The first thing I saw was its snout.
A small black triangle emerged from the brownish water for a second, disappeared, then reappeared.
I almost continued on my way.
The noise coming from the drainpipe was too faint to be a bark. It sounded more like a muffled cough, followed by a splash, then a silence so long I thought I’d imagined it all.
I stopped the municipal van anyway.
My name is Marco Bellini. I was fifty-two years old and, that morning, I was inspecting the damage caused by three days of rain in the countryside around Ravenna.
I had been doing this job for almost thirty years.
Fallen trees, blocked ditches, damaged manholes, country roads turned into mud pits: I thought I’d seen a bit of everything.
I was wrong.
A barely visible snout in the canal.
I went down along the bank with a flashlight in my hand.
The canal ran behind old sheds, hidden from the road by tall reeds and a rusty wire fence. The water carried away branches, bottles, plastic crates and clumps of grass.
Then I saw that snout again.
And I finally understood.
It was a female dog.
She had brindle fur, a white chest, one folded ear and two large brown eyes so wide open that I can still see them today.
His body was almost entirely underwater.
Its four legs were tied together with a yellow rope.
She could neither swim, nor gain a foothold, nor free herself.
All she could do was crane her neck to try and breathe.
Someone had tied her up before throwing her there, letting the current do the rest.
I took out my phone and called emergency services.
Then she disappeared.
One second. Two. Three.
No more snout.
No more looking.
Only water.
I put my phone back in my pocket and went down into the canal.
I didn’t think about it.
If I had done that, I probably would have stayed on the shore.
The water reached my knees, then my thighs. The cold seeped through my trousers to the bone.
And with this cold weather came back a voice I hadn’t heard for thirty-seven years.
My brother Paolo’s.
A thirty-seven-year-old trauma.
I was fifteen years old when he drowned one summer day by a river.
Paolo had twelve.
The adults were running.
My mother was screaming.
I, however, remained motionless on the riverbank.
I hadn’t gone into the water.
I hadn’t been able to do that.
From that day on, I never swam again.
I had avoided swimming pools, boats, trips to the lake, and even seaside holidays when my daughter was little.
For years, I had simply stated that I didn’t like water.
The truth was different.
I was afraid the water would remember me.
But the dog still didn’t come back up.
So I moved forward.
The mud held my shoes. A submerged branch hit my knee. Near the concrete pipe, the current became stronger and pushed me sideways.
I stretched out my arm.
My fingers touched something soft.
Hair.
I grabbed the dog under the chest and pulled.
His head came out of the water.
She coughed against my sleeve.
When she opened her eyes, she didn’t even try to bite me.
She no longer had the strength.
« I’m here, » I told him.
I don’t really know why.
Perhaps I was saying that to myself too.
I took the small knife attached to my belt and began to cut the rope.
It was wrapped around his paws several times and was so tight that it had cut into his skin.
My hands were trembling.
The blade slipped.
The current once again pulled its snout towards the water.
I lifted it higher.
« Stay with me. »
She rested her muzzle against my forearm.
Not because she trusted me.
At that moment, my arm was simply the only thing between her and the bottom.
The first part of the rope broke.
Then the second one.
When the last knot came undone, its legs finally separated.
But she didn’t swim.
She was too exhausted.
I pulled her towards the riverbank.
I fell once, then a second time.
With each fall, my first reflex was to keep my head above water before trying to get up.
A truck driver who had noticed my van parked pulled over and ran towards us.
His name was Enzo. He was a sturdy man in his sixties, with white hair and hands marked by work.
He grabbed me by the jacket.
Together, we managed to get the dog back onto the grass.
I took off my jacket and wrapped him in it.
« Breathe, my dear, » Enzo kept repeating.
Meanwhile, I was massaging his chest.
The dog opened her eyes.
She raised her head a few centimeters.
Then she licked my joints.
Only once.
Slowly.
That simple contact hurt me more than a punch.
A human being had tied her up.
A human being had thrown it away as if it were worthless.
And when the first hand came back to her, this dog did not respond with anger.
She had offered her trust.
A long night at the veterinary clinic.
At the clinic, we were warned that it would be a long night.
She had inhaled water, was suffering from hypothermia, and her paws were covered in injuries.
The veterinarian, Dr. Elena, explained to me that we had to wait.
I stayed.
At 3:40 a.m., when the corridor was silent and the coffee machine was making an infernal noise, the dog woke up.
She brought her muzzle close to the glass of her stall.
I placed my hand on the other side.
Then I thought of a name.
When we were children, my mother always used to say:
« A grace is not something one deserves. It is something that happens when one thought one had lost everything. »
I named her Grazia.
Grazia survived.
And that’s when the hardest part began.
Because saving someone from water can take only a few minutes.
Convincing him that the water won’t come back for him could take years.
Grazia stayed at the clinic for nine days.
I used to go there before going to work, then I would come back in the evening.
On the first day, she looked at me without moving.
The second one, its tail slipped once on the blanket.
The fourth time, she tried to get up when I came in.
Its legs gave way.
She looked at me with an almost ashamed expression.
I sat down on the ground.
« You have nothing to prove. »
Grazia crawled up to the gate and rested her head against the metal.
The truth about her abandonment:
Meanwhile, law enforcement discovered where she came from.
A private camera installed along the road had filmed an old van.
Its owner was a local man named Stefano, aged forty-four.
Grazia wasn’t actually his dog.
It belonged to his former partner, Laura.
When Laura saw the information about Grazia’s discovery, she immediately called.
A few weeks earlier, she had left home after a relationship that had become burdensome and marked by threats.
She had wanted to take Grazia with her.
Stefano had assured him that the dog had been entrusted to acquaintances.
That was wrong.
According to the evidence that emerged during the investigation, he had kept it hidden to make Laura suffer.
When she refused to come back, he used Grazia to get revenge.
This discovery filled me with anger.
But this anger was of no use to Grazia.
Laura came to the clinic.
The dog recognized her voice even before she entered the room.
She tried to get up.
This time, she remained standing for a few seconds.
Laura got down on her knees.
Grazia stumbled towards her.
When she finally reached it, she buried her muzzle against its chest.
Laura started to cry.
« I thought you were safe. »
I didn’t judge her.
It is easy to judge from your kitchen table, after Sunday lunch, with a cup of coffee in front of you, when other people’s lives can be summed up in three sentences.
When I told the story to my sister, she immediately asked:
« How can you leave without your dog? »
My mother, who was eighty years old at the time, remained silent.
Then she put down her spoon.
« We do it when we’re so afraid that we don’t even know what we’re still capable of saving. »
No one added anything.
Grazia arrives at Marco’s.
Laura would have liked to take over Grazia.
But she was living in temporary accommodation where animals were not allowed and was working at two different places.
« I don’t want to move it yet, » she told me.
Both of her hands were resting on Grazia’s brindle coat.
Then she looked at me.
« Can she stay with you? »
I hadn’t had a dog since my teenage years.
I lived alone in a modest house on the outskirts of town, with a half-abandoned vegetable garden, a fence to repair, and an old above-ground pool left by the previous owners.
My daughter Chiara lived in Bologna.
My work often kept me away from home.
There were people more experienced than me.
Foster families.
Volunteers.
People who didn’t feel their heart stop when passing by a canal.
Dr. Elena then asked me a question:
« Do you want Grazia, or do you want to continue seeing yourself as the one who saved her? »
That sentence made me angry.
Then I understood why she had asked me.
A rescue operation always comes to an end eventually.
The dog, however, stays.
There are still the medications left.
Fears.
Difficult nights.
Expenses.
The carpets are dirty.
And all those ordinary days when no one applauds you, but you still have to be there.
I looked at Grazia.
She stared at the door.
She had started doing this every morning shortly before my arrival.
« I want her. »
Three days later, I brought her home.
It had rained.
There was a puddle about fifty centimeters wide in the alley.
Grazia has stopped.
His body lowered.
His ears folded back.
His breathing quickened.
She tried to back away.
I went around the puddle.
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