Just A Dog

By Helen Griffiths

She was a mongrel pup born in an abandoned house at the edge of the city. Just keeping alive took courage and luck. Sometimes she found friends, sometimes enemies. Roaming the streets and the countryside, she narrowly escaped death more than once, but she survived to have one adventure after another. Finally, she found a family who gave her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Concordis Publishing
• Release date: Feb 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218372200

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Preface

The first thirteen chapters of this story are fiction, based on the real-life experiences of the many street dogs that wandered the streets of Madrid fifty years ago, when fear of rabies, the general poverty of those who lived on the outskirts, limited sympathy towards them.

Thankfully, this is no longer the case.  Strenuous efforts were made to improve life for everyone, including animals, and most dogs are licensed, vaccinated and as petted and provided for as they could expect to be.

The last three chapters are a true record of how Shadow became a deeply loved member of our family.  This is where the story ends, but, in fact, many more adventures awaited her which would easily fill another book.  Her intelligence, intuition and incredible devotion amazed us.  She was a star.

1.  HIDING-PLACE

1.

Towards the east, the faintest light was beginning to glimmer through the cloudy darkness.  It wasn’t enough to be called dawn.  It didn’t spread light to those shadowy parts of the city’s outer limits where bright lighting gave way to the solitary bulb, trembling in the breeze on the end of a cable that hung from a wall bracket of a corner house.  The shadows were deeper still beyond that dull circle of light, but the dog that padded along the dusty lanes needed no light to guide her.

She knew every stone, every rut, every lump of tumbled masonry, and, as she was hurrying slightly, she didn’t stop to make sure of the scents because she knew them all already.  She obviously had some destination in mind as she traversed the length of one lane, cut across another, scurried across a stretch of open ground abandoned to a clutter of rusty tins and rotting refuse, and turned left at the solitary cottage where bread was sold.

Beyond this shabbily-whitewashed, red-gabled house, a grapevine clustering its walls and windows, there was only a field; open country that went on and on to the horizon, and the dog had no knowledge of what was beyond because she never troubled herself with futile wanderings.

Now, she only went as far as the line of tumbled-down dwelling places whose bricks and doorposts were strewn at varying distances from their original positions.  There was still a roof over one of the rooms, though doors and windows had long been torn out or rotted away.  She cautiously scrambled over the sharp-edged bricks and broken glass, for the first time intent upon discovering the meaning of every scent and sound.

The light in the east was slowly extending, and there was a definite brightness behind the jumbled colours of receding night.  It wasn’t sufficient to light up the interior of the ruined cottage.  On a clear night, the stars reflected light through the holes in the roof, but the morning gloaming hadn’t their brilliance, so the dog had to rely on her ears and nose alone.

At last, she was satisfied that everything was as it should be.  The only smell was of the damp lime on the crumbling walls and the rusting iron of the kitchen stove.  She went forward again, ears pricked, nose sharp, paws treading carefully into the unknown.  The breeze that had been ruffling under her hair all this while could not enter, and she was suddenly warmer.

She sniffed about the floor, which was scattered with dirt and rubbish left by old occupants or dumped by strangers.  She knew what she was looking for and wouldn’t be satisfied with less.  There was a small space between two walls, from one of which dragged a door on broken hinges.  The space had once been a cupboard, and there was still a shelf above the dog’s head.

She tried the space for size, getting down and turning round and round.  It was a bit tight—she was a large dog—and the floor was littered with brick dust and chunks of plaster.  She scratched about sharply with her claws, snuffled in every corner, sneezing at the accumulation of dust and lime that filled her nostrils, and again tried it out for size and comfort.

Still only half satisfied, she went off to another part of the tiny room to see if she could find something better, but the other crannies were damp or draughty or smaller still, and eventually, she came back to the cupboard.  She prodded at the walls with her strong, brindled muzzle, and then she curled herself round another half-dozen times before managing to settle herself to her satisfaction.  All her movements were slow, unhurried, deliberate.

Every now and again, her big jaws opened as she panted slightly, closing her eyes and opening them again, half dozing.  She was a good-looking animal in spite of her rough appearance, with a deal of wolf-dog in her, which accounted for the big triangular ears and long muzzle.  Her eyes were deep-set, and there was no wildness in them, in spite of having always lived a homeless vagabond.

She had never had a master.  She had never heard one kind word addressed to her.  She answered to no name and to no human command, and yet there was a gentleness in her demeanour, a natural docility that was wholly doglike.  Although she was a scavenger, living as does the fox, the wolf, the jackal, or hyena in other places, she was chained to her inherent domesticity, an animal that belonged to man although no man had ever claimed her.

The walls of the houses were her only haven.  In the summertime, she lay in their shadow to escape the unbearable heat, and she had long ago discovered that, in wintertime, the sun’s rays striking on the white walls gave out a warmth which couldn’t be found elsewhere.  When boys threw stones at her, she moved away, and when they had gone, she came back.

Walls were her only refuge, outer walls, because she had never known the inside of a house or stable.  For this reason, she had come now to the abandoned cottages, seeking a safe birthplace for the life stirring so urgently within her.  She hadn’t come because the old cottage was reminiscent of people and the master she had never had.  The smell of humans would have frightened her away directly!  She came as the first wild dogs must have come to man’s primitive dwellings, needful of the shelters they erected.

So, in the cupboard of the forgotten cottage, four little whelps made their first whimperings, nuzzling blindly into the only warmth and comfort that would ever be theirs by right, and the mother dog watched over them with gentle expression while the sun broke up the darkness of the sky.

2

In the days that followed, the mother dog hardly left her younglings.  She was constantly afraid for their safety, although there was no apparent danger in that isolated place, and was immediately alert at the slightest whimper or movement on their part.  If she felt hunger, she ignored it.  Hunger was her usual state so that in her greater anxiety, its pangs hardly bothered her.

From time to time, she rose to stretch her limbs, causing the pups to complain with snorty whimperings as she dislodged them, but she was soon curled about them again, glad to have them nuzzle into her flank, tucking them well in with her muzzle.

This was not her first litter.  She had had enough pups in the past to know exactly how to treat them, but this didn’t stop her from being constantly anxious about them.  She licked their ears and eyes, their bellies and bottoms.  She kept them cleaner than they would ever be at any future period in their lives.  They were all warmth and softness, smelling of milk and satisfaction in their almost semiconscious existence close to their mother’s dugs.  The only thing that stirred them was hunger when they began to clamour and scramble with intent activity, digging their paws into their mother’s belly, thrusting a blundering littermate aside, heedless of anything but their own particular need.

The mother dog endured their frequent attacks upon her until they sucked her dry.  Even then, they would have gone on clinging to her had she not dislodged them by standing up and giving herself a good shake.  The most persistent would then fall off, and, with cocked ears, she would watch to make sure they were all tucked into each other, giving them a push with her nose if she wasn’t satisfied.

When she did, at last, make up her mind to leave them on their own for a few hours, it was because she was absolutely certain that no danger could befall them.  In the several days since their birth, no living thing passed that way, not even a bird or a rat.  She knew her hiding place was a safe one, and at last, her fervent anxiety was appeased.

She trotted off unhurriedly, stopping only to glance about in the ruined doorway, and was gone for a couple of hours, filling her empty stomach with whatever rubbish she could find, drinking her fill of the slightly soapy water splashed about the tap where the women rinsed their washing and finding on her return what she expected to find, four puppies fast asleep, sucking at each other in their slumber and waking with eager whimpers at her approach.

After that, she left them daily for an hour or so, and the pups didn’t miss her.  Even when their eyes first opened, their vision was so limited and their knowledge of the world even less, that they hadn’t the remotest desire to discover the meaning of the blurry shapes they could now see.

True, they no longer stayed bunched together quite so much.  Now and again, they made seal-like movements of curiosity in the first stirrings of the urge to use their short, fat legs, but their clumsy struggles took them hardly any distance from each other and certainly not beyond the cupboard.  They were still quite helpless, and their helplessness at this stage kept them safe.

They grew rapidly, however, especially when their eyes had opened.  They had seemed all paws and hungry mouths, their weak blue eyes half-buried in the many furrows of their skulls, but soon the tails were long enough for wagging, the legs were strong enough for gambolling upon, and the black button noses were quaveringly eager to dirty themselves in the cobwebs and dust surrounding their refuge.

2.  FOUR PUPPIES

1

The line of cottages on the outskirts of the city formed almost a village of itself.  At one time, it probably had been a village, but the continual and rapid growth of the city, which, not long ago, had been far off, had brought it almost to the doorsteps.  Blocks of red-brick flats towered above the roofs of the tiny dwellings, some of which were hardly more than holes dug out of the ground, and it was supposed that one day a bulldozer would come to crush into rubble within only a few hours the places where children had laughed and cried, and old people had sat in the sun for years and years.

There was a bread shop and a dairy and a grocery store so dark that you could hardly see the names of the tins on the shelves.  There were gardens about six feet square, laid with a conglomeration of patterned floor tiles which had been picked up from the rubbish left by the flat builders.  In the late afternoons, women sat under a few trees with mending in a basket on their laps and toddlers at their feet to discuss the latest news and scandals.  Radios blared, cocks crowed, children screeched, and a suffocating smell rose from the gutters that ran down the centre of the lanes, a primitive form of sanitation.

The women threw their rubbish a short distance away from the houses.  Chickens, turkeys, and ducks would come to peck at it, flapping their wings to frighten off an equally hungry donkey, retreating themselves at the sight of a dog.  Cats came more cautiously when there was no one about, slinking with jungle stealth, wild, indomitable, racing off to some secret place with their prize.  Dogs came at any time, gulping down everything indiscriminately, sticking their muzzles into sardine tine, licking the last grain of rice from a clamshell, even chewing up paper if its taste appealed to them.

Children also came to the rubbish dump.  They had very few toys, which they were seldom allowed to play with, and they would scrape around in the muck in search of something of interest, tin cans for throwing stones at, bottle caps in place of marbles, rubber shoe heels and any bit of broken plastic which by its shape or colour might draw their attention.

When it rained, there was mud and great puddles everywhere, while in the summertime, the ground was cracked and sandy.  There were a few trees near the public fountain and about these were several rows of washing-lines, always laden with sparkling, much-mended sheets, shabby overalls and nappies.

The four questing puppies came of a sudden upon this oasis.