Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [183]
Fifteen minutes before the end of the session Katya, despite her anti-globalist garb of black pullover, trainers, and bandanna, entirely capitalistically demanded 500 roubles. We didn’t invite her back. The second and third personal trainers were identical in respect of the quality of their exercises, but proved even pricier at 700 and 900 roubles for the same truncated hour.
We decided to stop throwing money down the drain, the more so since van Gogh’s bladder continued to require thousands of roubles. Life went on as before. He was scared stiff of anything and everything, and I stood between him and the unfamiliar – screeching garage doors, squealing car tyres, and men walking past.
As he grew older, the problems intensified. In order to get to a dog-walking area in our neighbourhood, you need to cross a main road at a crossing without traffic lights. That is, you have to weave between cars not in the custom of reducing speed when approaching a zebra crossing. As we neared it van Gogh would collapse, prostrate with fear. I had to half carry him, half drag him like a sledge, 40–50 kilograms of resisting live dog, between the cars. One walk over the crossing and back guaranteed a rise in blood pressure. It was plain, however, that a dog with a dysfunctional metabolism, sand in his bladder and problems of social interaction simply had to be taken for a walk in the company of his fellows.
In the end I started loading van Gogh into my Lada 10 and driving him across the road. In the walking area he runs about anxiously among the other dogs, not playing with them often, but sometimes at least. He exercises, he sniffs, he gets used to them. His main occupation there, however, is standing by the fence gazing longingly at our Lada. The minute I open the doors, van Gogh jumps into the back seat. Being driven, or even just sitting in the car, is the one thing he really loves. A small, contained space separate from the rest of the world, just him and his owner, that is the best place on earth for van Gogh. He immediately calms down, looks out of the windows at the world with pleasure, and his gaze becomes steady. He can fall asleep like that, all his fears forgotten. He jumps out of the car and heads straight for the the entrance, runs to the lift, and can’t wait to get back into the flat.
For now my blood pressure has returned to normal, but what next? The vets are telling me unambiguously I should have him put to sleep. Friends and colleagues concur. Why give yourself such a hard time? A dog is not a human being. Give him away. That is only their polite way of saying the same thing: have him put down. Who else would put up with him, other than those already wholeheartedly attached to this long-eared, sad-eyed creature who is guilty of nothing?
Nobody. It is the lot of sick dogs in the big city to be put to sleep if their owners do not have large amounts of money for treating and supporting them. A world which has become heartless towards unfortunate people (the disabled, orphans, the sick), has become equally heartless towards animals. Naturally. What else could we expect? Quite how feral money makes us is something you understand when you have a sick dog. I am not a crazy dog-lover, a category of people as large as that of crazy dog-haters. Crazy dog-lovers differ from the rest of us in loving dogs more than people. When all is said and done, I love people more than dogs.
But it is not in my nature to abandon him, a sentient being who would not survive being rejected again. He would die without me. He is completely dependent on me, to the last hair on his long silky ear, and he would be equally in the power of anybody else in whose hands he found himself. The world of the rich has produced such a numerous, ever increasing caste of abandoned dogs, van Gogh’s brothers. These people buy van Goghs as toys, play with them, tire of them, and kick them out. If they’re lucky they are returned to the breeder who sold them and