I’LL NEVER FORGET THE LOOK ON MY DOG’S FACE
A quick lesson on creative work and fighting your inner animal.
You see, my family has a dog. Her name is Shiva. It’s a huge American bulldog. Very large and very stupid.
When she was still a puppet, her whiskers were cut off by my stepmother (“because she’s a lady, forgodssake!”).
Then she spent most of her meaningless existence living in a bathroom. (But that’s a whole another story.)
Today she consists of about 50kg of muscle tissue, and it’s not that easy to make her do anything anymore.
But I remember one day when we brought Shiva to the vet to have her nails trimmed.
It’s not a painful exercise by any standards. But most dogs are terrified of sitting in an unfamiliar fluorescent-lit space, watching a bearded human hold clippers in front of their face. (The memory of those cut whiskers still fresh in Shiva’s mind…)
“Hold her tight,” the vet told my father and me strictly. We exchanged glances — both in decent physical shape — and took Shiva from each side, pulling her legs under our arms.
And she sat still. She really did.
Until the clippers made a sound.
