Zorro the dog was brought home – saved – by my father from imminent death because he had a bad leg, and his original owner didn’t want to keep him because he was the weakest link among his brothers.
So Zorro joined out household while I was still mourning my recently-deceased dog, Taho, killed by stomach worms.
He was furry and white and had black spots over his eyes (hence the name Zorro) and he really had a limp and was obviously the weakest link.
(As he grew up, though, the black spots over Zorro’s eyes moved further up his head and away from his eyes, giving the impression of having arched eyebrows and a perpetually surprised expression.)
It bothered me for days that he wasn’t barking. You’d step on his tail and he’d just open his mouth in pain.
Of course, nobody doubted the fact that Zorro was the dumbest dog to limp the earth. At a very young age he exhibited astounding dumbness by running straight into walls, or never remembering where his food was.
My family made valiant efforts to redeem Zorro’s reputation, claiming that he was a descendant of Siberian Huskies, the connection being that Zorro’s main colours were black and white.
How it was possible that Zorro -a mongrel of mongrel parents- mysteriously contracted Huskie genes, as if Huskie genes were transported like pollen blown in all the way from Alaska to Quezon City, was of no interest to my family – these were just details. (“Zorro is soooo a Huskie,” was the general opinion.)
Siberian Huskies, native to Siberia and brought to Alaska, are considered intelligent, playful sled-dogs. They are said to be happy to work for hours on end, and that they have great stamina and need tons of exercise.
With this in mind I poked Zorro with a stick while he slept, hoping he would wake up and playfully bite my head and drag me across the house yipping happily, as a sled dog should. Instead, he groaned and ignored me. A fly buzzing over his head completed the picture.
And so years passed and Zorro never failed to amaze us with his exhibitions of sloth and laziness; so incredible were they that we bragged about it to friends and invited them over to witness the magic themselves.
One time Julien was using the computer and heard an old man snoring and turned around in surprise; it was just me and my brother in the room, and of course, Zorro. Julien’s face filled with wonder (and eventually, disgust) as the three of us bent over to watch this faux Huskie snore, secrete nose fluids, and twitch in his sleep from time to time.
Zorro fathered a child, baptised Butchog, who was his complete opposite – intelligent, trainable, and not a Siberian Huskie. He could fetch, he was playful, and had brown fur. (“Butchog is soooo not a Huskie,” was the general opinion.)
Obviously, Butchog had inherited 99% of his mother’s genes (His mother was my aunt’s dog, Olga, 100% mongrel, from a long line of mongrels.)
The remaining 1%, he exhibited during New Year’s Eve, when he and his dad Zorro would cower under the table, dog-knees knocking in fear, as fireworks exploded around the neighborhood.
Currently listening to:
Elis & Tom
Elis Regina & Antonio Carlos Jobim