cubbyhole. Advancing with little steps towards the middle of the room, she bent down and, suddenly, lowered her head towards the floor while her whole stomach began to inflate and deflate at a rapid rate like a pair of bellows being used to rekindle a fire. I understood too late the discomfort sheâd expressed for my benefit, standing in front of me, with all the means she had at her disposal. I couldnât do anything other than stroke her painfully undulating stomach with the ten fingers of my two hands. Later, I saw this scene again in dreams a number of times, and I remember having had, in one dream, the disturbing vision of my arms bereft of hands and, in another, even more worrying, of my arms extending into a multitude of hands made of soft plastic that I didnât know how to use.
Finally, with a dull and painfully suffocated cry, which came up from the cavernous depths of her entrails through an involuntary retching, there suddenly spilled out a kind of dark brown gruel, in considerable quantity.
It often happens that a dog will regurgitate what is in its stomach. Thatâs what I learned from the three or four books on canine education that my daughter had read and that Iâd looked at myself when I needed to. Mélodie had had this unpleasant experience a couple of times, but without all these persistent, and vain, attempts at communication. What I found disconcerting and at the same time reassuring on each of these occasions was that she ate up again what sheâd regurgitated quite happily: it was proof that it was a passing and purely functional disturbance. But that day was not the same as any of these other occasions: she didnât leap uponthe soft, warm food that had just been discharged in front of her. On the contrary, she determinedly backed away a little, throwing me a look that expressed anxiety and helplessness.
I went into the kitchen to get what I needed to tackle the cleaning job like a professional. When I came back she had lain down, her muzzle placed on her front paws on the big mauve towel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I wiped up the gruel and wrapped it in several sheets of advertising liftouts, which I put away in a garbage bag. I scrubbed the wooden floor vigorously with a towel soaked in detergent. Meanwhile, Mélodie got up and went out of my study, heading nonchalantly for the living room. Now that Iâd got rid of the thick porridgey substance, I was trying to quench the warm and overpowering smell with a good dose of coconut detergent. Then I heard Mélodie coming back to meâshe was trotting. A kind of continuous squeaking accompanied the sharp little sound that her claws made on the floor. She appeared at last and placed herself in front of me; in her mouth was the little yellow crocodile, squeaking all the while.
While she waved her right front paw in the air as if she were trying to get my attention, she made the little toy go on squeaking with no let-up. I caught hold of the extended paw and said to her, âYouâre feeling better now! Youâre happy!â
She withdrew her right paw and gave me the other one. Then she went and settled herself on the mauve towel. She delicately released the rubber animal and placed it right next to her stomach with its shining silver fur.
âOh yes, so thatâs what it was!â
At the tip of a pink teat, right beside her baby, sparkled a little pearl, snow white and lustrous.
Diary Extract 4
Fragments that Have Slipped from the Notebook of a Dogâs Companion
I donât know if you can talk about friendship between a dog and its master. But I perceived in Mélodieâs eyes, when she held out her paws to me one after the other to tell me that she wasnât well, something like friendship, in any case a feeling inspired by a sense of complete trust. In the moments of intense outpouring of emotion, when she clung to me as if she couldnât bear there to be so much
Finally, with a dull and painfully suffocated cry, which came up from the cavernous depths of her entrails through an involuntary retching, there suddenly spilled out a kind of dark brown gruel, in considerable quantity.
It often happens that a dog will regurgitate what is in its stomach. Thatâs what I learned from the three or four books on canine education that my daughter had read and that Iâd looked at myself when I needed to. Mélodie had had this unpleasant experience a couple of times, but without all these persistent, and vain, attempts at communication. What I found disconcerting and at the same time reassuring on each of these occasions was that she ate up again what sheâd regurgitated quite happily: it was proof that it was a passing and purely functional disturbance. But that day was not the same as any of these other occasions: she didnât leap uponthe soft, warm food that had just been discharged in front of her. On the contrary, she determinedly backed away a little, throwing me a look that expressed anxiety and helplessness.
I went into the kitchen to get what I needed to tackle the cleaning job like a professional. When I came back she had lain down, her muzzle placed on her front paws on the big mauve towel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I wiped up the gruel and wrapped it in several sheets of advertising liftouts, which I put away in a garbage bag. I scrubbed the wooden floor vigorously with a towel soaked in detergent. Meanwhile, Mélodie got up and went out of my study, heading nonchalantly for the living room. Now that Iâd got rid of the thick porridgey substance, I was trying to quench the warm and overpowering smell with a good dose of coconut detergent. Then I heard Mélodie coming back to meâshe was trotting. A kind of continuous squeaking accompanied the sharp little sound that her claws made on the floor. She appeared at last and placed herself in front of me; in her mouth was the little yellow crocodile, squeaking all the while.
While she waved her right front paw in the air as if she were trying to get my attention, she made the little toy go on squeaking with no let-up. I caught hold of the extended paw and said to her, âYouâre feeling better now! Youâre happy!â
She withdrew her right paw and gave me the other one. Then she went and settled herself on the mauve towel. She delicately released the rubber animal and placed it right next to her stomach with its shining silver fur.
âOh yes, so thatâs what it was!â
At the tip of a pink teat, right beside her baby, sparkled a little pearl, snow white and lustrous.
Diary Extract 4
Fragments that Have Slipped from the Notebook of a Dogâs Companion
I donât know if you can talk about friendship between a dog and its master. But I perceived in Mélodieâs eyes, when she held out her paws to me one after the other to tell me that she wasnât well, something like friendship, in any case a feeling inspired by a sense of complete trust. In the moments of intense outpouring of emotion, when she clung to me as if she couldnât bear there to be so much
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