Otherwise Known As
Canine Friendly Part Two
Dedicated To Liz Morris, my cousin
Once upon a time there was a dog named Canine Friendly, whom you may have met in these stories once before. He lived in Venice, and at the time of this story was a guide dog for the blind. His master was a kind young man named Signor Svizzera who was a journalist and recorded reviews of plays he'd attended for the newspaper.
Signor Svizzera was helped a great deal by Canine Friendly who kept him from falling into canals or walking into walls, since Signor Svizzera was a blind man. Signor Svizzera was in turn very kind to Canine Friendly and took good care of him.
Signor Svizzera had a birthday and Canine Friendly wanted to give him a present. Signor Svizzera danced when he got out of bed that morning because if there was one thing he liked, it was birthdays. He gave Canine Friendly his breakfast, which the dog happily ate. They went for a stroll in the sunshine on the Piazza.
"Here's a hat shop!" thought Canine Friendly, looking at the hats in the window. "Let's go in!"
He led Signor Svizzera into the shop and he and his master sat down while the owner showed them all kinds of hats. Because Signor Svizzera couldn't see them, he held the hats in his hands and felt them while the owner of the store described the colour of them to him. He tried some of them on, and finally decided on a Tyrolean one, made of green felt with a feather sticking out of the band.
"I'll take that one, please," he said to the owner cheerily.
Canine Friendly obviously couldn't pay for it, being a dog (and dogs don't have money, you know) so Signor Svizzera took out his wallet and paid for his own present, said thank you to the owner of the shop and to the dog and took the hat home. Well, he did look quite stunning.
But that's not the end of the story! The two of them were going out that day to buy a sandwich, made of mozzarella cheese, mortadella ham and a kaiser bun (I know that, because I've eaten it there) at the market when just after lunch, a gust of wind blew Signor Svizzera's hat clean off. Alas, it fell into a canal and got quite wet until Canine Friendly left his master standing at the side of the canal, jumped in and saved the dripping hat. Unfortunately, the hat no longer held its shape, but they took it back to the hat shop. There the owner reshaped it for them. Finally, Signor Svizzera took his reshaped hat and put it on again. And after that, whenever a gust of wind came whistling down the street, he held it firmly in place. He didn't want it to fall in the canal again.
THE END.
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