The day we arrived, JP and I walked two miles into town from the farmhouse I was sharing with other writers for the week. We’d lost his collar and leash—things whose purpose he has never understood—and I was convinced he’d hidden them again. I stuck to the edge of the road, while JP trotted a safe distance several yards to my right, inside the Tuscan sun-drenched fields and olive groves, marking more than a few of the latter’s prized perennials, oblivious both to the frowns of the occasional farmer and to my disingenuous scolding.

*     *     *

“Nessun cane al Palio!  No dogs at the Palio!” a 20-something policewoman called out as she floated across the warm sea of red brick and terracotta of the Piazza del Campo, a notebook in her outstretched hand. I told her that my cane and I would steer clear of Siena’s annual horserace the following week. She looked at me incredulously—it was incomprehensible that I would come to Siena and not attend the Palio. JP rubbed up against her flirtatiously, leaving her navy trousers covered in tiny white hairs. She looked at him quizzically. “Bello,” she decided after a long moment. She turned to me. “He need a string.”

I explained that I didn’t have a leash and would take him home. “Come on, JP.”

“No.” she said firmly. “No string, no walk here. What if he see a cat?”

“He likes cats,” I protested.

“I like more,” she said. “I have many.” With a cold look she challenged me to come up with a solution. I looked around the fan-shaped, sloping square, at the gothic Palazzo Pubblico with its battlements and turrets … the 15th-century Fonte Gaie fountain with its gargoyle spouts … medieval apartment buildings with their archways and passages … the outdoor cafés and restaurants. There was a lot more for JP to sniff out than cats, and plenty of places for them to run and hide.

“Aspetti un secondo.” The policewoman held up her finger as if genius had struck, and then walked over to a man selling newspapers. The man shook his head and the two mock-argued in heated Italian until the man’s objections subsided and he begrudgingly untied a bale of newspapers and handed her the very thin twine that had bound them. He looked over at us, stifled a laugh and admitted: “Buona idea.”

JP didn’t think so. When I leaned down with the string, he hid behind the policewoman. “Look, he’s a good dog,” I appealed. “This might work for a Poodle, but a Dalmatian will break it.”

“If he so good, why he break?” she demanded, taking the string from me. She expertly made nooses at either end and slipped one over JP’s suddenly obliging neck and the other around my wrist … just as a succession of miniature three-wheeled trucks the size of golf carts arrived onto the piazza, each followed by a man with a shovel who began to sling soil at our feet. When a batch hit JP’s paws, he bolted, dragging me with him. The policewoman waved a finger at us as we ran: “Remember! Nessun cane al Palio!”

*     *     *

The Sienese, amused by a man being walked by a 60-pound dog on a fraction-of-an-ounce corda, laughed and saluted us as we made our way up and down the winding, cobbled streets—all of which continually led us back to the mound of dirt the Piazza del Campo had become … and the steely eyes of the policewoman.

*     *     *

The following day, bored to distraction by a riveting but lengthy lecture on the basics of nonfiction, JP bobbed his nose into my backpack, pulled out his string and held it between his teeth. He was already at the door when the cry came from the street: “Cavallo da corsa!” I swung the doors open onto the Via Rinaldini just as a riderless, wide-eyed stallion galloped by, a bright red banner bearing the design of a dragon streaming behind him. Possibly due to genetic memory from the days Dalmatians accompanied Europe’s horse-drawn carriages—or perhaps simply because my sister has an Arabian and we visit them often—JP has always had an affinity with horses, and he was instantly in pursuit. As were, a few too many seconds later, a frantic jockey and an ancient, panting priest.

Horse and dog turned a sharp corner behind the imposing stone façade of the Palazzo Piccolomini, and we lost sight of them. We followed their trail down an alley so narrow I thought it impossible that a horse could squeeze through, and in fact, not all of him had: Lying on the ground by a crumbling wall was a halter, bloodied and matted with the steed’s dark brown hair, and the banner, torn and soiled. The jockey picked up what was left of the dragon. He sobbed that he would be shamed and his contrada, his city district,  would have no chance of winning the race without Giorgio, his equestrian marvel. The priest tried to console the man, confessing that it was his fault: While blessing Giorgio for the first day of trials for the Palio, the priest had slipped, splashing an entire chalice of holy water into the horse’s eyes and startling him into flight.

*     *     *

Several police officers joined the chase, one of whom being, as fate would have it, our dog-wary policewoman. “Piazza del Duomo!” she called out as they ran past us.

“What’s the use?” the jockey moaned. “He won’t stay there for long.”

*     *     *

Actually, Giorgio was there—drinking calmly from the blue waters of the Fontana dell’Aquila. Anxious tourists kept their distance as JP licked clean a gouge in the horse’s front leg. As I observed the dog I had taken during his seventh week in this world as a tiny scrap of life, the dog I had grown to love as a father might a son, the dog I had proudly taught to be humanlike, I was humbled by how little I understood of the universal language of beasts … and by how much of it JP still remembered.

“No. La corda,” the policewoman said when the jockey tried in vain to reattach Giorgio’s torn harness. She took JP’s string, which was lying by the fountain, and gently tied it around Giorgio’s impressive neck, caressing him. “This is good,” she said. She held out the end of the string—scarcely a foot of it for the bewildered jockey to grasp—and the horse obediently sidled up next to them.

“What about my dog?” I asked the policewoman, half-jokingly, as horse and jockey walked away. She looked down at JP who was sitting by my side, almost human once again, looking appropriately guilty for his good deed.

“Non é necessario,” said the lover of cats, herself with a new understanding of dogs. “I am Agente Stefanelli,” she smiled.

*     *     *

The Piazza del Campo was sealed off by late afternoon of the day of the official horserace. From that point onward, the civilized city of Siena became practically feudal; citizens of its 17 contrada symbolized by such animals as geese, eagles and giraffes, were now fierce rivals, fanatical about their districts’ horses winning the race. Although Giorgio was recovering, he had not made the finals and would not represent his jockey’s contrada this year.

*     *     *

“Vai e torna vincitore. Go and return a winner,” the priest said to the horse standing at his altar. Incredibly the horse nodded in what seemed like self-assured acknowledgement. Luca di Luca was a fine specimen from Tartuca, the Tortoise District, which was Agente Stefanelli’s contrada. JP’s latest conquest had decided that dogs could attend the Palio after all, no strings attached. JP and I followed her and her husband, and Luca and his jockey, out of the church.

In the Stefanelli family box—a terrace overlooking the piazza—JP sat patiently through the hours of medieval pageantry of floats, concerts and drumming that preceded the 90-second race. When the rope finally fell, the roar of the crowd was deafening and JP hid under my legs. People cheered and sang when their banner-sporting horses flew by, while their neighbors booed and hissed. When it was over, Agente Stefanelli jumped out of her seat, screamed and hugged JP. “Grazie! What luck you bring!”

“But Luca di Luca came in last,” I said and looked at her husband who seemed to be on the verge of tears.

“Oh!” she scoffed. “I wasn’t born Tartuca! I married one! I am Istrice! A porcupine!” We won!  Grazie al cane al Palio!”

 

 

"The New Yorker of dog magazines." —Time Magazine
"The coolest dog magazine ever." —Esquire Magazine
"The must-read magazine for mutt lovers!" —O, The Oprah Magazine