Invisible Bonds · English edition · Chapter 1

Don't You Dare Leave Me

The true story of Patrizia and Darko, a hundred-pound Alsatian German Shepherd who drinks only from the bidet. Read the first chapter for free.

My name is Patrizia, and this is the story of a bond that, when it began, I had no idea would change my life so much.

Before Darko, I had already known the love of dogs.

In my family there had been Billo. A short-haired German Shepherd, male, good-natured and affectionate with everyone. We got him when he was two months old, and he stayed with us for thirteen years.

Billo didn't live in the house. He had his doghouse next to the front door and slept there, outside. He stood guard. Over the house and over us. It took only a noise, day or night, and Billo would bark. There was no need to ask him for anything: he simply did it, as if that were his job in the family.

He loved everyone. Maybe me a little more, because I was the one who fed him. When we went away, a friend of ours would come to feed him, and he would wait. He didn't have any big quirks, Billo. He was simple. He was good. He was there.

Then one day I noticed something was wrong.

I touched his belly and it was rock hard. It felt like a watermelon. I told my son right away that we had better call the vet.

The vet came in the afternoon. I wasn't there; I was at work. He explained that Billo's stomach had twisted. A torsion, he said, closed off at both ends, like a wrapped candy. They laid him on the garden table, put him under, and tried to save him by inserting a tube to let the gas out.

It didn't take long.

My partner called me. He told me Billo was gone.

I started crying right there, at work.

Before I got home, they had already buried him. I never saw him again. And maybe it was better that way, because I couldn't have handled it.

My children were eleven and sixteen. They were sad; we were all very sad. But there was Jack.

Jack was our West Highland, eighteen pounds of white dog. Cuddly, but with a personality of his own. He didn't want to be touched while he was eating — though, now and then, he would allow it. He and Billo used to play, and when they got carried away we had to separate them, because the difference in size was too great. Jack was also the only one who came on the boat with us, in Greece, where we would stay for months: eighteen pounds of white dog between the sea and the deck, as if he had been born there. After Billo, Jack was the only dog left in the house.

And something was missing in the house.

My children didn't want to suffer again. They wouldn't hear of another dog, and so Jack stayed on his own for a few years. I waited. I didn't want to force anyone.

Then, without anyone needing to be convinced, the moment came.

About ten kilometers from our home, in the Castelli Romani, a family had a litter of Alsatian German Shepherds. There were a dozen of them. The first time, three of us went: me, my son Chicco, and my partner.

The puppies came toward us all at once, the way puppies do. But my eyes kept looking for the same one.

I went back to see them five or six times.

Not because I wasn't sure. I was sure. But I wanted to watch him grow before taking him home. I didn't want to miss anything. Every week he was a little bigger, a little more alert, and I wanted to be there for that too.

To recognize him right away among the others, I had an idea: I had a little red bow put on him. The breeder tied it on while I was there. They were happy about it too: that way nobody would get mixed up.

As soon as I arrived, I looked for that bow.

I would pick him up, hold him to my chest, cover him in kisses, and he would lick me. Of all of them, in my opinion, he was the most beautiful and the strongest. He had a dark coat. From "dark" came his name, made a little more mine, a little more Italian: Darko.

Maybe I had already chosen before I even admitted it.

It was March. Darko was two months old.

When the day finally came to bring him home, I wasn't simply getting a dog. I was opening the door to someone who, from that moment on, would begin to fill every space of my daily life.

And if today I could go back to that Patrizia holding the puppy with the red bow in her arms, maybe I would only tell her:

"Don't you dare leave me."

Because that is what, over time, Darko has become for me: a presence I would never want to be parted from.

*And you?*

Stop for a moment before going on. These questions are for you — and for your dog.

- How did you choose your dog? Or was it your dog who chose you?

- Was there a dog before this one in your life? What did that dog leave you?

- What was the moment you knew this was the right one?

_You can write your answers in the Notebook, at the back of the book._