galerija/zgodba-memorial-gift-for-a-dog.jpg
Bor came to us in a cardboard box in 2012 and left in his sleep this spring, and in between he was there for absolutely everything that happened to us.
He was there for two house moves, one of which he clearly did not approve of, and he sulked in the hallway for a week to make sure we knew. He was there when Zala was born and then guarded her from the postman for eleven years, which the postman found less charming than we did. And he was there through one winter that we do not talk about much, when he slept on the landing between the two bedrooms instead of on his own bed, and none of us ever asked him to.
When we ordered the picture the only thing we agreed on straight away was that it must not be sad. We wanted him in the middle, alive, with everything he ever walked through arranged around him.
So that is what it is.
He is standing on the flatbed of an old blue truck, looking straight out, with the ear that never quite went up doing what it always did. Around him is every place he ever went. Both homes, the small flat and the one by the river. The river path he walked every single morning for fourteen years in every kind of weather. The beach on Rab where he swam exactly once and hated it, which is still the photograph everyone laughs at. The vet's door, which he could recognise from the corner and would slow down for.
His collar hangs on a hook by the cab and the first two collars hang next to it, smaller.
The number plate is the day he arrived. There is no second date anywhere on the picture and that was our decision, not theirs.
On the side of the truck, in Zala's handwriting because it is Zala's sentence: He was there for all of it.
The tennis ball is under the front wheel, which is where he always left it, usually somewhere someone would trip over it.