THE DOG DOBERMAN KID
Having revalidated my medical degree here in Uruguay after coming from Cuba. I got a job in a private clinic, which had installed an Argentine, on the treatment of pain.
It was a neighborhood of wealthy people. The treatment was expensive and in dollars and I earned well. A woman of about fifty-year-old patient who attended our clinic was enthusiastic about me. I found out that she owned an estate agent and therefore sold apartments and houses.
When I gave her details of my precarious situation, I lived in a small room in the center of Montevideo. She proposed to rent me a large house that was two blocks from the Legislative Palace.
The mansion was old and it was difficult to sell it. It had been first a refuge for nuns and then a school to teach ballet to the girls.
She offered it to me for a small fee and I settled there.
The hall was of pure white marble and the living room was polished wood. It had like 6 rooms and one of crystals between two neglected gardens. Two bathrooms.
Everything was going well in my new residence until the son of the Lady who had a Doberman dog brought him to live with me because the girlfriend could not stand it. The dog had become accustomed to the owner since puppy and was only happy when the boy came to see him and the girlfriend was locked in the car, because he was terrified.
I locked him in the back of the house, behind a glazed oak door and had to endure his barking all night because he never took my love. He loved only his owner who later stopped coming because he went to Europe to work.
The Kid was unbearable. To put food on it, I had to open the door a little and throw the food pills, taking care that it would not come out and bite me.
Once, a health worker was doing work in the bathroom and I do not know how the Kid opened the door and bit his leg through his pants and bled. I had to pay him back so he would not report me.
The Kid scraping the door with his teeth and nails was opening a hole little by little until he could get out of his shelter silently. When I came home from work I found the mattresses frayed because he had constant anger, for lack of its owner. He also grabbed in the living roon with the antique furniture, style, and gnawed them as if they were soft wood.
Another day a young man who arranged the garden for me, the Kid entered silently and bit his cheek. The boy did not panic but put a cloth on the wound. I saw that later there would be extra money.
The bottom door was finally destroyed and I left the Kid do what he wanted, impossible, was a dog of strong character, I think schizophrenic, if this diagnosis can be given to a dog.
It happened like a year. I suffered the madness of the Kid but he continued with his misdeeds and never loved me, only his owner whom he would not see anymore, nor even ask for his dog when he wrote to me from Europe. I had forgotten or it was on purpose.
One morning I did not hear the Kid bark. I went to see him and he was dead. The best of so much rage had given him a heart attack because this race is prone to this condition.
I felt the not having won the dog's affection. And death was accelerated by the anger of being abandoned by its owner.
Moral: Never buy a Doberman if you're not going to raise him from puppy and give him love for yourself.
DR ORLANDO VICENTE ALVAREZ
CUBAN URUGUAYAN
GENIUS
