Essay
Two Limping Dogs and a Small Yard
两条瘸腿的狗和一个小院子
The first one I found at the taxi rank by the filling station, dragging a back leg behind her like something she had stopped expecting to work. She was thin and calm and let me pick her up without a sound. The leg could not be saved. The clinic did it at cost and I took her home the same week, still groggy, in a cardboard box on the passenger seat.
The second came later, from a litter a neighbour could not place. He was the one nobody chose, the runt with a hip that would never sit right, and he had already learned to sit instead of run. People ask why I did not take a healthy one. I have never had a good answer. It is not a policy. It is just who is left in the box.
What a limp costs
Money, first. Even with the staff discount, two dogs with bad legs mean monthly bills I plan around: the joint powder, the anti-inflammatories, the check-ups I do myself at the end of a shift. Then time. A three-legged dog goes down stairs differently, gets through heat differently, takes the whole day more slowly. Nobody warns you that love is largely logistics.
Patience is not a personality. It is a decision you make again every morning.
The neighbours are kind about it and the landlord is not, which is the usual arrangement in this city. There is a wall, a hose, a strip of shade under the pawpaw tree, and no grass to speak of. In the dry months I water that tree more than I water anything else, because its shade is the whole of their afternoon.
Seven in the morning
Before work I do the round: water, food, the older one's leg rubbed down, the younger one's nails, which he hates and I cut anyway. Fifteen minutes if they cooperate, forty if they do not. Then I put on the shirt I can afford to lose and drive to the clinic to hold other people's animals still, glad of the work and glad of the leaving.
Gaborone is growing the way cities do, outward and fast, and every year there are more dogs in yards that were veld a season ago. More people who took a puppy during a good month and did not think about the bad ones. I do not blame them. Mostly they are not cruel, only busy. But busy is enough to keep a dog at the end of a short chain for its whole life.
Nobody in this city is cruel on purpose; most of them are only busy.
My mother says I have no ability to refuse, and she says it the way you deliver a diagnosis. She is not wrong. But a small yard with two limping dogs in it is not a sad place. It is loud at the gate and quiet by seven, and it is the only thing I have built that does not need explaining.
中文译文
第一只是我在加油站旁的小巴站捡到的，一条后腿拖在身后，像一件她早就不指望还能用的东西。她瘦，安静，我抱她起来的时候一声没出。那条腿没能保住。诊所按成本价做了手术，同一个星期我把她带回家，麻药还没全退，装在一只纸箱里，放在副驾驶座上。
第二只来得晚一些，是邻居家一窝送不出去的狗里剩下的。没人挑的那一只，个头最小，髋骨一辈子也长不正，已经学会用坐着代替跑。有人问我为什么不挑一条健康的。这个问题我从来没有好答案。这算不上什么原则，只是箱子里最后剩下的那一个。
一条瘸腿的代价
先是钱。就算有员工折扣，两条腿不好的狗也意味着一串要提前算好的月账：关节粉、消炎药，还有我下班后自己给它做的检查。然后是时间。三条腿的狗下楼梯是另一种下法，过夏天是另一种过法，一整天都比别的狗慢。没有人提醒过你，爱这件事很大程度上是安排杂务。
耐心不是性格。耐心是每天早上重新做一遍的决定。
邻居对这件事很宽容，房东不宽容，在这座城市里这是常规配置。一道墙，一根水管，木瓜树下一小条阴凉，草是几乎没有的。旱季里我给那棵树浇的水比给别的东西都多，因为那片阴凉就是它们整个下午。
早上七点
上班前我先转一圈：换水、喂食，给老的那条揉腿，给小的那条剪指甲——他最恨这个，我还是照剪。它们配合就十五分钟，不配合就四十分钟。然后我换上那件坏了也不心疼的衬衫，开车去诊所，去把别人的动物按稳；我感激这份工作，也感激能下班离开它。
哈博罗内像所有城市那样长，往外长，往快里长，每年都有更多的狗被关进一年前还是荒地的院子里。更多人在日子好的那个月抱回一只小狗，没有想过日子不好的那些月。我不怪他们。多数人不是残忍，只是忙。可光是忙，就足够让一条狗在短链子的尽头过完一辈子。
这座城市里没有人是存心残忍的；多数人只是太忙。
我妈说我这个人没有拒绝的能力，她说这话的语气像在念诊断。她没说错。但一个养着两条瘸腿的狗的小院子并不是个凄凉的地方。门口很吵，到七点就静下来，这是我这辈子造好的唯一一样不需要解释的东西。
