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oth. She brought them home, and I was the happiest kid on earth.
My mom named them Fufi and Panther. Fufi, I don’t know where her name came from.
Panther had a pink nose, so she was Pink Panther and eventually just Panther. They were two
sisters who loved and hated each other. They would look out for each other, but they would
also fight all the time. Like, blood fights. Biting. Clawing. It was a strange, gruesome
relationship.
Panther was my mom’s dog; Fufi was mine. Fufi was beautiful. Clean lines, happy face.
She looked like a perfect bull terrier, only skinnier because of the Maltese mixed in. Panther,
who was more half-and-half, came out weird and scruffy-looking. Panther was smart. Fufi
was dumb as shit. At least we always thought she was dumb as shit. Whenever we called
them, Panther would come right away, but Fufi wouldn’t do anything. Panther would run
back and get Fufi and then they’d both come. It turned out that Fufi was deaf. Years later Fufi
died when a burglar was trying to break into our house. He pushed the gate over and it fell on
her back and broke her spine. We took her to the vet and she had to be put down. After
examining her, the vet came over and gave us the news.
“It must have been strange for your family living with a dog that was deaf,” he said.
“What?”
“You didn’t know your dog was deaf?”
“No, we thought it was stupid.”
That’s when we realized that their whole lives the one dog had been telling the other dog
what to do somehow. The smart, hearing one was helping the dumb, deaf one.
Fufi was the love of my life. Beautiful but stupid. I raised her. I potty-trained her. She
slept in my bed. A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicycle but with emotions.
Fufi could do all sorts of tricks. She could jump super high. I mean, Fufi could jump. I
could hold a piece of food out above my own head and she’d leap up and grab it like it was
nothing. If YouTube had been around, Fufi would have been a star.
Fufi was a little rascal as well. During the day we kept the dogs in the backyard, which
was enclosed by a wall at least five feet high. After a while, every day we’d come home and
Fufi would be sitting outside the gate, waiting for us. We were always confused. Was
someone opening the gate? What was going on? It never occurred to us that she could
actually scale a five-foot wall, but that was exactly what was happening. Every morning, Fufi
would wait for us to leave, jump over the wall, and go roaming around the neighborhood.
I caught her one day when I was home for the school holidays. My mom had left for
work and I was in the living room. Fufi didn’t know I was there; she thought I was gone
because the car was gone. I heard Panther barking in the backyard, looked out, and there was
Fufi, scaling the wall. She’d jumped, scampered up the last couple of feet, and then she was
gone.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I ran out front, grabbed my bicycle, and followed
her to see where she was going. She went a long way, many streets over, to another part of
the neighborhood. Then she went up to this other house and jumped over their wall and into
their backyard. What the hell was she doing? I went up to the gate and rang the doorbell. This
colored kid answered.
“May I help you?” he said.