Carlitos, Rosie’s whippet younger brother, wasn’t a dragon, a greyhound, or missing a leg, but this didn’t prevent him from having an imagination of his own.
This is the second part of Rosie’s latest adventure. You can catch up on the first part here, or enjoy another of her adventures here and here.
Carlitos wasn’t a dragon, a greyhound, or missing a leg, but this didn’t prevent him from having an imagination of his own. If his older sister could proclaim herself a three-legged mythical monster and the queen of their vast territory, he could certainly believe he was either a spy, a cartoon character, and a comic book hero if he wanted. While some might suggest this was evidence of a sort of canine multiple personality disorder, perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on little Carlitos. After all, he was born in China, raced at an underground circuit to far less fanfare than his older sister, somehow got a Spanish name at some point, though the origin remains unclear, and was supposed to be sold into the meat trade before being rescued and shipped to America complete with a little doggie passport. Can we blame him for believing he’s some kind of undercover agent, even as we don’t know whether he’s working for the Chinese Communist Party, the United States, or the Mexican government? The other two aspects of his personality are based on indelible physical traits, namely a coat that looks like a super hero suit complete with sleeves and a cape, and a lack of an ability to understand either momentum or friction at even the doggiest of levels. As a result, he was always in costume and as he sped around the house, was always either scrambling his little legs to speed up or skidding to slow down, the same as one would expect from a super hero and a cartoon character rolled into one. There was, however, one final facet of his character that Carlitos himself wasn’t aware of. Hidden deep down inside his little doggie brain and body, he also had the potential to be an opera singer. Sometimes, he would climb up on mommy and daddy’s bed in the morning to sing them awake, making the strangest sounds anyone has ever heard coming from a canine, from highs to lows, tenor to soprano, belting out a melody to start their day as he managed to get the equivalent of a zoomies in a space measuring just a few feet.
Normally, these various and at times competing aspects of his personality didn’t bother Carlitos. Being a dog, he didn’t think too much about what he was from one moment to the next. Instead, he preferred to simply be whatever suited him best in the present, rather than worrying what he was a moment before or might be a moment after, assuming he could remember it anyway when he would deny being any opera singer, vehemently for whatever reason. Rosie the Three-legged Dragon’s nightly patrols, however, presented a unique problem in this regard. Though his older sister thought she was a dragon, she was altogether doglike in her approach to maintaining the integrity of her territory – to be accurate, their territory because Carlitos most certainly didn’t acknowledge her queen despite her protestations. While no one referred to him as a prince, he adhered to the old adage about homes and castles. Either way, Rosie didn’t fly, didn’t breathe fire, didn’t do anything that dragons do, at least to the limited extent Carlitos knew anything at all about dragons, which wasn’t much. At the same time, he did know that across at least two continents, dogs in particular did an awful lot of sniffing, peeing, and pooping on patrol, both monitoring and marking their territory, driven by instincts honed since they were wolves that they couldn’t possibly understand. While Carlitos wasn’t above sniffing a little dung and occasionally taking a lick or even a bite, he found it altogether disgusting and unnerving most of the time. After all, they had human servants to make sure their territories were protected. Why were all these weird, antiquated bodily functions necessary any longer? It certainly couldn’t be that Carlitos himself had a bizarre habit for a male dog and didn’t raise his leg when he peed, making him embarrassed to do so in public unless absolutely necessary. Instead, it could only be that the entire process was vaguely disgusting and should be related to the dustbin of history as they say.
Of course, this didn’t mean Carlitos didn’t enjoy it on some level. As a spy, a comic book character, and a cartoon, he liked to be out and about, showing himself, or at least one of his many disguises to the world, and he generally enjoyed walking. Frequently, one of the human servants would take him on his own, far beyond the regular bounds of the territory, where humans and their strange vehicles roamed, and his older sister almost never went. In fact, he’d developed a certain walk he thought was rather unique, where he would tuck his butt in, holding his rear and his head high, as if to say look at me, I’m special, though not in the way you think when I am spying on you rather than you spying on me. In that regard, he fancied himself like James Bond, Litos, Carl Litos, Double “O” Canine because the more famous secret agent generally peacocked about, made his presence known to all, carrying on as though he owned the place, hoping to keep the bad guys off guard, pushing them towards some kind of critical mistake. If it worked for the British super spy, it should work for the Chinese-Mexican double agent, and so Carlitos viewed these patrols as a chance to strut around the neighborhood while he left the doggie stuff to his older sister who thought she was a dragon and if that failed, to the human servants.
At the same time, Carlitos was well aware this approach frustrated if not outright angered his older sister. From the second they exited the lair, Rosie would insist on racing off with daddy, practically dragging the poor guy across the open plain, flopping and futzing around, making it a miracle he didn’t fall over and crack his head open or at least break a couple of bones, once or twice he almost did, trying to run so fast he lost his shoes. What was she trying to prove, that dogs can run faster than humans? Carlitos preferred a more parade-like approach, suitable for a civilized creature. As such, he refused to race across the open field, and instead practically waltzed down the paved driveway, butt properly tucked in and keeping the optimal distance on the leash with his human servant. Even this early in the patrol, Rosie would start giving him the evil eye, however, looking back at him, impatiently waiting for everyone to catch up, but what did she do once they did so? Immediately commenced sniffing and urinating all over the place, as though she was planning to repel an invasion of something, perhaps everything. Carlitos was well aware that there were other creatures traipsing all over the territory and he was not averse to chasing the occasional deer, squirrel, or rabbit – at times taking off fast enough to almost yank mommy’s arm off, an embarrassing admission – but he, as an intelligent, cultured canine, understood on some level that there was nothing to be done about it. Perhaps as a result of his longer walks and previous travels, he knew world was big and filled with all sorts of creatures both pathetic and frightening, too big to put a wall around and too many to track them all. While Carlitos wouldn’t go so far as to suggest the presence of some of these creatures didn’t bother him, he refused to let them dictate his behavior. Rather than the serious business Rosie thought she was undertaking, he tried to make it fun, a little game they played as a pack, or a family in human terms.
Regardless, it was impossible to have all that much fun when your sister regularly took off into a neighbor’s yard to track down a bear that wasn’t even there anymore, might not have been there since the day before or even earlier, pulling daddy along with her, only to take a huge crap right outside their window. The way the poor man just stood there, an embarrassed, almost fearful look on his face, wondering how he might explain what his three legged greyhound – not that Carlitos properly acknowledged this aspect of her physiognomy – was doing in the middle of their yard. Daddy was known to be a little crazy – any human that would try to keep pace with a greyhound had to be nuts – but no one was that crazy and all little Carlitos could do was wait, hang his head in shame, tuck his tail between his legs at his sister’s behavior. Of course, this didn’t mean Carlitos didn’t do any pooping or peeing of his own on these patrols. He most certainly partook of the opportunity to relieve himself in the freedom of the open air, outside the fenced in area accessible through the little doggie door he normally relied upon. The difference was in the overall approach and location. While Rosie insisted on sniffing around like some crazed lunatic of a dog, searching for evidence of bygone bears, rabbits, and who knew what else, Carlitos simply strutted up to spot and did his business, no muss, no fuss, no chance of getting caught in the act and potentially exposed a spy, a cartoon character, or a superhero.
Normally, this routine would repeat itself over about two hundred yards as they circled the edge of the territory with Rosie the Three-legged Dragon occasionally making a foray into the woods beyond. Though she refused to admit it and did everything to deny it, once they started making their way back to the lair, Rosie usually started to get tired, causing her antics to slow down in some ways and speed up in others. She began panting almost uncontrollably, that long greyhound tongue practically serving as a fourth leg, almost touching the ground. She stopped trying to run, and started doing that strange, three-legged hop, as though she was a 1980s breakdancer doing the worm on a barely balanced tripod of stilts, not that Carlitos knew what that was. Unfortunately, for Carlitos this meant she covered less ground, no longer leading daddy onward with a trot, and did more sniffing and peeing. As a result, his parade march was reduced to a barely a saunter, as though he was crawling along, desperate to get on with it. The two would soon change positions, putting Carlitos and his human servant in the lead and leaving daddy and Rosie in the rear. In the best of circumstances, this prompted Carlitos’ more dog-like instincts to take over, and against his will, he frequently found himself reduced to sniffing and peeing almost as much as Rosie the Three-legged Dragon herself.
Perhaps needless to say, Rosie wasn’t pleased at being behind or watching her duties being taken over by her younger, presumably untrustworthy brother. In turn, she would follow up behind Carlito’s markings, and leave some of her own, as if she could erase his presence with a little pee or in some bizarre way, she was attempting to cover his tracks. For mommy and daddy, this resulted in no shortage of confusion, one leash going under the other, one dog going around the other, until they could’ve been performing some sort of strange waltz or synchronized acrobatic routine. Unfortunately for daddy, he wasn’t very graceful. While both Rosie and Carlitos agreed mommy was the most beautiful woman in the world, albeit for slightly different reasons – Rosie felt she was a supermodel like she was, Carlitos figured she was the equivalent of a Bond girl – they both agreed daddy was clumsy, barely able to avoid tripping over his own two feet, and it seems reasonably to assume that at least some aspect of this back and forth with the leashes entertained them on some level. This did not make it anything less than a festival of pee, a little poop, and a lot of tied up leashes rather than a proper patrol and to a large extent Carlitos, not believing patrols were necessary any longer, was fine with that, even enjoying it to some extent when he allowed the doggie side of himself to take over, except when something unexpected happened.
That particular evening, a wind arose out of nowhere at the furthest point from the lair, bringing with it a strange new scent while they were as far from home as Rosie normally goes. The wind alone would’ve been at least somewhat surprising, strong enough to rustle the grass, kick up exposed dirt, toss around a few pebbles on the street, and shake the leaves on their trees, as though a squall was blowing through, except there was no rain or snow. It didn’t last long, but the temperature seemed to drop and everyone, dog and human, froze in place for a moment, like the unexpected wind had stopped them dead in their tracks, making them entirely forget what business they were about. The scent, however, was by far the most striking thing, at least to the canines involved. While breezes tended to carry smells from far and wide, bringing with them tales of creatures that lived and hunted well beyond their territory, so far removed they were no threat, there was something different this time. The scent itself was stronger, as though the wind’s entire purpose was to carry it to Rosie and Carlitos. It was also richer; rather than faint traces of dozens of creatures, as was frequently the case, there was predominantly one and one alone, or at least one so much stronger than the others, they seemed of no importance. Equally strange, as strong as the scent was, there was no clue from where it originated. It could’ve been anywhere and nowhere, everywhere and no place at all at the same time. It simply was, and yet it was also completely out place, familiar but unexpected.
In that regard, there was something of the canine to it, a familial resemblance and also something entirely different. It was a smell Carlitos had encountered before, but usually at a much greater distance, or at least much fainter, like it only existed as a ghost, not a creature they would actually encounter in real life. To be certain, this did not imply the creature was large or frightening, merely mysterious and reclusive, the sort of thing that was out there, even as you rarely saw it, preferring to hide in the woods beyond where humans and dogs lived. For their part, the human servants were to Rosie’s knowledge generally intrigued by these creatures, believing them to be both clever and sleek, ascribing to them almost mystical powers of deceit and trickery, calling them sly for well-founded reasons. On the rare occasion one is observed, even more rarely for more than a split second, humans tended to marvel at the appearance, believing it at times a good omen or bad. In some ways, canines and dragons probably thought the same, like some distant relative respected and revered because they were rarely seen. This was different, however. The distant relative was now exceedingly close and in some numbers; not everywhere and nowhere on second sniff, but right there. The unseen remained unseen for now, but was just as unmistakably present. Though neither Rosie and Carlitos knew where, something had taken up residence right in the equivalent of their backyard, something known to be notoriously fickle and hard to predict: A fox, or rather an entire family of them, a mother and at least three pups, had apparently decided to move in. The only question was what Rosie and Carlitos would or even could do about it.
TO BE CONTINUED…
You can catch enjoy another of her adventures here and here while you wait for the next installment.
