Dog

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Saturday May 25, 2013

Dog, present-day purebred gray and white pit bull, 9 kg

The male Human dropped my brother on the ground. He yelped in pain.

 “Shut up and get in there!” the female Human snapped, grabbing him by the hind legs and stuffing him roughly into an empty crate. “God, these stupid dogs are so noisy.”

“Why did your dog have to have so many pups?” the male, Al, growled.

“I don’t know,” the female shrugged. “I like them pit bulls. She just happened to have six. Nine would’ve been ideal.”

“None of which you can keep,” snarled Al.

They shoved me into one of the wire crates. It was bare wire on the bottom, making my soft paw pads ache and slip. I couldn’t hold my footing; the gaps in the wires were slightly large for my paws, but the crate was much too small. I had to arch my back and step carefully so my feet wouldn’t catch in one of the gaps. I tried to lie down, but the wires pressed into me; it was very uncomfortable. I gnawed on the latch of the crate to pass time.

The Humans were taking the crates with us in it and loading them, one by one, into the Car. I’d only been in the Car once or twice, and always in the back, but it was a new place and always had different smells. The Humans would put me in the back and then a lid would come down, blocking me from the view of the outside world. Then the Car would start to move and after a while, the next time the lid came up I would be in a different place. It was always a building with bright walls and the smells of dogs and other animals, and another Human would poke and prod at me and put sharp things into my skin. I growled at her at first and bit her, but when we went back to the Car Al would beat me and throw me to the ground until I couldn’t think straight. I quickly associated these hurts with the big bright building and the only other Human I’d ever seen in my life besides Al and Mary. After the second visit I learned to fear both and kept myself as subdued as possible. My life was to lay low and fear Humans and avoid hurts, and if hurt, learn from the hurts.

So when my crate was piled roughly on top of my brother’s and loaded into the Car, I growled in fear. The Car was a bad thing, too; it was the thing that led me to the bright-walled building.

“Shaddup dog,” Mary, the female, snapped, slamming the lid of the Car down when she’d given me a painful flick on the nose.

My nose stung. I whimpered to my brother and he whined back, softly. I didn’t feel so miserable when I knew I was with my siblings and my mother.

I felt the Car move underneath my feet, jostling and slamming me to the sides of the crate as usual. The ride was always bumpy and another unpleasant aspect of my life. Yet I sensed this time the Car wouldn’t take us to the building. Could the Car go elsewhere?

“Mary, check on the dogs,” Al commanded.

“Rayna’s fine in the backseat. The pups are okay in the trunk.”

“They better be. I don’t want Joclyn seeing any dead dogs back there.”

“Al, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about mistreatment, Mary. I couldn’t care less if you’d beaten the dogs, I do that myself, but what will Joclyn think if she sees them piled in the back like that? Do you think she’ll help us sell those animals?”

“As long as there aren’t any bruises it’s fine,” Mary mumbled. The Car’s atmosphere was getting tense, and I stifled a terrified whimper.

“Does it matter whether they’re bruised or not? Animal expert like Jo, she’ll see they’ve been given discipline the good hard way. And like all those silly la-dee-da animal rights activists, she’ll think it’s abuse. Hah! Abuse. We’re teaching those dogs through their own language. They obey me because I give them what they deserve; strict discipline, and that’s why we have obedient dogs. Those stupid dog trainers jabber on and on about positive discipline and appealing to the dog and all this crap. I don’t need to appeal to the dog. He just needs to listen to me and know that I am his God.” Al’s voice rose a notch in pride. I perked my ears at the change of tone. Humans were confusing; what was possibly so interesting that could make them ramble on and on for hours?

“Joclyn will do it. We’ll give her credit, don’t you worry Al,” Mary said satisfactorily.

At least the tension had ceased between the two strange Humans. They were the only Humans I’d ever known, besides the other female in the big bright building, and I already knew they were strange. My mother and my siblings were the only other creatures in the world. They were my world. I lay back down, trying to find a comfortable spot in the crate. No matter how much I resented the Human pair, I still lived off of them. They fed me, and that was clear.

And then there was something else that tied me to them. Loyalty, maybe, or the way my mother treated them, as if they were her most important beings, despite the way they treated us. As if they were our masters, our gods. They were. Humans, it seemed, were superior to dogs. It had always been this way in the place I lived in, and that thought, that instinct ran through my blood. I despised the Humans, yet I obeyed them. Out of fear and because they were my masters, because it was ingrained into me that they were my masters.

I didn’t think about it all too much. Dogs don’t dwell on things we simply accept as true. Humans are truly extraordinary, trying to find every little detail in every answer, as if trying to find the meaning of life. Why we are here. They waste time. Dogs didn’t have to think about such things; we just lived. And often times I was very happy living with my mother and my brothers and sisters. When I saw the Humans, my mood diminished.