3

Don't ask me how I know, but as we dogs say "It’s a coat feeling”; certain things make your hair stand up, and you understand everything, without so many words.

 

They say that similar beings attract each other, and we were both outperformers, the best in our field: me standing guard, her in the stock exchange, something like having three bowls instead of one. Human beings are unique in this regard.

 

According to the legend, the idea came to a guy a few thousand years ago, human years to be exact, who multiplied some loaves and fish and turned water into wine to everyone's amazement. Pure human nonsense. But as we animals know, they believe everything and are also proud of it. How naive!

 

By the way, I'm using a simultaneous dog translator device (Canis-English), so I am not responsible for the quality of the translation.

 

But let's get back on track. My employer, the Best.

She had been the best since childhood, ever since she had had to deal with a mother who wanted nothing to do with her, complaining that she should never have been born, preferring her other children, the ones who came later. 

But as we dogs know very well, as long as there is a bowl waiting for you, one can endure loneliness and indifference.

 

“Because she was the Best and the best never give up.”

 

It is said that she forged ahead in her studies and work, reaching the top of her profession, and every time she went back home, she ate from that bowl, hoping for a caress and a hug from her mother. But nothing, she kept denying it, praising instead the qualities of her son or the beauty of her other daughter.

 

“Because she was the Best and the best never give up.”

 

Years went by and she kept going back to that bowl, in the hope of a kind word. She took care of her sick mother until the end, and when even on the verge of death, she refused to caress or tell her that deep down she loved her, the Best’s heart hardened, and her spine fell apart.

The human doctors… animal friends stay away from them if you can... oh sorry, stupid device, this didn’t need to be translated… erase, erase quickly…, anyway, I was saying… that they mumbled something about the thoracic vertebrae, and after many surgeries to replace them and endless therapies, they put her back on her feet.

 

“Because she was the Best and the best never give up.”

 

Meanwhile, other human years passed, but her heart turned to stone, did not let her move forward. Bad habits are hard to die and in her mind, she always returned to that bowl, long cold and empty, in the hope of a caress and a hug.

We dogs, trained or not, know about it because even if they treat us badly, we remain humans’ best friends. And all this for what? Yeah, for that bowl and the hope of a caress and a hug.

...

Extract from the book “We Cannot Escape from Ourselves”.​​