I think…it's a mixture. Of this and that and those over there; all together…drawn together.
Down there.
It's the vet who's worried over my leg, how it's always coarse and raw from where I have licked and bitten during the silent, lonely hours.
It's my cinnamon lady, who is now engaged to a man of oil stink who comes to pick her up at the end of the day. A lady working was stretching the boundaries, but now, a married lady working.
She handed in her resignation yesterday and said her last goodbyes to me.
It's the police dog trainer who noticed that I still jumped and flashed him the whites of my eyes in terror when he come near me.
It is all this.
Here he comes; my replacement trainer. The one who smells of bread and wine and talks to me in such a gentle, sure voice. He comes for me, but also for everything else. I, on my lead, am in his right hand, my empty bowls in his left and my bed tucked under his arm. We walk away from my "we don't really know what to do with this new one, stick her out the back, in the old kennels" cage.
I have a suspicion that I am being relocated, and I think I know where. He keeps guiding me in the right direction and soon enough, yep, knew it.
It's the police lane, full of barking, restless dogs all ready for their morning routine to commence.
It's daunting, the way the row stretches one for what seems miles, the way that they all turn and every black and tan face is watching me through strange, demon eyes. The bread and wine man keeps pulling me forward, he expects me to go down there?
Oh, oh yes. He does. So you are forced to settle for hiding yourself behind his legs and keeping your eyes down. Because you're a good dog, and good dogs don't take their personal feelings into consideration.
He stops in front of a numbered cage.
Which is already full.
With two dogs.
And he opens the door, sets my things down, pulls me in by the collar and leaves me to socialize when I have not done so successfully in nearly a year. He stands at the doors, you know, so that if I start to get ripped to shreds he's there to step in.
One is moving closer, she's really sleek for a Shepard, and she walks all the way up to me. It's a stare off and I don't even know how I got myself into it. She growls from deep down in her chest and by god woman let's be sensible about this situation please!
I jolt my head up high –yep, there it is, that old stubborn fool in me- and let my lips just peel back. I had realised then that this could only end disastrously, I was prepared to protect myself until the bread and wine man could jab his boot between us.
But it doesn't, because she steps back. I'm hysterically processing how I got away with that when I realises, I am not hers to touch.
The other one is coming over.
This one is pedigree German Shepard if I had ever seen one in my life. She lets me see just how long her steps are and strong her back is as she crosses the meters of the larger-than-I-am-used-to cage. This one is skilled in the intimidation business.
My paws are hot and so I begin to shuffle and circle in anticipation.
"You mean harm?" She asks, gravely and still stalking slowly towards me.
"Of course not!" I choke on the words because- because is this what it is all about?
"You plan to dominate?"
"What?! The fuck no!"
These dogs are crazy, crazier than normal dogs. Then I remember Grady and Oscar. There must be something vicious happing down in the bowels of the police dogs. Must be.
Suddenly they put their teeth away and the threats disappear from the air. But we are still all pumping and stretching in our ready-to-fight-when-you-are ways.
We go through the process, the greeting, the knowing, the tail wagging, the smelling, the sharing. By the time their trainers come and the police dogs filter out, we are settled.
The sleek one is Little Jean; she's my age, a quarter sheep dog and sterile (and ashamed of it). She never told me that, it's all in the smells, you see.
The bigger one is Dizzy, she's a year older, having failed the graduation test last season, and she's pumped full of testosterone no female should be have inside her body.
My wine and bread trainer has lit up a cigarette and is busy breathing the corridor full of smoke. I settle down into my bed and let my eyes snap shut. It was a very tiring morning.
Once my new man has finished, he clips me up and takes me out of the kennels, down to the streets. He's different to my cinnamon lady in more ways than one. With my lady, she walks high, she walks mighty and we go the same route every time we go. This bread and wine man through, his shirt is always half untucked, he slouches and walks with a swagger, he always ends up leading me down silent streets I have never touched with my eyes or paws before.
When he turns through the cracks of the town, past bleeding kneed children and swollen eyed wives, I always notice his steps jump more. He likes the backstreets, he likes the romance and danger. He likes these things like he likes the women we meet.
They all think they are his one true lover; he certainly kisses and fondles them with enough passion to justify such thinking. But no, no you are not true nor even love, there are numerous others which he treats just the same.
I have met them all through these last months of training. I think, if someone was to ask this bread and wine man which girl he loved the best, he might in fact say me.
Brodie, the wiry spaniel who has never thrown a boiling kettle at him for being late, as never demanded that all his time should belong to me only, has never demanded any money, any jewellery, any clothes.
No, we have a simple understanding; I have seen all of him, bare and spread out before, his womanising, his drug smoking, his delusional father who is strapped in a hospital bed to keep from killing himself. I know, that to him, my sweet, quite understanding, is truly something to behold.
I jump my front paws on the side of the fountain so I can look into the gushing, clear, cool water. We watch together as he tosses a bronze coin in. It hardly slashes and sinks, landing with a clunk on the bottom of the white and mystical ocean.
As it was falling, the high lunch time Sun had caught its angles, and for a while there, the water was filled with darting, golden, pint sized fish.
"Majestic" He whispers, knees cracking as he kneels down to run his fingers through my fur. I like my fur; it seems to have represented me. Back when was a pup, it was golden, now as a dog, it was darkened to deep brown. Mother is golden and father is grey; where did this dark brown come from?
My heart.
We know each other, in ways the cinnamon lady never did. We spend hours, lifetimes really, just together, just resting in the midst of spring, upon the benches in the park, letting the rustle of the thousand year old trees above us be our conversation.
Just because you like dogs, does not mean you're a dog person.
"And then I jumped and grabbed him in my jaws!" Little Jean laughed and flopped to the ground, so close to me that the dust she raised into the air settled on top of my coat. She turns her head to me.
"I love these types of days." I let my mouth turn, slowly, into a sad smile. Little Jean and Dizzy always rush to tell me about their days, about the hunting, the fighting, the drug sniffing and cart chasing. And they love their jobs, they do, they glow with it.
They will fall asleep with the presence of happiness, of all is good and of that life can never be better. While I, I shall be a horrible clash of brown fur in their uniform black and tan sleeping pile. All along the rows, it is just those two colours. It does not make me sad, it is just a sick metaphor to how I feel, deep down.
They are like butterflies, while I, I am like a haunting funeral song.
I next day, the bread and wine man and I went to a funeral.
And I listened to those songs and I watched those people. Yes, it was perfect for how I was now, in this time of life.
It's the faces of the mourning wife who, when the instruments stop but the singer's beautiful, hollow voice continues on for one last lungful, it's that face which has just found her peace in amongst the turmoil.
So black and blue and deep, this turmoil, like nothing you could ever see. Only feel.
I find it fitting that when we come out of the dusty and dark church, small and wooden and stale, the Sun is so bright that everyone has to squint they're eyes against it. The Shepard's, I heave, this is them.
And I look back, to get the last glimpse of me.
But I see something else off to the side which startles my emotional journey, walking on her lead, steady and splendid.
A sister.