I’m bored, bored, bored, even though I know life has few shafts of joy, and acceptance is all in knowing it is meaningless.
Je suis un existentialist.
I arrived here exactly four years ago, dragged from my family in the Pas de Calais – abandoned in the home of the foreigner.
She spoke in a devil tongue and her French was excruciating to my aristocratic ear.
I was called Jazzy (a diminution of my extremely beautiful kennel name) before, and now I was to be César. Pretentious? Elle? Le sigh.
I sat in my open cage. She sat on a step watching me. I held her eye; stood, crouched slowly, and peed over the pathetic baby blanket she’d given me along with a soft toy.
The toy was already shredded.
A shocked cry came from her. I smiled. Inside. She needed to be trained early.
I bit and bit her as she took me outside. It had been dark when I arrived but now I could see the full horror.
Merde.
Nothing but green and sky. No pavements. No sound but those flying turds called birds.
Hey, I screamed. I’m showbiz. My family are all champions sweetie. We don’t do country.
We toss and prance around the show rings of Europe. My mama and papa are queen and king of the circuit.
Get me out of this sodding hellhole and back to my destiny.
Stupid woman thought I was so cute yelping at the world and her.
I’m serious here, I screamed again, biting her ankles for emphasis. Don’t bury me alive. I’m a future star – I need my stage; my public – help me, help me, anyone.
Nobody came.
Not for me. For her – initially, yes. They looked in disbelief at the chunks I’d taken from her legs and hands and then back at me.
Oui? I turned my head winsomely sideways, tossing my blond hair from my eyes, indicating her lies. I kept my wrath for her and her alone.
She wore boots always after that and covered her legs and arms.
She got me a trainer who took me around markets and towns where at least I was recognised for the player I was. They stopped and cooed over my beauty – of course I had a weekly groomer – and took pictures to show on Instagram.
The foreigner hovered in the background muttering to the trainer about watching he doesn’t bite; don’t let that child near him and often said a word beginning with F.
Too dull. I took to evacuating all in the car heading home just to watch her sob. She compared me often to a Portia – a sap of an Afghan as far as I could see.
One night as she stared at the stars I heard something and jumped. She didn’t. I won’t reiterate her hospital stay, her re-education etc.
I went to kennels and Trudi. Meanwhile, her friends told her to get rid of me. She got rid of them.
Then the Italians came to look after both of us. I loved them. They ran and played with me while she sat in a wheelchair.
They called me emperor and mi amore. Then they left.
People, who used to come around, stopped. They always thought she was insane getting me in the first place. She was.
But I was hers, and God help me, she was mine.
I gave her a break because I was by now into Sartre. I understood the nothingness of it all and my place in a meaningless universe.
She told me she was one at 13. Apparently a black polo neck is de rigeur. I don’t wear clothes but if I did….
I’m now allowed to roam alone outside my compound but I go inside to chase the cars.
I’m not as moody as I was but I’m aware I’ve become a bit needy. I sit next to her on the sofa and watch the soaps she loves.
Instead of biting I just nibble her. Through the night I bark at anything that moves outside – more for myself, to prove I’m alive, not buried alive.
In between I dream. I dream of the life that should have been mine. Crufts. Champion of champions.
Unlike other dogs – God I hate that word – I don’t twitch in my sleep – I extend my exquisite legs.
We, the foreigner et moi, have settled into a routine. I speak English now and I understand her tortured French. She swears a lot, in both languages.
I suppose she’s the Simone de Beauvoir to my Sartre. Compliant; in awe of my superior presence while quietly re-telling, rewriting the story.
I am dependent on her. I have finally accepted this. She is all I’ve got and if anything happens to her then I am truly buggered.
She worries about this too given all that’s happened but for now we live in the moment and I’m careful not to trip her up.
But I’m bored. She is bored. We sigh together and have another oven chip.
Existentialists do that.
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