“Dogs are
not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”
Roger Caras
WHISKEY
I was 5
when my grand mom gave me my first dog.
Her name was Whiskey. I have to admit, that’s a male name. Whiskey liked birds
and escaped on two occasions to ravage the volière of the neighbors.
Whiskey
gave birth to a lot of puppies, 7 times and 4 puppies at the time. That makes
28. My father buried a few the moment they were born. My sister and I would
take care of the lucky survivors, feeding them milk, dressing them like dolls
and showing them of to the neighbors.
When
Whiskey was old, we kept one puppy. That puppy had puppies too, and we kept
another puppy.
I left my
parents’ house at 18 to go & study and then went abroad. Once back in
Belgium at age 29 I bought a house.
MARAGOGYPE
My mom had always known my desire to have a big dog of my own. She’d tell me I had no space nor time to keep one. Funny enough it was my mom who one day told me a former colleague of hers had puppies. They were giving them away for free. She could not recall what breed they were.
I saw the
puppies first when they were three weeks old. Mommie dog was a malamute and
daddy dog, a great dane. He had managed to get mom pregnant through the fence.
They were all so cute I could not make up my mind which one to choose. I was
offered to return the following week, spend some time with them before making
up my mind.
I chose a
gorgeous female puppy, her white breast was perfectly symmetrical, her
black-brown ears, her naughty smile. She was just perfect. I called her #Maragogype
after the best coffee in the world and brought her home a week later.
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Maragogype
came into my life when I needed it so badly. I had a crazy, obsessive
ex-boyfriend still harassing me. I was
stupid enough to accept going for a drink with him . We were to meet at the
place Fernand Cocq at a terrace. I parked my car nearby and left Maragogype
inside the car. I was barely seated when the alarm went of. I told my ex I was
going to take her out of the car. By the time I returned to our table, he had
left. He was so jealous of my dog he could not stand her.
‘Flavors of
the World’ was my gourmet store I had just opened in a pedestrian street on the
#Sablon. Maragogype and me were a team, I would take her wherever I would go.
One day a 12-year old girl walked into the store and asked whether she could
play with the dog. I expected her to
stay for 15 minutes. In stead, those 15 minutes were two hours. The following
day she was back, and the following day too…
It was
Thursday morning when a woman came into my store. I had a strange feeling. It
was after 11 am when a car of one of the neighbors drove by. I remembered
thinking they should have known traffic was forbidden.
My customer
left and I called my beloved puppy. But she was nowhere to be found. I
panicked, ran on the street and called her. 5 minutes later I was desperate. I
learned that the car belonged to the ‘parents’, - an Austrian couple working in Brussels, - of the little girl and
that they seemed to have been in a hurry.
An elder
neighbor had witnessed them picking up MY dog,
then chasing away by car. I released the better spy in me. A few days
earlier the couple had bought a mahony mushroom shaped pestle paid for by their
debit card. I called the bank and shared them my suspicion. My guess is the
bank should not have done this, but the bank employee willingly gave me an
address. Then I called the phone company and 5 minutes later I rang their landslide
phone.
The message
on their answering machine gave me their mobile number.
By the time
I reached them they were driving deep into Germany. Far from accusing them of
theft, I was told not to go to the police. But I did. Meanwhile a former
colleague of mine for when I was still working for a petrochemical company,
offered to drive me to Vienna. My mom
who had had me screaming and totally going out of my mind suggested I needed a
psychiatrist.
I gratefully
accepted my colleague’s kind gesture and
that same evening the four of us, - my colleague and his handsome Mexican wife,
a friend and me, - started the 10-hour drive to Vienna. I had called the
Brussels police beforehand and they gave me the permission to follow my dog’s
kidnappers to Vienna.
Early
morning the following day we arrived in Wiener Neustadt. At this point I am
clueless as to how I figured out the address of the girl’s grandparents’ house.
But my god feeling had proven to be the right one. She had been on a holiday with her aunt and
uncle, the couple working and residing in Brussels. Her parents were divorced
and she was living mainly with her grandparents. Why on earth would an Austrian
lawyer dare to steal someone else’s dog, were it not to compensate a hole in a
12-year old’s life.
We parked
the car with view over the entrance of the apartment building. Residents were
coming and going but no one seemed to match our kidnappers profile. We sat
there for 6 hours convinced my dog was somewhere inside of the building.
Finally we
called and the girl’s mom picked up the phone. Christina was with her father in
Vienna and we were immediately given his address. It took us less than 20
minutes to reach the city center. Whilst we were parking our car, Christina and
her father came outside. We had not even rang the door bell. She was holding a
picture of a dog in her hand and her father hurried saying that she had
absolutely no reason to steal someone else’s dog. It was obvious they had been
warned while we were driving. Mystery ! Her dog could have been dead for years
. What would this photo prove. As if this was not enough, her father invited us
for a drink around the corner, so I could talk to Christina. I never intended
to accuse her or her uncle, I only
wanted to know what she had witnessed in the street. She started crying. Half
an hour later she was still crying. Seeing a twelve-year old shedding tears
over a lost dog only convinced me in my believe they must have abandoned the
dog on their way to Vienna. At her age she must have been shocked with her
uncle’s decision, lacking the maturity to grasp the full idea behind.
All seemed
so surreal and it got worse when Christina’s father, a local police officer,
offered to find us a place for the night. Here we were, the four of us,
accusing the brother of having stolen my dog, it was a gesture we could not
accept.
Yet, 5
minutes later he announced we had just booked two rooms at the Viennese police
headquarters. The ‘hotel’ bill would be on him. We left the bar, I was
immensely relieved. I knew what I had to
know, and though I was about to return to Belgium without Maragogype, I had done
what I possibly could have done to find her.
Back home I
called the couple who had been so kind to trust me with one of their 3 puppies
. The plushy black puppy with the white
breast had not been given away. Yet they had decided to keep her. I figured it
was their full right, it was theirs, wasn’t it.
Untill
then, three weeks later they called me with some wonderful news for me…
next:
Dog Stories 2/3 : Cheops - Cheops & Keops ( scheduled June 26th '14 )
Dog Stories 3/3 : Nefer ( Scheduled June 30th '14 )