Dogs are people to their families. Friends outside the family can sort of get it, but I don't think the emotional relationship is enough to see the obedient animal as a real person. They have personalities and however you characterize the relationship, they connect in a family kind of way. They are pack animals and the family is the pack.
Uniquely, for this dog, she chose the pack she wanted to belong to. We didn't go to the breeder, we didn't go to the dog show, we didn't go to the kennel. She tried a few options. She ran with a few others, but she came to us. From the wild. Really. We already had a dog. A beauty. We rescued a puppy, a white lab-marimana mutt and gave it shots and food and freedom and a safe place and a couple of baby girls to play with. And we called it Mozzarello because Mozzarella might be a girl's name. And maybe we gave it a little too much freedom because one day a mangy, black, little girl dog started hanging around. They were too young to be really serious about each other but the relationship began to annoy us. The little mangy black dog wore a short length of rusty chain dangling from its collar. We assumed it was a runaway with a bad upbringing. You know, damaged goods. Italian dogs can be mistreated. We didn't feed it, we latched the gate, we discouraged the relationship. We didn't want fleas.
And then, one day, the gorgeous white dog with all the good fortune life can bestow, ran away. Just up and left. We called around. We raised a fuss. We got the community to go looking for our dog. Some suggested a farmer might shoot a loose dog who gets into the chicken coop. Others suggested a hunter might be eager to take up a lovely, new dog. Anyway, Mozzy was gone. We presumed that the black bastard mutt led our dear innocent away, that they ran off like a couple of bandits on a chicken hunting spree. After all the little black girl had been identified as the type of rough neck sent in to root out wild boar.
The lovely white lab never returned. And was never spotted. We were heartbroken. But one of our theories didn't hold up because the black mutt did return. Regularly. We would shoo it away but all it would do is give us a disappointed look.
OK, Fine! Lets take a look at this skin eczema. And here's some left over food from our real dog. And that's how Ciuccio (Chew cho) adopted us. The name derived from the Italian for a baby's pacifier. Probably because she did pacify our girls. She didn't seem to miss Mozzy. She seemed to like to hang around with us. It was a perfect fit, actually. She got virtually excessive freedom. I guess we were flattered by her good taste in a new family. We relied on her judgement and she delivered. And when we made the drives up to the new house at LeCoste, well, that really paid off for her because this was dog heaven. No hunting and lots of wild rabbits. Yes, Ciuccio was a hunter. Boar, deer, porcupine, fox, mice, rats, and lovely, delicious rabbits. That dog was no fool. This was a good gig.
She lasted a long, long time through a beautiful but difficult period of our lives. With every new day, she would astound us with her keen, independent intelligence and understanding. She didn't need lessons. If you didn't want her to pull on the leash, she'd stop. If you wanted her to walk at your heel, she would. I suppose by quickly proving to us she could do these silly things she might get us to stop asking. And we did. She lived virtually her whole life without a leash or closed door. When the house at Borgo Petroio was little more than a shell that we camped in, she killed the rats, protected the vegetable garden from rabbits and deer, greeted guests (and their pets) with a friendly wag and a floppy ear. And she made a wonderful mischief with anyone on the estate that we didn't like. She taught the little girls a thing or two like how to eat a fresh rabbit, and if you had the stamina, she would lead you to the most far reaching dark corners of this wild estate. If we snuck off on foot, she seemed to sense it in her sleep. She would bound ahead, then check back that we were still on course, and leap ahead another twenty meters as if to drag us along. Once underway, she would suddenly vanish, and suddenly, when you least expected it, she would overtake from behind at full speed, frightening twice. Once when you thought you'd lost her for good, and again when she would fire past. On these "walks," she made no sound; but at night, what a racket. She was smart enough to stay out of the firing range of wild boar or porcupine, but that didn't stop her from non-stop confrontation for whatever time it would take to clear the area.
She survived. She would drag home corpses of long dead creatures. She could crunch through bones, swallowing fish and foul without a problem. She even survived a couple of poisonings which killed a number of pets on the estate.
And when she died, she died with grace. A seizure left her bewildered and walking obsessively as if she was trying to find something she remembered, some place where she could begin to put it all back together. No anger, no aggression. A curious, impatient walk outside, then in again. Not hungry. Manic. Alex let her out again in the dark and she never returned. Or perhaps she returned to the wild whence she had come. She was so like us, and she knew it before we did.
We're not going to replace her because we can't.
