71. Boyhood

"His mother decides that she wants a dog.  Alsations are the best--the most intelligent, the most faithful--but they cannot find an Alsatian for sale.  So they settle for a pup half doberman, half something else.  He insists on being the one to name it.  He would like to call it Borzoi because he wants it to be a Russian dog, but since it is not in fact a borzoi he calls it Cossack.  No one understands.  People think the name is kos-sak, food-bag, which they find funny.

Cossack turns out to be a confused, undisciplined dog, roaming about the neighbourhood, trampling gardens, chasing chickens.  One day the dog follows him all the way to school.  Nothing he does will put him off: when he shouts and throws stones the dog drops his ears, puts his tail between his legs, slinks away; but as soon as he gets back on his bicycle the dog lopes after him again.  In the end he has to drag him home by the collar, pushing his bicycle with the other hand.  He gets home in a rage and refuses to go back to school, since he is late.

Cossack is not quite full grown when he eats the ground glass someone has put out for him.  His mother administers enemas, trying to flush out the glass, but without success.  On the third day, when the dog just lies still, panting, and will not even lick her hand, she sends him to the pharmacy to fetch a new medicine someone has recommended.  He races there and races back, but he comes too late.  His mother's face is drawn and remote, she will not even take the bottle from his hands.

He helps to bury Cossack, wrapped in a blanket, in the clay at the bottom of the garden.  Over the grave he erects a cross with the name 'Cossack' painted on it.  He does not want them to have another dog, not if this is how they must die."  (J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, p. 49-50)