Asshole Dog Owners

My wife and I once stayed overnight at a house with another couple--family members. We arrived a tad early to their house and no one was home. I could hear a dog raging in their back yard. Absolutely pure foaming-at-the-mouth raging. I encounter this from time to time in my job as a letter carrier. I'm kind of antsy and don't like to sit still, so I told Carole that I was going to walk up the driveway and have a look at the dog (it was behind a fence, so figured it would be fairly safe to just look).

The dog was there. A medium sized short-hair cur-dog of forty or fifty pounds, I'd say. Of no particular breed or type. It was the color of a maggot and had kind of a shrunken skull and a rat-like countenance. It was not a pretty beast.

The dog was in a froth of anger. At what? At me? At another dog that was nearby? I can't say. I assume that it's just a shit-crazy dog.

But sometimes I have learned that you can get some dogs like that to calm the Hell down by talking to them. So I did that, in a level voice that I hoped was soothing. It did no good. Instead, the dog seemed even more upset than before, almost going into a shaking bout of pure bloody fury. My wife came halfway up the drive and saw this monster and asked me to get away from it. She was not so foolhardy as I was.

So I left the creepy animal and retreated to our vehicle.

After a while our hosts appeared and we unloaded our luggage and were shown our bedroom. All seemed okay. We went out, had dinner, and returned to the house. We were shown around again...and then it was decided that they would see what would happen if they let this withering creep of a dog into the house. That is, they wanted to see how it would react to us. Their little drooling, chomping baby.

We were in a kind of activity room on the lower floor of the house. A sliding door was opened and the horrible animal came in. It did not come barreling at us, jaws ablaze, but it definitely did not like us. It growled and snapped. Instead of disciplining the vile thing, the owners comforted it and petted it and made it feel that its display of aggression was the right choice.

I realized that we were at the mercy of this mucking hound and its two clueless owners.

My first thought was to be honest and just leave the house. But this was family who I hadn't seen in some time, so I bit my tongue and took my chances. We weren't attacked, but I consider that just blind luck and my own caution.

It takes a special kind of asshole to put two human guests through something like that over an obviously vicious, inbred, mentally retarded canine. I've never forgotten it.

"Welcome!"

Carole's New Kayak, Brief Visit to See Family

I took a brief break from the novel to run out to pick up a kayak for Carole that we found on Craigslist. While on the run out, we stopped by to see my nephew and his family before rushing back to the house.

What did I see today with my one near-sighted eye and my one blind eye?

Our truck with our new (well new for us--it's a used item) Wilderness Pungo 120 kayak.

My nephew Mark and his wife Michelle.

My grand-nephew Harris and his tiny doggie Mimi.

My grand-niece Madison.

My grand-nephew Nolan.

This is Pepe. She is really sweet. And really small.

This little fellow is their totally fucking insane hamster. Do not put your hand in there or he will bite the shit out of it. Do not put your finger through the bars of his cage or he will bite the shit out of it. Do not put your nose to his cage or he will bite the shit out of it. He spends half his time climbing up and down the bars trying to figure out how to get out or just doing his goddamndest to bite through the metal. He is totally fucking insane. If he got out I am convinced that he would run right up to the nearest living thing and bite the shit out of it.

This is Sassy, their cat. She's pretty normal.

Tiny dog. I've forgotten its name. Very sweet and very damned tiny.

Here's a Horror Story:

On one of the routes I used to have to cover from time to time, through a really super tough neighborhood, there was a crazy terrier. Not a very big dog. Not sure of the breed, but a terrier. Maybe a twenty, twenty-five pound dog. When he was loose, he would try like hell to bite you. Generally, if you could keep your mailbag down low so that he'd tear into the bag instead of your shin, and back away, once you were about fifty yards or so from his yard, he would stop pursuing you. All the while barking like a totally crazy fucker. Which is what he was: crazy.

His owners generally kept him in a homemade box crudely constructed of old lumber and chicken wire that they would force him into, ass-first, and then nail shut. The box was so small that he could not stand up--only crouch. His little face would be looking out of the chicken wire and he would...well...scream at the world from this hideous space barely big enough to contain his form.

When they'd let him out (don't ask me how--I never saw them do it--but sometimes he was out) they would tie him to a length of gigantic chrome chain with some kind of electric wire that they would twist around his too-tight collar and onto the chain which he would have to drag around and which weighed far, far more than he. The times when he would be loose and try to bite anyone who walked by were the times when the wire would break or his collar would break.

He had been pepper-sprayed so many times that it was like water to him. He was immune. After a number of applications, any mammal will become immune to that stuff.

Every mailman who encountered this dog--after the initial shock and excitement of just trying to get away without being badly bitten--was sympathetic to the dog's situation. All of us called the cops. Nothing happened. We called Animal Control, but nothing ever happened. We called the Humane Society. Nada. (Understand this was a high crime war zone neighborhood. They leave the mailman alone because...well, we bring the checks.) You couldn't personally rescue the little guy because any move was answered with savagery.

For the dog had been driven mad by the evil fuckers who owned him. Another mailman explained that what they were doing was intentionally driving the poor fellow crazy so that they could use him in dog fighting. This, I am sure, they eventually did. I feel certain he died either in a battle or from the wounds of battle in some horrible place.

Instead of being loved and cared for, he was brutalized and killed.

We mailmen tried. The system doesn't generally work; despite what the TV shows will tell you.