Gueritas came into my life on December 12, 2004. My fianceé at the time, Ricardo, and I had just bought a house on the southside of San Antonio and like any good new Chicana/o southside homeowner, I thought we needed a dog to protect the house. I had heard chihuahuas were vigilant watchdogs - that they were once guardians of Aztec temples. I heard female dogs are even more vigilant. So, of course it made sense to get a female chihuahua. I had it in the back of my mind and figured if the opportunity presented itself, we'd find one.So one day as we were driving down Southeast Military Drive during the usual weekend "parking lot flea market," I saw a pickup with a cage in the back and a sign that read: "Chihuahuas for sale." So we pulled over. There were a few puppies in the litter. One chocolate brown male was puffing out his chest and wagging his tail at us as if saying, "Pick me! Pick me!" But there was a little beige one lying curled up in the back that caught my attention. "How about that one?" I asked the seller. "Is she a female?" She was. "Can I see her?" So he pulls her out of her comfortable curled up sleep and I saw her little face for the first time. She was cute as a button and so tiny. When I held her in my arms, I knew instantly that she was mine. I drove to the nearby ATM for the cash to buy her. I remember her being curled up in her comfortable little ball on Rick's lap as I drove her to her new home on W. Whittier Street across from Roosevelt Park. For me, her name came easily. What else would you name a beige chihuahua with the cutest white markings? "Guera."
We soon found out that my predictions were right - Guera was a spitfire (not to reinforce Mexican stereotypes). She was a vicious little b! Her ears were always perked at attention on alert for any would-be predators. At times she would bark seemingly at nothing and when I'd look out the window, I'd see a dog being walked a block away. "How did she know?" I'd ask myself. She was on it.
She was also a nipper. Family and friends learned to stay away from "the mean one." See, a year later, we had gotten a chocolate male chihuahua, Pilón, as a companion. "She needs a playmate," I said. However, I should have known that Guera was a loner, a rebel. She was so mean to poor Pilón. (As any older sister would be.) When Pilón was allowed on the couch because he didn't shed as much fur as her (and because he didn't act a ass like she did), Guera would get mad and nip at his feet when he was let off, as if to say, "If I'm not allowed up there, neither should you!" Pobre Pilón. He's the sweetest puppy. We used to say the only harm he could do to anyone was to lick them to death.
Meanwhile, everyone stayed away from Guera, who would bare her teeth at the sight of anyone coming too close. My younger brother Thomas, a grown ass man, once flinched like a little kid, when he saw Pilón round the corner of the living room. "I thought it was Guera," he said and we laughed. Yes, Guera was "the mean one" - the cutest one, the one all the people wanted to pet on walks, but also the "meanest."
But her "meanness" was misunderstood. The "meanness" was her protectiveness - of herself, her space, and those she loved...a lot like how people describe me. Guera was always on guard, as if to say, "I'm little, but I'll fuck you up." She would attack a pit bull to protect me. I remember one time when I took Guera to the dog park for the very first time. It's like she was totally out of her element. She barked at every dog she saw as if they were intruding on "her" territory, as if the entire park was her yard and they were not allowed on it. We sat on a park bench and I was amazed to see Guera pee NINE times (yes, I counted) to mark a circle around me. And any time a dog walked into her "circle" she'd attack them. Thing is, the communal water bowl was in the circle, so that made for numerous attacks on several unsuspecting, thirsty victims.
About two years later, I moved out of our house and into an apartment on Guenther Street. I needed space to write my dissertation and get my head together...the pressure to write turned into anxiety, that ever-present monkey on my back. I figured it would be best to leave her in a house with a yard. I was away from her for about a year. It was hard. I didn't visit her often because I didn't want her to get upset/confused when she saw me. On the occasion that I did visit, she would get so excited that she'd have her little "attacks" that were like reverse sneezes. I'd have to pet her to calm her down. "It's okay, Mama. It's okay," I'd tell her. She loved me that much.
After completing my Ph.D., I obtained a postdoc at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I decided to take her and my cat, Kitty Witty, with me. Poor Gueritas. Little did she know that she was moving to the great white north. When the first snow came and I tried to take her out, she ran to the door with her usual excitement, but when she saw the white mountain of cold hell right outside the door, she quickly put on the puppy brakes and high tailed it in the other direction. It took several layers of hoodies and parkas (and firm coaxing) to finally get her to step out into the snow...on which she normally stood like a tripod, with at least one paw in the air. The look she gave me was unbearable, as if to say, "Mommy, why are we here?" And I'd tell her, "I know Gueritas. I hate it, too." And I did. Moving away from home and everyone I loved was hard and Gueritas was all I had. I didn't transition well. I got physically sick on the drive up and upon arrival, my emotional well-being was also negatively affected. I felt so isolated and out of place. I felt judged for everything I did/didn't do at my job. Word of how I was doing always got back home to my mentors...and it always seemed I wasn't doing something right. I tried hard to make it work, to feel invested. But mostly, I was sad.
About a month after moving up to Urbana, at the suggestion of my best friend, Natalie, I drove up to Chicago to work on a community mural project that her friend, Ernesto, was leading. Knowing of my volunteer work back home with San Anto Cultural Arts, she felt this would be a good way to feel a sense of community again. I went to Chicago and soon brought back Ernesto.
Guera did not seem pleased with this. She would growl and nip at him...an intruder in her home. But Ernesto, thinking himself the Dog Whisperer, told me that what Guera needed was to be dominated. She was acting like she was the boss of us and that had to stop, he said. So he decided to have a stare-off with her, thinking she would avert her eyes, see him as her master y ya, problem solved. Knowing Guera's aggressivness, I was transfixed by Ernesto's attempt at a close face stare-off with this crazy little beast. I watched as he went in with eyes wide open, closer, closer... Then, snap! She bit his nose. I couldn't help but laugh and say, "I told you so." Secretly, I was like, "Good job, Gueritas. You stand your ground." Later on, after she bit him while fighting with Xochi (her new stepsister) over a rawhide bone, he sat over her in order to dominate her. After squealing like a pig for what seemed like an eternity (which made me cry) and fighting a good fight, she finally submitted and accepted Ernesto as a new stepdaddy.
And so we became a new "happy" family in the midwest. But I wasn't happy. I was always questioning why I had been taken all the way up to places like "Urbana, Illinois" and then the following year even further up north to Minneapolis for a job as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota...where winters there make those in Illinois seem like summer (okay, maybe that's a slight overexaggeration...but not really). I was constantly questioning. Questioning my new relationship, questioning my career, questioning where I was supposed to be and where I was supposed to go. It never felt quite right. It seemed that as soon as I got to Minneapolis, negative energy surrounded me. Now, I'm not a "touchy feely spiritual" kind of person. I'm not one of those people who can "feel" someone looking at them and I don't necessarily believe in mal ojo...okay, maybe mal ojo yes...I've had quite a few earrings fall apart after someone commenting on how pretty they are. Point is, I've always been more the analytical, headstrong, get outta my way I got business to take care of kind a gal. But the negative energy in my new place was so strong, even I couldn't deny it.
Within two weeks of moving into our new place, my car was broken into. On the night of my department reception as new faculty member, my car got hit by another driver on the way out of the parking lot. When I returned the rental that I was given in order to get my car repaired, Enterprise accused me of damaging it and tried to sue me (on my birthday). My relationship with my boyfriend was shaky and I was not fitting into my department or my community. My physical and emotional health were "not well" to put it lightly. I honestly couldn't take it anymore. So I decided to enlist the help of local friends/danzantes to do a limpia on me and my home. Afterward I heard from someone else that the friend who lead the process said she had never felt so exhausted after doing a limpia.
And I trudged along. I tried to tell myself that the limpia worked (although I knew that it hadn't). Visits home were my only refuge. Friends and family asked when I was coming home and why I hadn't found a job in San Antonio yet. "I'm trying," is all I could say. And try I did. You see, I always thought that after getting my Ph.D. I would somehow work in the community, to use my education to help people like me achieve opportunities like I did. This is what I believed to be my destiny. The academia gig was what would lead me to my destiny. For me, it's a means to an end. The visits were never long enough and when it came time to leave, I'd always make the joke that it was time to go back to "hell," aka Minnesota.
My morning rituals here often involved waking up, crying, eating breakfast while crying and then maybe a little more crying after that. The sad thing is that Guera often looked at me as I cried as if to tell me, "Don't be sad. When you're sad, I'm sad." (She had very expressive eyes.) She would come to me, stand up on two legs, and scratch me with her front paws...as if trying to comfort me. Guera was always anxious, too. She never seemed to be able to relax. She always had her "concerned face" as I called it. Always looking, but really looking...as if to try to figure things out. Ears perked up, eyebrows up into her forehead, and her head tilting from side to side. So when I was sad, she expressed concern for my sadness.
The day before yesterday was an interesting day. What started as a sad morning with breakfast tears, turned out to be relatively good day. My therapist urged me work on "feeling" to help with my current depression and anxiety. After this hard session, I went home to repot plants to take to my office. I told myself that this would be the day that I finally moved things into my office after over a year and a half of having only my name on the door and a few paintings to indicate that the office was mine. On that specific day, I finally moved in my books and plants as if making the statement, "I am doing this." (Or at least going through the required motions.) I checked my mailbox and got a little Sanrio care package from a friend and a newsletter and virgencita sticker from another friend and colleague at ASU. When I got home, I got a letter from my friend/pen pal and two magazines that an unknown friend(s) had subscribed me to. I told Ernesto, "Aw, people are sending me love." I should have remembered the pattern of one step forward, two steps back.
The next morning was like any other. We let out the "doggie bears" as I affectionately call them and ran an errand. When we came back, Ernesto went to work and I started to make myself some coffee. It was then that Guera bumped into me. I thought she was just being her usual nuisance when I noticed she had pooped herself and was stumbling awkwardly. I picked her up and there was foaming on her little mouth and her tongue was protruding. Her eyes were dazed and she couldn't even focus on me. "Gueritas!" I yelled. I panicked. I Grabbed the keys and ran out the door. I looked up the nearest animal hospital on my phone and drove like a crazy person. "It's okay, Gueritas!" I told her as I pet her and tried to keep her conscious. "It's okay, Mamas." Construction, slow minivans... "Come on!" I yelled. We finally got to the hospital and we checked her in. Ernesto got there a few minutes later. She was still dazed when they called her in to the examination room. When I picked her up, I realized that she had pooped on my bag that she was sitting on. The doctor wiped her and found there was blood in her stool. She could barely stand. The initial examination showed she was relatively okay, except that she had low temperature and some liver issues. The doctor said it was possible that she had some sort of trauma (from a sting or something) and that she just needed to be on an I.V. for a while to get better.
So I left her and went back home to clean up her bed - that had poop and vomit in it - for her return home. I knew the vet bill would be high, so I decided to return a couple of things I had bought at Old Navy and then next door to Pets Mart to return Guera's new snow boots that I knew she probably wouldn't wear (she alway kicked them off...she had a plethora of clothes, but the boots she couldn't handle). I ran to the grocery store (also in the same shopping square) to get a few things for dinner so that I wouldn't have to leave once Guera was home and so we could watch her.
Then the doctor called and said that Guera wasn't doing better. She had started having seizures and one eye was dilated significantly more than the other, which was a sign of neurological damage. She said she had given her valium for the seizures and that she was becoming less and less responsive. "We might lose her," she said. My heart fell to my stomach. I started crying and told her I'd be right over. The drive seemed like an eternity. Construction, school busses, pedestrians... "Come on! Are you serious!?! Go!!!" I was frantic. "Wait for me, Gueritas. Please wait for me!" I cried out. And "Please, God. Please, God." I drove into the parking lot like a crazy woman, ran through the door and said, "I'm here for my chihuahua." They took me back where three people were around her. "Here's momma," one of the women said. She was lying there staring, with a ventilator in her mouth. "She stopped breathing," the doctor told me. I threw myself over her crying and hugging her, "Gueritas, Mamas. Momma's here, Gueritas. It's okay. Momma's here." Then they asked me to step back. The doctor checked her heart again and told me, "Her heart stopped. I'm sorry." My heart stopped, too. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. There she was, staring at me. "She waited for me," I thought. "She waited for me."
Just then Ernesto called (I had been calling him on my way to the hospital) and asked what was going on. He hadn't heard any news since leaving earlier that afternoon and, like me, thought she'd be fine by the end of the day. "Guera just passed," I sobbed. "I'm on my way," he replied. I continued to cry uncontrollably as she looked at me and I closed her tired little eyes.
They took us to the "sad room" as we called when we sat in the waiting room earlier in the day, saying we hoped we'd never have to be in it. Little did we know. In it was a Kleenex box, a "sky" ceiling and a tapestry of sad puppies looking at us. Then they brought her in in a little blanket. I couldn't believe it. My little Gueritas. As I held her and cried, I told her how much I loved her and how much I'm going to miss her. But I still couldn't believe it. It was like she was sleeping. And I remembered the moment when I first held her and knew she was mine...in her comfortable, curled up little ball. The way I found her is the way she left me.
The moments after that were and have continued to be surreal. The vet offered a little clay imprint of her paw with her name on it. A few minutes later, she returned with the imprint, Guera's collar, and a box with her body in it. We took her to the University of Minnesota animal hospital for a doggie autopsy. I at least wanted to try to know what took her. I owe it to her. I felt as though I was in a dream state on the way there. She was in a box on my lap. It was a beautiful fall afternoon and the hospital was along a lush green plot of land with trees whose leaves were turning bright orange and yellow. "Look at what a pretty day it is, Gueritas," I said.
Leaving her there was hard. But I knew Guera wasn't in that box anymore. Her spirit had left it already. I sat outside the hospital on a bench with Ernesto and cried and cried...and cried. I can honestly say I've never felt so much loss in my life. Bouts of crying come intermittently between staring off and wondering what it all means. Guera wasn't just a dog or a pet. She was part of me. She was the doggie embodiment of me and all my craziness. She had anger issues and wanted to fight the world. Like me. She had constant anxiety and always seemed concerned. Like me.
Guera was my doggie soul mate. She felt my anxiety, my depression, my frustration. I can't help but feel guilty for not being happier and for not being more grateful for her companionship, which oftentimes felt like she was being a nuisance...always getting caught up in my feet, always wanting to be where I was sitting. Looking back, she probably knew that my soul was uneasy and wanted to help comfort me. Instead, I saw her as "bothering" me.
She also had tons of personality and weird little quirks, like taking one mouthful of dog food at a time to her bed, eating it each kibble slowly and meticulously...then returning for a second mouthful. It took her forever to eat a meal. She slept in a cat bed (as in a bed shaped like a cat) and often did weird little flips and eye scratches with her paws while making crazy little grunting sounds. It looked crazy to us, but it made perfect sense to her. She had so much personality, I felt like she talked to me all the time. And so she inspired my story of Guera the Internally Colonized Chihuahua, which many have come to know and love through the comic and the Rasquachis videos of which she is the star.
I often stare off into my own thoughts, wondering what it all means - why the spirits would take away the one constant in my life, the one thing that I loved and that loved me unconditionally in this god forsaken world. And while feeling like a part of my soul has been ripped out, I also feel that Guera's passing has taught me to not be afraid to "feel" (as my therapist suggested) and, more importantly, to not be afraid to live.
After years of depression, anxiety and trying to fit into this foreign world called the midwest, and an academic job that simply doesn't fit, Guera has opened my eyes to just how unhappy I've been. Since leaving home, I had gained over 20 lbs. and sprouted tons of gray hair. I almost don't recognize myself anymore. My sadness here has been intolerable and Guera's passing now makes it unbearable. The years of the one-step-forward-two-steps-back has culminated in Guera's passing. I have no doubt that this is a clear message - that it's time to go home, that life is too short to be miserable. There are family members and friends who I love and who I take for granted like I did Guera. And I don't want to look back and regret living miserably for a job that I didn't feel invested in. The years of "well, maybe it can work" and "maybe if I just think positive" are finally at an end for me. I had to feel this immense loss to also find liberation from the confines of the life I'm "supposed to" live. I loved Guera...like I love home, my family, my friends, my community. And I can't stay here "hoping" for the chance to get back home. Gueritas was my companion on this crazy ride and her passing is now sending me back home. As if the spirits are saying, "You've done your best. You've proven yourself. Now come back home."
Guera was my spirit guide. She took on the burden of my sadness, anxiety, feelings of loss and desperation. It's like how they say chihuahuas are good for taking away asthma...because they actually take the asthma on themselves and often die from it. Gueritas took my doubt, anxiety and fear from me, as if finally lifting the heavy burden I'd carried with me for so long. She's a doggie martyr. And her passing to the spirit world has opened my eyes to what really matters in life. This is why I say that it is through her death that I have learned to live. And I will take both her spirit and ashes home with me. Back home where we both belong.
My heart is broken and will need time to heal. The hard part is that Xochi looks for her constantly and doesn't understand why Guera, her sister/partner in crime, is missing. That continues to break my heart a little. I guess over time Xochi will stop looking for her and I, like Xochi, will learn to live life without her.
Right now, I like to think of Guera as my guardian angel in doggie heaven, peeing a circle on her cloud and attacking any other dog that dares to tread on it.
Rest in peace, Gueritas. I love you and thank you.
