Dante (English)

The first time I saw Dante was during spring time, and as usually in Granada during this season –if it is a lucky year- it rained every other day. Some kids in the street were making fun of a black and skinny dog. I checked it out: it was a female dog. The kids ceased “paying her attention” and she turned around to keep walking. Then I called her saying: “hola” with a happy singing voice. And she turned around, kind of hoping for something. But I got concerned about making her hopes grow, so I changed the look in my eyes to something like: “don’t become too excited”. And she understood, she understood perfectly. Turned her head, disappointed, and continued walking.

I kept thinking of her. I saw her at several times: from the bus, from the car, walking through Cenes, around the little town, approaching bars’ outdoor tables to beg for food, or the kids with snacks. Later on, I found out that Dante was known in Cenes as “the Luisa”. Sometimes she stopped by our place and I gave her food, later I left food outside for her, hoping that she would show up. Sometimes she did, sometimes she did not.



One day, after getting off the bus with my brother, we saw her at the bus stop –sometimes she would wait there too, to be with people I guess- and I tried to take her with me, but she would not follow us. So I started playing with her and I could take her with us that way. I left her in our patio. When my mother arrived I said: “Mamá, I have a surprise for you outside”, and she replied: “it is not a dog, is it?”. And I said: ”take a look”. After she looked at her I asked my mother her opinión and she said: “Ay, Ire, she is very black!”

But the dog stayed with us.



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She slept with me while we were living together. I took her out every morning and in the afternoon for another while. Everyday. If she had a wound, she would show it to me, and she learned to communicate through her eyes, though she never learned to open doors or peel mandarines like my previous dog; she never needed either, nor to steal food or search in the garbage. In a lot of respects, she was an ideal dog, extremely sociable with other dogs as well as with humans.







She snored sometimes, she always dreamt. Many times she had nightmares, visible ones. She moved her legs, cried. Frequently she dreamt of being abandoned. One day I woke her up and she still cried awake, but she came back to sleep peacefully. Overtime, we discovered that she had a little bullet on one of her legs, which helped imagining more of her past. Maybe they shoot her to make her go?, maybe earlier, an accident hunting?, maybe later, by some kids?




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Dante had hunting instincts, brought home a cat and hurt a pair of them, and also hunted a little rabbit. She taught other two dogs hunting. She was also an amazing runner (a greyhound mix), very agile, great at feinting. It was beautiful to see her running. Since she was a “hippy dog”, she believed in free love, open doors and sharing food, or rather, in other (male) dogs sharing their food with her. She was pretty skillful at that. She could disappear for days and then a neighbor would call us and tell us: “Dante is here or there”. Again, walking, another dog’s owner would say in passing by: “look, it is my dog’s girlfriend”.
In her long walks by the river she used to grab stones from the river and place them all together in the shore.




Such was Dante, and of many other ways. But now these ways have as their only material base the neural network in which memories of her reside, and these lines, maybe.