Today I spent a lot of time with my dog. I took her for two walks, and spent a couple hours on the porch with her, me reading a book, her watching the world go by.
Let me tell you about Cleo.
Cleo doesn't walk, she prances.
Cleo looks not unlike a footstool, with her long flat back, and short legs covered by long fur. She looks almost like a centipede when she walks.
Cleo has only one eye. Eight years ago, the dog next door clawed her eye out while she peered under the fence. Sam found her, the eyeball dangling out of the socket on the thin thread of optical nerve. When she came back from the vet, they had shaved and sewn up the former site of her eye, leaving jagged stitches across the seam. She looked like some strange form of monster. Now the fur has regrown and the stiches have been removed. She looks like she's permanently winking, and sometimes walks into things.
On Sunday, when I was walking her down busy E. Johnson St., Cleo got so preoccupied watching traffic that she walked straight into a tree. She didn't skip a beat--she just kept walking.
Cleo speaks three different languages: bark, howl, and chatter. She barks when she sees another dog or hears someone enter the house. She howls when she is excited. She chatters when neither barking nor howling seem appropriate. Imagine human inflections without articulation, a garble of sounds that should make sense but shatter the ears instead.
Cleo has quite a coat. She doesn't shed so much as knot. My goal has been to groom her, which is a difficult task on two accounts. First, she is feisty, not unlike myself as a child when my mom would try to force a brush through my heavily snarled hair. Also, when I take her for walks, she chooses the spots with the most debris. Her fur collects dust faster than any knick-knack. Perhaps, I could market her as a new organic cleaning product.
Cleo has a strange relationship with other dogs. She eyes them up and speaks her languages at them, but she jumps back when she sees them near her, as if stunned by the attention or frightened of the familiarity.
Cleo has seizures.
Cleo is a sweetheart.