Dog

Wednesday May 29, 2013

Dog, present-day

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purebred gray and white pit bull, 9 kg
I whined, screamed, thrashed when I realized my mother was not with me. The crate toppled to the side and hurt exploded from my body, but I ignored it. My mother. Gone. That was much more important than anything that would go away, like hurt. My mother was gone forever.

I resented this Joclyn Human even more, for separating my family. She didn’t care about us anyway; and I didn’t care to leave my Humans. Only that food would be gone.

I had never been separated before, not from my mother. I was always with her. It was strange. I screamed and howled with my brothers and sisters, wondering where she went. Joclyn yelled at us, but I was used to it so I ignored the Human. I expected the beating and the hurt that accompanied yelling, but to my surprise there was none. It made me howl all the more.

My heart was broken. It was crushed. The only prized possession in my life, my mother, had been taken away from me. I depended on her all my life. She was my only comfort, my only role model. I had never met my father. I knew there was another part of me that was my father’s blood, but at that moment I hadn’t even known I had a father. My mother was gone. I didn’t know what to do. Neither did my siblings. We hadn’t even thought of the possibility of seeing her again. We didn’t know what would happen next; we didn’t see into the future. Dogs only live in the present.

Joclyn grew tired of our terrified constant whines. She didn’t understand; like all Humans, she hated dogs. She just put up with us because she had to. Like all Humans. She didn’t have a heart. She didn’t understand what we were going through. And if she did, she didn’t care. I could sense that in all Humans. All the Humans I’ve known were all the Humans I’ve ever seen.

The Human sighed and began carrying the crates into the big Human dwelling. I didn’t recognize it. We gave her a hard time, thrashing in the cages and snarling and snapping at her when we could, unbalancing her as she moved us in. I could still smell the stench of my old home, and the scent of my mother lingered on my fur. I whined at the thought, growling at Joclyn when she picked up my crate.

Over the next few days, we ended up at her house. I hoped it was temporary. She let us loose in one rectangular empty room and we ran around, going to the bathroom wherever we wanted to. She only came in occasionally to refill the bowls of food and water, let out for us to free-feed when we wanted, or to clean up the messes we made. There were barely any toys except a rubber bone and each other. The bone was chewed up in the first couple hours. My brothers and sisters either lay around listlessly or howled at the small window in the corner of the stuffy empty room. No one played with each other. We didn’t really know how to play, having never been given the chance with Mary and Al. No one really ate either. The food looked better than what we were given at my Humans’ house, but the kibble still smelled disgusting.

I wandered, freely marking the walls and leaping at Joclyn’s feet whenever she entered the room. I was only a puppy and she easily swatted me aside. When I sank my teeth into her ankle she yelped. I expected the big Human hand of hurt to come down on my back as it had many times before, but there was nothing. She just grabbed me, shook me a little, and dropped me, briskly leaving after that and muttering under her breath.

This is how I learned to drive her away. I was my family’s guard dog now, until my mother came back. I snarled and bit at Joclyn’s heels, driving her away from the room and giving her little time to meddle inside with us. She was a bad Human. Just like the person in the bright building. Just like Mary and Al. They were all bad Humans. So all Humans were bad. It was that simple, yet on lazy afternoons my mind drifted back to seeing the dog and its Human, having fun together. How was that possible? How could the dog possibly stand that Human, let alone enjoy it? That just didn’t make sense.

Time seemed to stand still in that tiny little room. We all grew extremely bored. I raced from one side of the room to the other, barking to pass the time. I scratched at the wallpaper until it peeled, chewing at the paint and the wood. Joclyn only scolded me for the damage, but she did nothing else. And so I learned. She would not beat us the way Mary and Al did, but the bitterness and disinterest in her when she was around us seemed to be just as bad as my Humans’ beatings.

I kept up my biting routine whenever she came in, however. It was the only way to keep from insanity, as I’d seen from one of my brothers. He’d been lying there, half-dead, and suddenly he jumped up, his eyes rolling wildly in his head and his mouth foaming, his tongue flying and his belly huge and round although he ate nothing. He’d run around the room, scaring a few of my bored sisters, and foamed and snarled with a gurgling voice. I snarled at him. My other siblings barked and barked and whined and whined. I no longer knew my crazy brother. I had been about to leap at him, but Joclyn had come running over. She opened the door and I had more important things to tend to, like snapping at her ankles.

She’d scooped my brother up, who’d squirmed and writhed, very unlike him. “Rabies and worms!” she’d cried, panicked, and scuttled out of the room with my foaming brother in hand, me chasing after her. She slammed the door nearly on my nose and I watched her through the window. I barked, but she didn’t look back. She raced out of the house and I never saw my brother again.

And then I realized the sickness had been inside him from the start, and manifested to this. My brother’s smell was still there in the corner, stale and lingering.