travels with my niece

since my sister is spending her vacations in india, i, together with my parents, have been tasked with looking after my niece. she's a hairy lesbian from sweden and is currently going through a phase of teenage rebellion. walking around town with her inevitably draws attention from people, especially women. they look at my niece and then at me, with a warm and fuzzy glow in their eyes. complete strangers stop to talk to us, asking all sorts of questions and giving unasked for tips as to what i should feed her, whether she's a half-breed, why i have her on the leash, etc. (to avoid any undue confusion i should perhaps add here for those of you who do not know it already that my niece feliz is a fuzzy little dog who's way too cute for her own good).

some people claim that people over here are kinder to dogs than to children. my experiences with feliz tend to support that claim. a case in point was when i went hiking with her and my sister in the alps a few months back. we had forgotten to take a waterbowl for feliz along and stopped at the souvenir store of a bavarian monastery to buy a bowl. the saleslady, an antediluvian crank, was shouting in a gravelly voice at the children not to touch anything, to keep their dirty fingers away, to shut up, and so on. when it was my turn, she barked a "so what do you want?" in my general direction. i said that i was looking for a water bowl for my dog, her scowl became a smile, her eyes lit up and her voice became soft and sweet as she started asking me about my dog and waxing lyrical about her own dogs. in between, she'd revert back to her gruff command voice to curse any and all children that dared enter the shop. she even offered to give me a bowl for free if she could find a suitable plastic one, but unfortunately they were out of stock.

in the end i settled then for a kitschy cup with an alpine motive even though the iconoclast in me was egging me on to buy the dog a water bowl with a picture of the pope on it...