When darkness fell completely, despair and terror seized Kashtanka, and she hid in the doorway of a house and began to cry bitterly.

Whoever thinks that nostalgia, longing, and alienation are feelings limited to human beings is delusional. There is an abundance of feelings in this short novel that makes you stand before it with reverence. The dog “Kashtanka” gets lost from her owner, the furniture maker, and falls into the hands of an animal trainer. He joins her with a cat and a male geese, whom he trains. When the time comes for the show, she hears the voice of the furniture maker’s son. She jumps up and runs towards the sound to find him standing with his father, so she rushes towards him, howling with joy.


This copy of the book is issued and made freely available under a legal agreement between the Hindawi Foundation and the family of Mr. Dr. Abu Bakr Yusuf.

About the author
Anton Chekhov: a doctor and one of the most prominent writers of Russian literature. He was classified among the best writers of his time, especially in writing short stories and plays, in the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The hero in this long story by the genius writer Anton Chekhov is a dog, or a bitch specifically, called “Kashtanka,” or that’s what her owner, the furniture maker “Luke Alexandrich,” called her. One day, she got lost when she was following her owner, and an animal trainer named “George” found her and named her. The name is "Auntie", and she was in the company of a cat named "Fyodor Timofeevich" and a male geese named "Ivan Ivanitch". They were sometimes joined by a pig who had no name, and "George" trained them to earn the money necessary for his living from the shows that the animals presented, and when the time for the show came She was surprised by the presence of her first owner, the furniture maker Luke, and she returned with him to her first home in his house. And about Chekhov’s description of the scene of the dog’s return to its owner, starting from the circus to the last row in which her first owner stands, I will not describe this scene as anything other than that it is infinitely amazing.

Chekhov's method of describing the conditions of animals and his method of psychological analysis of them I cannot describe because of their magnificence that words cannot convey. The laziness of the cat Fyodor, the heresy and philosophizing of the male goose Ivan, the astonishment and curiosity of the dog Kashtanka, or as they called her Auntie, and the love of the sow that has no name, all these conditions are described in an amazing way and in unboring detail, which makes the reader feel as if Chekhov is talking about one of his qualities, not animals. In the part in which Chekhov describes the cat Fyodor Timofeevich, I found it as if he was describing my own situation two months ago. The author says: “As for Fyodor Timofeevich, he was a different type of master. When he woke up, he did not make any sound or move, and he did not even open his eyes. If he had been able to, he would not have moved.” He woke up, because apparently he did not like life. There was nothing that interested him, and he looked at everything with laxity and disdain, despising everything, and even when he ate his delicious food, he blew his nose in disgust.