Italian dog

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Italian dog

It may appear very inappropriate, while speaking of lurking death and disaster, to write a page about my dogs.

Which dog-owner does not do it to explain how superior, loving and heart breaking his dog was?

The story always begins as a mathematical problem:

Let us accept that you have 10kg of animal called dog at point A. and that you want to carry out a double linear translation which will carry your animal from point A. to point B. with a transit at 30.000 feet.

You have two hours to comment the following questions?

How are you going to translate your dog from A. to B. knowing that dog will do its uttermost to prevent this filthy torture from taking place?

Where are you going to find the money knowing that the airlines are under the impression that dogs are only owed by extremely rich VIPs, that therefore the said VIP will be flattered and honoured that his dog is treated as a first class passenger, his travelling box also and that you are charged by the kg at first class price, the result being that while your dog is drinking champagne and Foie Gras in first class, you try and find some space in cattle class for your legs which during the night got entwined with the legs of the passenger sitting next to you, and behind you, at the same time trying to explain to your loving young wife what a chance life has given us that makes it possible to make such a wonderful (bumpy) trip and would she please stop moaning about her dress that was slightly stained when the plane tilted to the left and the breakfast tray to the rear.

On our first trip with the dog, the lady at the embarking desk having looked at us, at our clothing, at the thing that was called officially dog and looked rather like a rag been used far too often to clean the lavatories, decided that the laws of gravity were no longer applicable and the 10kg dog and 10kg cage became a 5 kg load. Thank you dear lady from SABENA, may all the dogs in heaven remember you. On the reverse in Bujumbura on the way back, the dog suddenly increased in weight in an amazing proportion, I did not know that an animal could gain so many pounds in so few minutes and that it needed so many exit permits, all of which were paying.

Further problems, you have to face your dearly loved friends, all of them expressing their delight at the wonderful idea of bringing your dog to Africa and at the same time telling all their friends which kind of double idiot and animal hater you must be to bring a dog used to our temperature climate to a roasting country where he will boil within his fur and be eaten alive by snakes and other insects (does that line give the impression that snakes belong to the order of insects, well they do in my world).

You have to explain how you are going to find the delicious crispy expensive food that is the only food your beloved dog accepts too and otherwise he/she goes around the house looking for some appropriate place where to vomit. An appropriate place is defined as a place that is so well hidden that you will not see the vomit but sufficiently ventilated that the whole house will be aware that something is wrong and the house occupants look at one another with suspicious glares.

And you are really lucky because you do not realize that this is only the beginning of the story. Once the dog has been brought to Africa, either it is a good natured dog and it will die or it is a perseverant nuisance and you will have to bring it back to Europe.

I may possibly give you the impression that I am not an international expert on dog transport. Behold Thou Wicked Reader!

Already in my infant years, at the age of twenty, having separated from a girl friend and a dog, I lost the girl friend and kept the dog. Wise man!

Travelling to France from Sweden with a dog in those days was a rather unpromising adventure. The French were convinced that a Swedish dog would be full of all that things they get by bathing naked, all that disgusting things they get inside by not drinking wine, they were very suspicious. I cannot really blame them as the Swedes had simply solved the problem by forbidding not Swedish looking dogs to enter the Socialist Paradise of Sweden.

Being a student I was full of money (debts) and the prices offered by the Airlines to rent a dog cage appeared slightly above my means, with that money I could have bought sausages for 30 days (I ate the sausages, my dog ate the mashed potatoes, if you add much pepper and chilli to the mashed potatoes the dog is far cheaper too feed).

So I build my own invented dog cage. It was built on the same assumption that guided Leonard da Vinci when building his airplane, namely that if you can conceive the thing, then in some magic way it is going to work.

At the first viewing the on-lookers where asking why I had built a foldable matchbox with wire net. I rather liked the design, it had something artistic about it, however, technical testing, (stuffing the dog into the cage and lifting it) proved that the folding forces were superior to the forces of faith. Of course this would have been a minor problem if instead of transporting a dog I had had to transport, say a turtle. But is was a dog, at least at the start it was a dog.

Thanks to my hammering I was able to construct a convincing cage that only had cost about twice what the official Airline cage would have been.

At the embarkation desk they were so impressed by my construction that the whole airport appeared suddenly to have had nothing better to do but to come and admire this new concept.

I remember a silly embarkation officer asking:

<< do you intend to let your dog travel in this?>>

Well having signed about a dozen papers stating that I was fully responsible and had not been recently released from one of our better mental hospitals we could start our journey.

All these noises you hear when you are flying, you know the noise of the engine disintegrating, of the wing getting detached, of the captain being resuscitated, all these normal terrifying noises take another dimension when you wonder whether your beloved dog is being squeezed to death between a contained of cocaine and a container of Very Superior Old Cognac.

Being a Swede, I had planned and foreseen everything; the airport authorities had been informed that I would arrive with that thing which you can see hiding there under the blanket in the cage, <<what do you mean, what cage? >>

We arrived, at least I arrived, then the freight arrived, my beloved dog being considered as freight, I patted my dog, opened the front gate of the cage (which I did not really bother do to both the front part, over part and back part where already open, and they say you can trust the Airline) and off went the dog which apparently had no notion of passport and visa and vaccination control.

So I continued to disembark looking very innocent, presented my passport, could see a bewildered Officer behind the checking point scanning her and there, and went through to find my dog with my father.

I am being told that the cage I left at the Airport was later claimed by an Art Lover and can be seen in the Guggenheim Museum under the title/

<< The Glory of Hope and Faith>>

Well, in fact all this had nothing to do with the reports I am supposed to hand over.

The first dog to accompany us to Zambia was of course not our dog. While living in Rome, the girl living in next flat came to us one evening carrying a kind of thing in her arms, telling us that for some reasons her family had no taken to that thing and that it was to be retired from this world unless the accepted it. The thing looked at us with fierce eyes and trembling legs, well aware that we were the demons and dog haters she had been told by her mother to avoid at all cost.

Being a man of strong character and experience and well aware of the risks of getting involved with other peoples problems I mad it quite clear from the beginning that the <<thing>> could only stay with us for one night until the girl had found a more appropriate solution. Apparently that was the famous day when the sun never rose.

The girl had claim that the thing was a dog. Well a label was really needed. It did indeed have four legs, but it appeared that some mad dog builder was very fond of spaghetti and one day having overcooked the spaghettis until they were so soft and twisted that they could not be eaten, he decided that they would be the proper material to build dog legs.

The colour of the dog was so amazing that we nearly made a fortune if we had been willing to disclose the secret for getting that mix. Many passer by in the street claimed that it was impossible that so many different kind of colours could exist in one place at the same time. They were not totally convinced by our explanation that these kind of dogs were honoured as God in Tibet.

From the point of view of character, she was a very good natured dog, as we were to discover later that all animals seem to be; as long as we did what she wanted, at the time she wanted, she was willing to pretend that she was following our orders. Possibly some very hard liners on the extreme right would be willing to put forward some weak argument pertaining to the fact that she demanded that we wake up at night and put back the blanket on her in such a way that the was totally covered except for one eye. I found that to be a very acceptable demand, after all, if you covered both eyes, how was she going to be a watch dog?

She was our first dog to make the trip to Zambia/Lusaka Airport. It was not too bad, compared to the dogs we were later to transport he was a lightweight. We had some worry considering the local habits of the luggage handlers at Lusaka airport.

It will come as no surprise to most knowledgeable observers and travellers that it took quite a considerable time from the moment the luggage compartment was opened and the luggage handler entered into the plane to the moment the first suitcase appeared. To those who feel disdainful about this poor performance, let them into a dark house with all the drawers locked and let them try to find in ten minutes where the valuables are hidden. If you do consider it from that angle (is there any other angle) you must say that they were very efficient.

Apparently my dog was not considered as something of value that

<< sorry Sir, you luggage has not been found

<< could you kindly describe it

<< we shall call you once it has been located

so out came the pile of luggage.

While I do not like to keep my readers anxious by digressing I would like to drop a few words of advice about luggage. Considering that the height above the ground of a normal plane must be something like two floors, that the machine that is supposed to carry the luggage from that height to the van is motor driven, that the engine is being used by the Airport master to power his maize grinder, the luggage will find it's way from the dark inside of the plane to the tarmac without any problems whatsoever thanks to the law of gravity which states that your luggage will hit the tarmac at a speed of 9 meters per second.

So the luggage arrived to the luggage hall, on top of the luggage being the dog cage with inside my dog. I suppose one can say that it is lucky that the drive from the plane to the hall was a straight one. Again my readers will accuse me of wasting their time by digressions but I do vividly remember the practice of the luggage handlers at Grand Canaria of marking the path with fallen luggage.

It must be something in the blood of our dogs or us, this little dog once the gate of her dog cage was opened, she crossed the hall at great speed to inaugurate the splendours of the Zambian countryside with a mark of respect and ownership.

Those where still the days when the strange interpretation of rules and regulation by white foreigners was considered with commiseration and pity and nobody bothered about import permit, vaccination books and ownership.

The stubbornness of her character was later to cause her death. While Annie was tending to the maize trials I had set up at the Mt Makulu research station, Annie tending it because I was on one of my trips a thousand kilometres away, she refused to pertain in these vulgar and muddy tasks unworthy of an Italian dog of pure breeds and she went to investigate that interesting thing which was wriggling under that bush half a yard away. Regretfully that wriggling thing did not appear to have been fully aware of the habits of Roman dogs and in spite of the huge doses of anti-venom serum administered, she died.

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