tragic death

So I have some unfortunate news to report--Pipo has died. It was altogether a quite horrible experience. His health began to decline on Saturday with an intestinal blowout downstairs while everyone except Autumn and I were home. We decided to ignore the mess considering it isn't our house or our dog, and I barely had the stomach to side step it to get outside, let alone clean it up. We didn't eat dinner with Fiorella and Giuseppe on Saturday night because we had gone bowling and they had gone to Giuseppe's mother's 80th birthday party. Sunday night at dinner they informed us that Pipo was sick. Obviously the language barrier caused our discussion to be limited but we were able to find out that he was upstairs in the bedroom and wasn't walking around or eating. Apparently he wasn't doing too well. Fiorella was convinced they would have to put him to sleep on Monday and Giuseppe had a little more faith that the doctor could make it better. Upon arriving home from school on Monday I was greeted by a horrible sick dog smell. Unless you have experienced this yourself words cannot describe the stench. Luckily, it was confined to the hallway and hadn't seeped under our door and into our room. It was quite sad that he was so sick but I lacked the vocabulary to find out what was wrong with him. The doctor put a stress collar on him and put him on about 6 different meds for Fiorella to give him. Tuesday night, before Autumn had arrived home, Fiorella knocked on my door to get me for dinner. She had been checking on Pipo and I got my first glance at him since Saturday. He looked like death. He was laying on a blanket on the floor, his collar on, two blankets draped over his body, and he shook all over. Fiorella bent down to fix the bandage on his leg that was covering a wound I am assuming was from the doctor for blood work or something of the sort, and stroked his shaking head. It was such a sad scene and I wished so greatly that I could express any sort of consolation, but I knew that even if I could speak Italian I would probably not be able to say anything that offered comfort. During dinner she periodically went upstairs to check on him and she barely touched her food. After she finished dessert, which consisted of roasted chestnuts, her and Federica went upstairs. After about a 2-3 minutes hysterical sobs funneled down the stairs. I instantly knew the reason for the cries. Giuseppe hollered up to see what was wrong and confirmed what I already knew. Pipo was dead. It was horrible. What do you say to a family who just lost the eyeless black dog that they have loved for the last 14 years? He was like a child to them. Autumn and I cleared the table and tried to think of what we could do for them. We were about to clean off the dishes but Giuseppe stopped us and told us that they would get it later. We decided the next best option would be to retire to our room for the night and let them mourn. We passed by the extra room and there was Pipo, laying lifeless on the floor. What do you do with a dog's body? Wednesday night at dinner we found out that they buried him in Giuseppe's mother's backyard. That is the end of Pipo. No more clinking of his nails down the stairs during dinner, no more coaxing him out of our bedroom with wrapper noises, no more feeding him the chicken bones off my plate.