The Guardian

Even in my dreams I pace the house, familiar with the crackling noises of the furniture, the rambling of the refrigerator and the whistle of the plants yielding to the wind. When everything retreats for the night, I guard the house.
It was discouraging at first to see the little kids who enjoyed my company months ago, recoil in fear when they spot me on the streets. I am now full grown, young but strong and with a short temper. I keep my cool with children and women even when I despise high pitched voices but I don't have patience with agressive males. I built a bad reputation. Other dogs in the block cross to the other side of the road when they see me coming. Sometimes in the morning, human males come to check on things on the wall, they press buttons, write a few lines in their papers and leave. Others, later on, deposit more papers or boxes by the door and still others knock, searching for my family. I let everyone know of my presence. Nobody step into the house without my approval. Only when Jack or Elena force me to abandon my post or convince me there is no risk involved, I let them in. Other houses have been broken into. It will never happen in mine.
There is a secret pride in the process of maturing. It is like being under the skin of a different and more imposing animal. You know you are the child people used to play with or laugh at but they don't. They look at the new skin and smell the predator. They expect you to be violent and brave, you are pleased to play the role until you also accept it as the truth. In turn, you become a byproduct of your actions, you become what they believe you are. And when some day a shivering lady begs the family,"Get that black dog away from me", you subtly wave your tail and whisper " As you like it".

Indian Country

In order to take this long trip through the desert, Jack got a bigger car. It was a young beast eager to run that put to shame the old dying animals at home. I had a great time on the beach, although we were, once again, banned from approaching the ocean. We were content with running along the side walks, among the noisy people smelling of alcohol and salt. Then, for unfathomable reasons, we headed into the desert. It was amusing at first, my head sticking through the window and softly combed by the wind. Some time later I grew concerned and even Jack looked somber and tired. Elena seemed to feel at home in that barren land and my mother, as philosophical as always, just slept through the whole thing. We left behind towns and gas stations, the grass and the birds. Silence took over, blowing on us like the breath of a beast. The sun retired and in the menacing shadows, I saw the distant glitter of a building bleeding colors from every pore. That anomaly was soon replaced by many more until we entered a whole town covered with those cold artificial fires humans love. It was madness all around. Crowds of people of every age and shape roamed without direction among cars on the street. On the sides, piles of garbage, empty bottles and fliers trying to attract them inside the buildings, obstructed the way. The sky was hidden by the multitude of lights. Fountains of dancing water jumped into the air following a music which origin I couldn't find. Laughs and cries came from every door and stumbling drunks grabbed the light posts as if they were their mother's arms. My awe and fear of humans was born that night, realizing how much wonder and excess they can build from nothing.
That detour lasted just one day. Next morning, we packed under a dusty wind and crossed into the emptiness again. Jack was getting sick and angry. He had some kind of infection in a finger, I could smell it and felt unsafe. We arrived to a small town in the evening. It was so different, my previous night was filed in my memory as hallucination. After crossing a narrow street with boring flat houses at the side, we entered a non descriptive hotel (it was becoming a routine for me). My mother relieved herself in the bathroom and created a brief panic. Humans are allowed in the bathroom but we are not..
The next day was spent gazing at a giant cut in the surface of the earth. People go to the rim of the cliff and look below. It seems that below, the red earth looks just the same. I don't see the point of it. Then, Jack's finger got worse and he went with Elena to see a Vet, or whatever is called for human people. There, he was cut and pocked just like they do to us, and after a night of fever, he recovered.
Those days had been stressful enough for my young, inexperienced soul, but they didn't give up. They kept going deeper into the rocky land only interrupted by small posts where we stopped for food and water. At one of those places I had a chat with an old dog. He was chained to a pipe in a gas station, apparently waiting for his guardian. He uncovered for the first time our location.
" This is Indian country, boy", he said. " A very old land with old people."
And when I asked for more, he dismissed us all as newcomers. He assured his tribe has been there for so long, nobody could trace their origins. Many generations of dogs were raised and perished on that red soil, under the care of the ancient people, and everybody else, he said, were no different from my mother and Elena, like leaves on the ground without roots.
If I found that fellow, arrogant, I couldn't stop listening; so many were the stories he knew and is a secret well kept, that dogs like to listen to stories, particularly at night or when they are bored.
" The Indians didn't let the dogs be idle", the old folk remarked staring at me with his blurry eyes,
" They didn't have other beasts of burden. We played that role and moved around with the rest of the tribe carrying the food and the tents where they lived. We helped in big hunts and were given the bones. The animals they killed were as big as a pack of dogs, all covered in curly dark hair. Through their noses came spurts of fire and every time they ran through the prairie the whole earth trembled. But nothing stopped the brave Indians and their dogs from getting the game. Those were good times. Now we have to live around these lazy white bumps and their spoiled pets. In the old times, nobody would have dared to call us pets. We were hunters. And also had better manners. If a dog was a big mouth and barked without good reason, he or she was barbecued at the next meal"
At this, the hairs in my back stood up and I looked at my mother with badly disguised shame.
I suddenly imagined that perhaps this trip was designed to give us up to a tribe and with a weak voice I asked if they were still around.
" The Indians? They may be defeated but not conquered, you'll smell them very soon."
Then he turned his back to me, scratching his neck until the fleas ran down his legs.
When we jumped back into the car I started moving around nervously and even planned to jump and go back home on foot.
" what are you trying to do, boy?" My mother complained "The old guy was nuts".
The night surprised us at an even poorer hotel in the middle of nowhere. There was dust all around and I could smell the Indians indeed. They manned the place, serving the food, cleaning the rooms and selling toys for tourists. They ate only a few things, lots of fried bread, corn and beans. Meat was scarce enough for the humans to get it all but here, and this was just the first nice surprise of the trip, nobody cared if the dogs were of leash.
Next morning I was taken to the rim of another hole in the earth. From outside there were the same old rocks, but looking below, I found a different new world.
Streams of water poured in multitude of channels around a small village. People were busy around their tiny houses, trees loaded with fruit circling them as the only fence allowed. Cattle, horse and yes, dogs, roamed free. The perfume of the flowers and the mud and the moss growing over the wet rocks, reached me as a song.
"I think", I confessed to Eloisa, "I would be happy living here".
" Ask them", she answered " where they sleep and how much they eat". Where are all those big bulls with curly hair? They were all taken, as all the things that run wild"

Weary travellers

Travellers

After we got the car, we really went places. It started with short trips to the outskirts of the city. We were cramped in the back seat, frequently fighting for space. My mother trying to get in the front row to catch the best view, I, sticking my head through the window and letting the air comb my fuzzy hair. Several times we reached a trail system that surrounded a lake and extended through the hills and along a narrow creek. The smell of wild animals was evident, as well as their prints in the woods. We ignored the lake, crowded with fatty birds who couldn't fly, but refreshed our tired legs and swam in the creek. Human people discriminate against dogs as they sometimes do with themselves. we were forbidden to enter some parts of the trail system and we were forced to stay on a leash. However as we left behind the closest sections to the lake and the picnic area, humans became scarce enough to allow us some freedom. And that's how part of my dreams came true. I went after raccoons and I saw my first deer. It was a tall, gentle beast who looked at me without fear before vanishing down the hill.
Days got longer and we walked to exhaustion, gaining strength and endurance. The next summer we took on longer trips and I got to see the ocean for the first time. Eloisa likes the romp in the sand but never comes close to the water. The ocean is agitated and unpredictable, its water viscous like blood, entangled plants and beaten rocks wash ashore like the vomiting of a giant monster and indeed, Eloisa believes that something dark and voracious lives in there.
Two seasons later we visited another tribe in a chaotic city they call L.A. Eloisa has been there before and the only thing she remembers is being pregnant with me and having morning sickness. We got a room in the first floor of a big building and I broke lose in the corridor. My pack and the employees panicked for a minute. I never understood why humans get so nervous in the presence of a single dog off leash. When they finally calmed down and called me, I came back wagging my tail.
L.A. has more humans and dogs than the biggest army of ants I've seen. the visitors swarm in search of toys and food and then drop in the beach in a state of stupor. The local pack spend most of the time trapped in their cars trying to get home.The air is dirty and made me sneeze. But there is a place in particular that my mother love, because deep inside she dreams with royalty. Jack and Elena feed her delusion calling her " The Queen". It is a small section of the city devoted to expensive shops where wealthy humans and their pompous dogs waste their resources. Its name is "Rodeo Drive". Awe and excitement didn't prevent Eloisa from peeing under the window of one of those shops, while I slipped in the marble floor trying to get away. However,we didn't receive the angry looks I expected. Humans were in a relaxed state of mind and were mostly curious about our ancestry.
Next day, Elena said that we have had enough of that and we were heading to Indian Country.

Cars

Finally, Elena got a car that could run. Before that, we have been sad witnesses to the efforts of two old beasts Jack kept, motionless, at the front door. Their only service, was apparently restraining somebody else from parking in front of the house. Every winter morning, they growled and shuddered for a few minutes before falling asleep with a big spurting of smog. Jack talked and occasionally, insulted them, to no avail. Elena took public transport like the kids. I could tell she was going far away because she brought back the smell and seeds of different trees and cities in her shoes.
I Believed at the time that the two old cars were dying, but Eloisa was sure that they have never been alive. We had a long discussion about this while we were in the cages. if this seems silly to you, just imagine what else a reasonable person would do when forced to spend 12 hours a day in a crate in the living room with no other entertainment than background jazz music in the radio and toys that would bore a toddler.
The facts are that cars have the same general structure of animals. They have four short legs, eyes in the front, a belly and a back. You open the head and find convoluted tubes as you find inside the head of a squirrel, although even a car has bigger brains. People jump in their backs as they do with horses. Their butt is big and can be filled with all the trash humans carry around for no reason. Other features are anomalous. The mouth is round and narrow like a fish mouth, and is on the rear. They have also a pair of eyes in the butt, but perhaps they are fake, just like the false eyes of the butterflies in the wings. Cars have a history and go from young to old in no time, however they never grow or gain strenght, they only decay since the moment they are born. Cars cannot regenerate and heal their wounds as animals do and they don't move alone. This is the main point, Eloisa stated, that put cars in the realm of inanimate objects. they cannot move on their own volition. I refuted this argument, reminding her that I've seen cars running against people wishes, causing injuries and deaths. Eloisa still insisted that such events result from human fault, not from the car intentions. Vehicles don't smell like animals and have no plasticity of expression or emotions. they always look the same. But those assertions could also be applied to oysters.
It is not easy, in conclusion, to define life. It well could be the solid wall Eloisa imagines, separating the living from what is merely there, but also, as I believe, a fine gradient of states of being from the rock to the car to the dog, every modest thing with a hidden soul, teeming with intentions and dreams about the world.

Chihuahuas

My mother has always been fond of little fellows. Every time she had the opportunity to go unnoticed through the neighborhood, she went to chat with the smallest dog I've ever seen. He lived two blocks from our home and spent the afternoon in the front yard watching people pass by and waving his tail. Sometimes his guardian was around, seated in a reclining chair, drinking beer and laughing with friends. Sometimes he was alone, anxiously looking back to the house and asking for company. My mother would stop by and comment about the trivial matters of the day. In occasions she talked about me and about how I was becoming a difficult youngster with a short temper. On my part, I considered the Chihuahua something amusing, delicate and fragile like a toy but he could never command my respect.
I came to be irritated by the attention my mother gave to him. One day, I stopped in my way home and he greeted me with the usual joy. I started boasting about the wild games I played, how I destroyed the sofa and spent a few months in confinement. His face suddenly turned serious. He shaked his head and said in a whisper,
" You are a lucky guy, many other families would have ejected you from home; not to the streets, where you have some chance to survive on your own, but to those prisons where they keep the orphans and rejected. And I tell you, boy, if nobody picks you up in a week, is very likely you will be killed there. They give you some poison and you are dead before you can beg for mercy"
The whole tale made me very upset, no less than the fact that he called me boy.
" Whoever wants to kill me", I replied, "will pay with blood. I am part wolf, can you see it?"
He laughed at that.
" You are no wolf, you are just a mutt. I have pure blood. Everybody who looks at me knows that I am a Chihuahua and knows where my ancestors came from. But whoever looks at you, cannot tell what you are"
I growled, the hair in my back, suddenly upright,
" I can eat your head with one bite, wolf or not"
By that time, my mother was between us, trying to cool the situation. Just to be graceful to her, he changed his tone,
"It was not my intention to hurt your feelings", he said," Just to give you a dose of reality, being you so young and impulsive. I am an old soul, my friend. I couldn't help but notice that you are not neutered, and that may be the reason of your behavior. If you want to keep your balls, be gentle. Be like me. I am so small and good natured, that nobody considers me a threat. That's why I am still a man. But start looking around, in the park, on the street, and you'll see the sad reality of our emasculated race. To have power, don't be like a wolf, be like a cockroach. They are not feared but thrive in every house and cannot be eradicated.
Listen to a grown fellow. All those German shepherds around us, are eunuchs. They started just like you, howling in the nights and calling their ancestor, the wolf. Dreaming about gaining the Alfa position in the pack and getting all the ladies."
My ears were down when I returned home. Not a dog but reality has grabbed me by the neck.

School

In spring, I discovered where the kids spend the day. It always baffled me that the morning was so empty of them. In my evening walks I had seen them in crops, laughing, screaming and jumping on each other, their toys spread like casualties of war in the small gardens in front of the cookie cut houses and the playgrounds. I could hear them whispering at night, forced to stay in bed, talking to their siblings or their stuffed animals in the darkness. But early in the morning, the parents or a mysterious man in a big yellow car shipped them away for the day, bending under the weight of backpacks and books. I imagined that the children were confined, just as I was, while the adults were out hunting or as they call it, working.
One morning, being the sliding door of the kitchen inadvertently open, we managed to escape. After being in the cages, we have become experts at seizing opportunities to get lose and were thirsty for the world we have missed so much in winter.
My mother and I ran the first two blocks and then walked quietly, hiding behind the cherry trees lining the street, to avoid being detained by the neighbors.
We traced the smell of the children to a park we knew very well. We were often taken there to exercise by Jack and Elena. In those days, it was empty except for a few other humans with dogs. But that particular morning it was full of kids, grouped by age or size, pouring from the cars and the yellow bus. They ran fiercely for a while before being herded into a flat building where they spent some time, quietly seated, fixing their tired eyes in books or drawing in papers. That's a very strange human activity. They call it studying and seem to consider it of utmost importance, as if their future and position in life depends on it. The same monotonous exercise continued until a friend of mine spotted us in the playground. He suddenly left his seat, went to the window and pointed in our direction. The woman in front of the class, didn't pay attention, perhaps believing the child was trying to distract the others, but soon, all of them were on that window, jumping at the realization that we were playing and having fun while they were inside toiling with their innate burden of responsibilities. I can say that we almost started a revolution. They were eventually left out for a break and played with us. We took special care in being far away from the grown ups. That morning, my mother also taught me to hunt moles from the ground. After a meal of raw meat we came home just in time and closed the door of the backyard. When my family returned we were sleeping a siesta. The two kids next door told them about our adventure. But when they looked at me, I just stretched my back and walked away with a lazy wag of my tail as saying,
"It's just a fairy tale".