It was less by chance and more by design and luck (for the dog) that this one joined our "establishment". You see, there was this awful pets shop
where my wife kept window shopping about once a week, absorbing the enchanting looks and smells of all these newly born, hardly eye opened crawling
walkers on four, absorbing the enchantement and the misery too. The shop was (unfortunately) successful, yet the poor beasts were caged in hardly their
size cages, left during the weekends in stiffling heat and hardly something to eat or drink, and it was a long time before public complaints forced the
authorities to close the shop. And one of the dogs, a female Papillon, caught my wife's eye for whatever reason. For several months dogs moved in and out of
the shop, yet this poor beast, albeit a beautiful one, was hit by bad luck and nobody bought her. Confined in a cage where it hardly could turn its head,
growing in this same cage and losing even more of its space, losing more and more of its wiggling tail habits - the dog was clearly wasting away. My wife
couldn't take it anymore - she got in, paid whatever (huge!) amount they asked for and took the little bitch home. Persuading me in the simplest way -
naming her after my childhood's dog, Tizza. Could I refuse?
One thing is sure, and the vet told
us clearly - one more week and she would have been a gonner. She was so thin, so underdeveloped, so feeble - that she didn't even know how to bark, and
poor girl - she broke both front legs the first time (in her life) that she tried to make a jump. You understand that even the bossom of Abraham
wouldn't have been as good a house as the one she found with us. She got operated on her front feet and got two metalic nails fixing the bones together
(our first bionic dog), she started putting on weight, and Tiger - our fierce and fiery pinscher house master - took her in as only a real gentelman in
a real Hollywood melodrama, could do. He let her use his sleping coat, he never took her food by force, he taught her how to crawl in our bed, and he taught
her how to... bark. She idolized him.
Which brings me to THIS dog's specialty: barking. If you ever wanted to install an intruder's alarm - forget it, all you need is a Papillon. This dog can
hear a mosquito a hundred meters (or yards) away, and once it starts barking it kind of forgets to stop. You can take a three weeks trip to the Bahamas,
and when you're back, if she would still think there is some foreign presence in the house, she would still bark. Never tiring of it.
The only time in her life when she, unfortunately, went into a sudden mutism was when her "big brother", Tiger, died. The dog went into such a deep
depression we thought we were losing her. Nothing helped - food, walks, caresses - the dog moved into this inward world of hers and it seemed that nothing
was going to pull her out of there. And with me, myself, probably heading the same way (for several accumulative reasons which are not for this short narrative),
my wife did the one move that suddenly changed the picture, in one magical sweep, the full one hundred and eighty degrees: she went out and brought a toy
into our lives. Actually she went out and brought Toy into our lives. And, as they say in kids' stories, life was never the same again.
Fifteen years. Living the bliss of full dog life to its end. Such a will to live... through a beginning in hell, through two broken legs, through two brain strokes, and she pulled through. Till finally the call of the blue was too strong even for her. Farewell, Tizza, carry my greetings to all those up there that I miss so...
Doggy, doggy, doggy, dog,
Gone to lands hind silver fog,
Gone to meet your brother sweet,
Lying at my mother's feet,
In the gardens east of eden
Which to me are still forbidden,
Say hello to those I miss,
Take with you my love and kiss,
And tell uncle God today
That for you and them I pray.
Doggy, doggy, doggy, dog,
Saw this entry in His log:
(welcome transcript) Hi there fun
Hold your yapping minutes one
Glad to see you coming home
Bring some life under my dome
Choose a place, my left, my right...
Hey... that's MY throne, off... you plight!
(mumbling) ...Headache... have to clone
This here dog phenomenon...
Brusells, 06.Aug.2004
|
