Zorba

I was found on the campus one day in November 2017. I really was as small as a person’s hand and knew nothing of the world. I went from lap to lap, over the moon. I must have got used to it back then, because even when I was the size of a calf I still loved sitting on a lap.

At one point it looked as if I had found a home, but it did not work out, and Haydok took me back under their wing. Eight years — where did they go?

In those eight years I was loved so much, so very much. Like all my friends, people looked me in the eye. Did you never see the lipstick marks on my face, or me sitting in someone’s lap like a baby, or refusing to get out of a car? They say some creatures have the devil’s own charm; that was me.

I was a good dog. I cannot believe any of my dog friends is a bad one — but some can be quicker to anger, and in the end that is why I am no longer with you. Bless them all the same. It is our nature; sometimes you lose to the balance of it.

Haydok is very tired, you know. Every time one of us goes, it opens a wound in all of their hearts. We are the children they found when we were the size of a hand and wrapped in cotton wool, the ones they kept alive for years with more than anyone should have to give — and we are going one by one.

For all the difficulties they meet, all the obstruction, all the breath that smells of death, I know they will never give up on us.

My life turned out to be eight years, and I lived those eight years on this campus so well: I was always a good friend and a good listener, and wild as I was, I knew how to sit quietly when the moment called for it. Friendship mattered to me — protecting my friends, leaving nobody out.

One of the Haydok people said of me: "Zorba became close friends with a dog no other dog would speak to. He did not leave him out."