuwwey and I had too many similarities. He was the smallest dog and I was the smallest human. We both liked potatoes and hated cabbage. And for all our huffing and puffing, we tended to cry at the slightest inconvenience. We were so close, in fact, that his sleep directly affected mine.

You see, he was terrified of storms. Most dogs have an aversion to loud noises like thunder thanks to their sensitive ears, but Chuwwey’s case was different. Sure, fireworks startled him and he didn’t like getting wet, but the rib-quaking fear that made him hysterical enough to howl for hours until he was held was something only storms could bring. How torturous for him to live at the foot of the mountains where clouds gathered into thunderstorms. His tail drooped at the first drops of rain, afraid of what would follow.

On sunny days, he was perfectly happy. He tussled with the other dogs, got along with the chickens, and uprooted a few of the plants. He napped under the guava tree in the day and snuggled with his siblings in their shed behind our house come nightfall. A thing you should know about our mini farm is that dogs couldn’t stay inside the house. Our animals had to live outside, no matter the weather. It was probably an old tradition in the countryside to have separate houses between people and all their animals, and although keeping dogs in a doghouse or a shed wasn’t the norm in our neighbourhood, my uncle was particularly strict with this rule. Any question I had about any of the rules were met with a harsh voice or a sarcastic remark. He believed that since the chickens could do it, the monkey and the pigs could do it, so could the dogs. Sadly, Chuwwey didn’t understand this, and neither did I.

During monsoons, the dogs and I played in the sheds. Some nights, when the sky continued her symphony, Chuwwey scratched at doors and barked at windows, begging to be let in. Uncle never listened to Chuwwey’s sad whimpers, and simply shooed him back to the shed. In the morning, my grandma would find the scored wood and complain about the damaged mahogany. My uncle would then find Chuwwey to yell about the cost of repairs. Chuwwey’s ears would flatten and he would curl his body as small as it could go. He didn’t know what for, but he was sorry. When I tried to interfere, I got harsh flicks on the forehead. Would I, at age nine, be able to pay for door repairs? No, but if only. So, I would sneak Chuwwey in through the kitchen door when everyone was asleep, and we’d hide in my room until morning. It happened so often that we fooled the household into thinking Chuwwey had gotten over his fears. Just like that.

Then one night, I went to bed under clear skies and woke to roaring thunder. I rushed down to fetch Chuwwey but, to my surprise, Uncle was already at the door using his bulk to block the panicked dog. I stood frozen as Chuwwey jumped over Uncle’s knee and landed behind him, tracking muddy paw prints across the tiled floor. Before Chuwwey could duck under the table, Uncle caught him by the scruff and chucked him out the door. Chuwwey tried again, his eyes frantic, shivering from nose to tail, but this time Uncle kicked him away in anger. The resulting yelp echoed louder than the storm around us, uprooting me from where I stood and chasing me back to my room. Even cocooned under thick blankets, the sound seemed to reverberate in my head, keeping me from sleep.

I wanted so badly to run to the sheds and check on Chuwwey, but if I did, I knew he wouldn’t be the only one kicked on the ground.

~

Things got better in the following years. Apologies were exchanged, and my uncle left the country to work in Qatar. By the time I had to move out for university, I was at ease knowing that I wouldn’t need to worry about Chuwwey. In a gentler, emptier house, my grandparents let the dogs in for company. After Sugar’s passing from a virus, the dogs had more regular visits to the animal clinic. My grandparents pampered them like they were their own children, and I'd come home to three happy dogs. They had a habit of following me from the porch to the staircase before settling back in their usual spots. Brandy snoring faintly on the living room couch, Honey blocking the stairs, and Chuwwey sunning himself by the window.

I got the call about Chuwwey's death one sunny morning when I was in Manila, two days before I was heading home for the weekend. No one had told me he was sick. Apparently, he was admitted to an animal clinic overnight when my grandma noticed that his hacking coughs persisted for days. The vet pronounced him dead in a thin folder labelled “Spice,” due to pneumonia abetted by an untreated rib injury.

It was a blisteringly hot day, weather Chuwwey would have loved to roll around in, but I wanted to howl for the rain.

Jan Atanacio (she/her) is a Filipino poet, pastry chef, and language tutor based in Toronto, Canada. Her focus is currently pulled between writing for food magazines, making bread, and finishing her great-grandfather's memoir. You might find crying over a book somewhere on the TTC.

Image: Aspin dog (Anilsharma26/Pixabay, 2022)

Edited for publication by Lauren Ridgewell as part of the Creative Book Publishing program.

HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation and the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.