A dog's life is a hard one. Most of the time they have to do everything you tell them, and when they don't, they have to live with it - since they can't speak for themselves. They always get into trouble because they smell things that they never will, and usually end up in places where people are eating or drinking something that would be bad for them. And sometimes while doing what we tell them, there are bugs or other animals out there which aren't good for dogs. They can't help it, they really don't mean to get into anything, but that's the way life is. But some dogs manage to get themselves into more trouble than others, and that's what I'm going to tell you about.
The first dog I'm going to tell you about was my dog, who wasn't really mine. He had been my father's dog, and he was a stray, just like all of us. He was a nice dog though, I remember the day my father came home with him quite well. I was six, and he came across him next to a dead animal and pounced right on him. Dr. Milgram was doing some research on the effects of natural vs. artificial stimulants on our pets, so he brought this dog home to test his hypothesis that dogs would become aggressive when fed amphetamines as well as plain sugar water. My father took the dog home and gave it some food and water, and I remember that a few days later while my dad was at work (he wasn't really working because we didn't have any money), I came across the dog lying near the trash can. He looked pretty tired, and when I went to pet him he ran away. I was starting to get worried about him, so I followed him into the living room...
When I found him there, he was on the floor in front of a candlelit dinner table. He lay there shaking with fear and growling at me in what seemed like a very angry way. My dad came home at that point, and when my dad saw the dog on the floor, he immediately pointed out that it was my dog who had crushed the glass of cheap champagne next to it (his brother had bought it at a local market as a present for his upcoming wedding). My dad was very mad at me and the dog, as you might expect, and I started to suspect that he had been on those stimulants he had been fed. I didn't know much about it back then, but there was something odd about my father's behavior after that day. He started treating me like a little boy again (he had let me grow up pretty well), and he seemed to get significantly more aggressive and angry when things didn't go well for him in his work.
One day I was playing with my toy soldiers, and I accidentally stepped on the dog. He growled at me, and my dad came running over to scold me. The next thing I knew, my father was giving the dog a shot of something in his kennel. It was terrible to see him like that, he looked like he was trying to get up and run away from something. My dad had shoved him down there in his kennel and locked the door so that he wouldn't be able to get out, but it seems as if he already had plans to kill my pet if things didn't work out for him in his research (and who else would have done it besides my father?). Anyway...
On the next day, I had fallen asleep on the couch while watching TV. I guess at some point my father had come home, put some sort of mask or something on my face, and knocked me out with a needle or something (I've always wanted to know what it was like); I woke up in a cold sweat with the dog in front of me. He was wet from lying on the floor all night, and he didn't look any better than he had when he was in his kennel. The thing that scared me most about him was the fact that his eyes were open; they looked sunken and painful. I asked him if he was okay, but he just stared back at me. I felt bad for him and decided that I had to get my dad to help him. It turned out that my father was dead, so I covered him up with his favorite flag (a U.S. flag) and put his favorite record ("The King and the Chorus Girl" by Steve Allen) on his stereo and turned it up a little loud so no one would hear me and try to stop me from helping my dog. It took me hours, but I got the dog out of the house without anyone knowing about it and put him in the trunk of my dad's car (his car was like an Alcatraz for dogs). My father's car was in the garage, and I remember looking all around but not seeing him anywhere when I got into it.
I drove my dog home, put him in my parent's bedroom, and said that I was sorry and that they'd be back later. When it seemed like no one was coming to make me take the dog away from my home, I called the police to come and pick him up. It turned out that he had been injected with a poison similar to strychnine (I think) that killed him very quickly once it got into his system. I didn't know anything about any of this at the time, so I just sat there on the bed and cried. My father had become a seriously disturbing kind of person after that day, and I was effectively left without a father in my life.
Now, just to make things clear: I don't know if my dad was actually doing those things to the dog or if he was just trying to get me out of his hair with some sort of experiment. It's also possible that my dad really did kill him and then throw him away like that. I had problems with my dad for a long time after it happened, but we've gotten along well since then. He and my mother don't know that I know, but I did find the knife he used to stab my dog. It was a ten-inch knife with a wooden handle and a blade that had bloodstains on it when I found it. I still have it in my room under my bed (I don't know what to do with it). The worst part of the whole story is that I still have dreams about him, and they're always as real as if he were there in front of me. He seems to haunt me in a way that no animal ever has.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
