Jethro's Dawg

By Rudolfo Carrillo


If you want to know about my dog, Rosie, then sit back awhile and I'll tell you all about her. First off, it is a damn miracle the dog is alive today, because when I found that mutt, she had a fractured pelvis, two broken teeth, and the bad attitude one develops after having been run over and then spun backwards onto the tarry asphalt by an SUV piloted by a former architecture student on his way to pick up his kids, late, from some daycare or other near the airforce base.


Now don't get me confused, as it weren't I that run her down and the fella that did was certainly polite enough before he left me there on the side of the road to look after her.
Rosie bit me through the hand when I approached and damn it if I didn't scream in agony and give a bloody finger to that nice man, as he headed south, in a hurry, on San Mateo Boulevard. I knew in my heart that la jura would show up at any minute and so set my mind to thinking how I was gonna get that angry heap of bones and fur out of the road before another truck rolled by and did her in. It came to me that I might as well take my shirt off, so that I could throw it over her head. But it was last day of summer and I was just starting to get my winter fat developed. 


For a moment, I feared being seen in all my corpulent glory. But the hell with it says I, as I peeled off my top, yelled out an ancient Aztec battle cry and made my move. She didn't put up much resistance because she was plumb scared nearly to death, pobrecita.


At the emergency vet, they told me I ought to put her down, but I resisted, produced some Franklins from out my pocket and told 'em to do their best to save her. Those bills worked wonders and the next morning I got to take her home. The vets were glad to be shed of Rosie and told me she tried to bite just about every soul in the clinic. She was nice to me, though, and curled right up in the back of my 1987 Saab 900 for the ride home.


The year I found Rosie was the year my old man died and it so happened I spent the night waiting to hear about her fate by going to a New Mexico Symphony Orchestra concert where they played a thing called the Firebird Suite by a guy name of Stravinsky. I was using up the last of my father's season tickets and mostly thinking after him, how he was lying in a bed at the VA and dreaming of baseball and freedom and so forth and so on.


Well, my pops, who was also named Rudolfo, died that Thanksgiving. By then, Rosie had got herself healthy and plump and became the top dog at mi chante. She liked to follow me around and growled at anyone, kin included, that came near me.


I took her just about everywhere with me. She couldn't stand the folks I worked with, thought they were representatives of the devil, excepting one. That would be the quiet freelance music writer I had a secret crush on. Rosie the dog would wag her tail like it was dinnertime whenever that woman walked by my office.


Just about ten years have passed since all that came to pass. I lost my shitty sales job at that old place and went on to become what others call a formidable writer and artist. Just about everyone reads my mierda and thinks it is something fine, I hear. Off course, the most beautiful thing was I ended up married to the gal I told you about.


The only problem is with Rosie. She developed a sort of cancer during November of the warm winter that just passed. She has what they call a mast-cell tumor and it sure don't look good. The surgeon says he'd have to cut her leg off to cure the cancer, which the mutt told me was out of the question. He also said there was some hope for remission and so I am counting on that and keeping a close watch on her.


So, I've got her on prednisone and now it is springtime. Four months are a long time for a dog, I reckon. The trees in these parts are busy budding and today I saw that we've got bees in the back yard, just waiting for the apple blossoms to come out. And Rosie is sitting by my side as I type out this story. Her eyes are still bright. She still gets up every morning to visit with the sun and the sky, baring her teeth at anyone that stands between me and her.

And I don't know how this story I am telling you will end. I could guess at it all day and all night, if I was so inclined, and so might you. But, instead of pondering quantum outcomes, you all just keep her in your thoughts, as I am wont to do.


Be Seeing You.