I am walking my blind dog in a public park. We are on one of those community tracks. There are people exercising everywhere.
Joggers. Walkers. A few cyclists. One woman is power walking, wearing earbuds, having an animated phone conversation, talking to an invisible person. She looks like she is hallucinating.
My dog, Marigold, and I have been working on walking a lot lately. It’s not easy, walking. We have very few “good walks” inasmuch as walking in a straight line is nigh impossible when you can’t see.
So mainly, we walk in zig-zags until both of us are dizzy and one of us needs a carbonated malt beverage.
When I near the tennis courts, I meet a woman with a little girl. They are sitting on a bench. The girl sees my dog and she is ecstatic.
“Look at the pretty dog!” the kid says.
So I introduce the child to Marigold. Immediately the child senses there is something different about this animal.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” the kid asks.
“She is blind,” I say.
The child squats until she is eye level
with Marigold.
“How did this happen?” the girl asks.
I’m not sure what I should say here. So I keep it brief.
“Someone wasn’t nice to her,” I say.
The kid is on the verge of tears. “What do you mean?”
This is where things get tricky. I don’t know how much of Marigold’s biography I should reveal. Because the truth is, Marigold was struck with a length of rebar, by a man in Mississippi who purchased her as a hunting hound.
“She was abused,” I say.
The little girl’s face breaks open. The girl presses her nose against Marigold’s dead eyes. She feels the dog’s fractured skull with her hands.
“Oh, sweet baby,” the child says.
That’s when I notice the mottled scars on the child’s neck. They look like major burns. I say…