He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle?English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down. He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, and he is blue when he is clean. Charley is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting. Only once in his ten years has he been in trouble – when he met a dog who refused to negotiate. Charley lost a piece of his right ear that time. But he is a good watch dog – has a roar like a lion, designed to conceal from night-wandering strangers the fact that he couldn't bite his way out of a cornet de papier. He is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine. —Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck Use your own words to describe Charley and explain why you think Steinbeck gives such a detailed description of his dog.