Madame Cohen

  • Author, France

Like mas­ter, like dog”

Ipassed him, For the first time, At a bend in the track, Amidst the under­growth, Tram­pling with huge strides, Over the ground, Cov­ered with, Golden brown leaves. That now was … A good few years ago! “Oh what a crea­ture!” I exclaimed to myself pri­vately… He cut such a dash! A face del­i­cately chis­elled, clean lines, long neck, slen­der of bear­ing, rib cage slightly flat but a good size, ele­gant of stature, bal­anced pro­por­tions – fus­ing together to give this indi­vid­ual an over­all har­mony. Nut brown eyes with a lively expres­sion, mis­chie­vous and friendly, a sud­den smile that revealed strong and healthy teeth all height­ened my shock at meet­ing such an Apollo in this neigh­bour­hood. We merely exchanged glances, and we each con­tin­ued on our way.

After that, I would see him from afar mak­ing his way, with his char­ac­ter­is­tic style, along the banks of the Can­che over by the groins; I respected his reserve and kept a cau­tious dis­tance. Then over the years, and after he had moved away from this area, I had occa­sion to know him bet­ter. I dis­cov­ered that behind the physique of this young lion were hid­den numer­ous qual­i­ties: kind­ness, vivac­ity, curios­ity, loy­alty, capped by a resound­ing appetite for life… in fact, just by an appetite! All this bestowed him with a remark­able equi­lib­rium, both men­tal and phys­i­cal, even though, I learned over fire­side chats, that it hadn’t always been the same.
What of his deport­ment amongst his fel­lows? He is con­ge­nial, con­vivial with his friends, loves end­less walks in the woods or by the sea. Some­times he is a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, nois­ily remon­strat­ing in order to gain atten­tion – it is his rather mul­ish side – but then a minute, an hour, a day later, he will make him­self small, hum­ble, quiet and atten­tive to oth­ers. But… look out! One of his looks can also give the out­sider who has over­stepped the mark cause to trem­ble.
W What more can be said about him? I could describe his rump, well-​muscled, his rec­tan­gu­lar muz­zle, but that’s not what is impor­tant. What? But, you’ve mis­un­der­stood. I was talk­ing of course about Sam­son, the Ger­man Mas­tiff, the Olympic Apollo of dogs, faith­ful com­pan­ion, lov­able … just like Robin, Grisbi, Elvis and, like all those around Alain, given their free­dom. This is why the say­ing goes… “Like dog, like mas­ter” If there are other char­ac­ter traits that can be added to the descrip­tion of the human being out­lined here — Mr Godon — two are incon­tro­vert­ible and insep­a­ra­ble: his gen­eros­ity and his approach­a­bil­ity.
If we are look­ing for defects, then I am sorry … I would need time to look harder ………..

Danièle Cohen