Not Without my Dog

Transcription

Not without my dog

We had two dogs when my dad died. One was a chow-chow—that was my mother’s dog, and my dad had a Boston Bull. The chow-chow had only had one owner, our family, and would have been very unhappy with anyone else, while the Boston Bull . . . I kept him. No one wanted the Boston Bull except me. I got to Lévis to take the train, on . . . I bought a ticket and they put the dog in the mail car, at the front. So every time the train stopped, I ran to get him, take him for a little walk and give him food and water. When we got to Moncton, they announced, twenty-minute stop! I got off the train with the dog, and quickly went to the station restaurant and asked the girls there if they could give him something, some meat or something to eat, some vegetables. They thought he was so cute and started calling him Chummy, because he was really chummy, chummy, chummy. Suddenly I heard the announcement “train departure number twenty, Lévis.” Oh no! What to do? My bags were on the train, my [inaudible]. I grabbed the dog and took off like a crazy lady and a big hand grabbed me from behind, and a man said, “Where are you going?” “I’m going to take that train!” I said. “You can’t, it’s leaving.” “I’m in the navy, you can’t do that to me, you said twenty minutes,” I told him. “Come with me,” he said. So we went to the office and they sent a wire, a telegram to Halifax telling them to get my bags and hang on to them, and so on. So I had to take the next train, which was a troop train full of soldiers. He told me to get on the train, act like nothing was wrong and sit down. “But I don’t have any money,” I told him, “I don’t have any more money to pay for the dog, to get my bags back, I’m out of money.” “Don’t worry,” he said. So I hid my dog in the corner, like that, but he was making sounds like this [groaning], making noises. Suddenly, someone said, “There’s a dog here!” Well, that broke the ice. The people were really nice and I got to my dormitory, where there were 100 of us, and tied my dog’s leash to the iron bedstead, and I left a note on the pillow of the bottom bunk saying “Don’t be afraid, he’s my dog and he’s very nice.” But unfortunately, one of the girls got up at four in the morning. The dog moved into the aisle between the beds and she didn’t see it. She had her toothbrush mug with her, tripped over him and fell. The dog started barking and everyone sat up, wondering what was going on. I think two or three days after that, I went to the office with . . . and the commander called me and said “Duchener, I hear you have a dog.” “Yes,” I said, “it’s my dog. “Well actually, it’s my father’s dog and there’s no one who can look after him like I can.” To me, it was like a mission. “Well,” she said, “there are 2,000 women here. What if everyone had a dog?” “Well, yes,” I said, “but it’s not like that. My father just died and there’s no one to look after the dog.” Unfortunately though, I had to give him to someone else. It made me really sad because that dog was my link with my father, summer vacations, and all that.