Sacri 2.0: Yanie, the Sacrificial Dog

Do you know the feeling when someone is dying helplessly infront of you? Someone who can’t say “no”, can’t say “please not me”; someone who can’t even beg you to save her life. Do you know how it feels like seeing someone who’s blankly wondering what’s gonna happen? Scared but can’t run, can’t even scream? I’ve been in that situation. My eyes are staring at the procedure that I must learn, but my heart is crying in pity as I see right infront of me another Sacri, the sacrificial dog.

That was Wednesday morning, when the sun was shining bright, but my body seemed like it has a frozen core. I woke up late, so I needed to move fast. I knew what’s going to happen later that morning, so I packed what I need: face mask, surgical gloves, scalpel holder and blades, and different forceps. I came late at my Zootechnics 52 class, and surprised by a quiz. Happy that I answered all satisfactorily, but my smile faded immediately when I saw the dog that we’re gonna use for our Gross Anatomy Laboratory.

Yanie, that’s her name. She’s a mongrel, ASKAL as we call her kind, but her gloomy eyes are filled with life. She has a brown and white coat infected with fleas. She’s so thin, and her ribs are all bulging. Some of who saw her say it’s ok if she dies, because she’s not lovely at all. But for me, life is life, and it has same definition between a cared and loved dog to a thin and ugly dog; same as between a human and a mere askal. But even if I felt apologetic towards the poor Yanie, she still needs to face her fate, so that I will be able to learn.

Time came that Yanie has to be euthanized. I wore my Laboratory gown at same time that Yanie was lifted at the table. That time, her eyes are scanning our faces, same as the other group’s black dog at the other table. I know she wanted to jump down, or to bark at us, but she just couldn’t, for her schnozzle was muzzled and her thin body was restrained by several hands. When our teacher placed the basin beside the table, she said we must make sure that the blood will drain down there. That certain moment I know I’m not dreaming at all, and that was really happening.

One of my classmates went out and cried. I know she felt sorry, I know we felt the same and perhaps the whole class too. But I just told myself repeatedly that I have to be insensitive for the moment for this is part of learning.

A clinician student did the euthanasia for us. When he injected the Zolitol to Yanie, she felt down immediately. Before he incised her throat, he first taught us how to get blood from her vein. She was under the influence of the drug, so she was unresponsive to pain. But when he started to open her throat, I can see that Yanie is feeling the pain. I felt so uncomfortable when he cut her jugular vein. Blood was flowing out of her body, and she was just so helpless. As blood flows out of her, many of my classmates can’t afford to stay numb. “Kaluoy niya”, “Ouch, sakita pud ana ui”, “Wala na si Yanie”.

I did my best to stay insensitive, to always think that this is for the sake of learning. But all of my walls bagged down to pieces when we started to inject formalin and let it circulate in her body. For a moment, her body shook intensely. “Look at her taking her last breath,” said Kent, the clinician.

Just think of this, few hours ago Yanie was alive, and few hours later, Yanie was all cold and stiff body wrapped in cloth, placed in the fridge. When I went out of the room, an article about a Vet student who’s been in same situation as mine 2 years ago constantly bangs my mind. Santi. That’s his dog, which he took care for days before they dissected him. That achy feeling that wrapped my body as my eyes read the painful experience of that Vet student few years ago came back to me like 10x more. It is really painful to see someone dying infront of me. And you know what’s more painful? It is when you know that the one dying can’t even speak for herself; can’t even ask us ‘why?”.

But facing the reality, Carl Ace is a Vet Med student, and that simply means there will be more and more of like this as I go further. There will be more Yanie needed to be sacrifice for the sake of learning. And if God allows, thinking of Veterinary Medicine as my profession, all of the sacrificed animals starting from the frogs to the ascaris, to the starfishes and different arthropods, up to Yanie, the sacrificial dog, and including the animals that will be used in the future, their lives won’t be wasted, their pain wont be left overdue, for they are part of my foundation, all I learned and gonna learned out of them would make me a better veterinarian to be efficient in saving lives.

The Wednesday sun came to set at the horizon, and before the sky totally turned blue and gray, one realization cracked out of the experience I gone through that day. Not because they can’t speak, nor they can’t reason, nor simply because they think less comprehensively than humans, they feel less pain. Their inferiority towards human doesn’t allow us though to inflict them pain. But SCIENCE NEED SACRIFICE, and learning needs something like Yanie’s fate. I’m so thankful for Yanie for giving up her life for me, and for my batchmates. And as a promise, your life won’t be wasted. We won’t allow letting ourselves, myself, to fail this subject, Gross Anatomy and sacrifice another dog just to try to pass again. 

For me to learn Gross Anatomy, one life is enough; one corpse is already sufficient to learn what must be learned. This is a sad truth, but someone has to be sacrificed for my education. But I don’t think that was depressing, because I believe that was actually motivating! Life for lives; Yanie for the future animals who need me. 

To Yanie, I promise, we promise, your life won’t be wasted, and we won’t let ourselves to repeat your fate to another Yanie, another sacrificial dog.