“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
I kid around with dogs, but I do like them. Generally. Almost always.
As a child, I had a dog named Frisky, who was certainly frisky, but more than that, she was barky. Still, she was my little beagle. My grandmother had a big collie named Freddie. He was not the most energetic of dogs. But he was nice.
My wife and I, and later our son, had a dog family member named Della. She was much beloved. We called her an Irish Retriever, because if anyone spilled a beer, even on sand, she licked it up. Even I wouldn’t do that.
Dogs and I usually get along quite well. Like Elliot Rosewater, in Vonnegut’s God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, it may be there’s an uncanny kinship that dogs recognize in me. Kaylee and Bella the Wonderdog, seem to respond to me positively, perhaps in recognition of fellow earthling status. They are canines, I’m a great ape, (or at least an above average ape) but we are from the same planet. Homies, if you will. Daisy and Harriet are our grand-dogs. Oliver is a buddy. I have thumbs, so I can let him out of his cage and open the door to the backyard if his people are away. And every time I do this service, I provide a treat. I think he notices that.
But this piece is about bad dogs. I’ve only know a few, really. But I’d like to tell you about some of them.
During my career, which encompassed three distinct kinds of work, I visited folks in their homes. I did this for many years, and encountered lots of dogs (and also cats, and ferrets, at least one pig, goats, various birds, and aquarium fish). I almost always got along with the dogs, but not always.
BOOGER
Booger lived in northeast Allegan County. He and the young couple lived in a mobile home. I was there to see the man. When I arrived at the trailer, Booger came out to my car to greet me. He went into a semi-crouch and growled and snarled, showing a lot of teeth and drool. I didn’t yet know his name. He was a large mongrel, of indeterminate lineage, but I thought maybe there was some Chow in the mix. He was an intact male.
The man heard the barking and came out. “Booger,” he yelled, “settle down!” Booger did not settle down in any appreciable way. I explained who I was, and what business I had to conduct, and asked if I could come into the home and sit at a table, where I’d be able to go through some paperwork and take notes.
He was cooperative, and no doubt wanted it so noted. He grabbed Booger by the collar, and said to me, “C’mon in.” We walked together to the trailer. Booger seemed to want to escape the guy’s hold, no doubt to bite me.
I had learned quickly in my career to always have a Samsonite briefcase with me on home calls. It was big, and sturdy, and held blank forms, case files, a Ping Pong paddle (in case I visited Community Mental Health; the director had a table in the lunch room), and perhaps a sandwich. The hard sided briefcase made a nice barrier, in a case where man’s best friend wasn’t in a mood to be friendly. The guy held on to Booger by his collar. I held on to the briefcase by the handle. If he broke away, he wouldn’t be the first dog I’d introduced to the Samsonite. It provided a measure of safety to me, and caused no injury to any dog. But the guy kept his grip on Booger’s collar.
The floor of the trailer had what I took to be patterned carpeting, light blue with little white specks. It was actually solid light blue, with hundreds of tiny pieces of newspaper, rather evenly distributed across the entire surface. Booger liked to chew the newspaper. I believe the couple received a free paper once a week, and Booger liked to play with it, that is, he would chew at it until it was reduced to fine confetti. Since he did this every week, there seemed no reason to vacuum the bits of paper – Booger would do it again next week.
Booger kept growling and barking at me, until the fellow got tired of repeating the answers he was providing, and put Booger outside. This worked just fine, until, of course, the time came for me to leave. The guy said, “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll be fine, once he knows you’re leaving.” I argued, briefly and successfully, for the man to go outside, grab Booger by the collar, and hold on until I got in my car. Then he let slip the dog of war – and Booger charged at my car, barking and growling and drooling copious amounts dog spittle onto the driver’s door. I drove away, on to other tasks, and Booger noisily chased the car for a hundred yards or so, no doubt feeling good about his contribution to household safety.
BRUTE
Brute was a dog that appeared to be under reasonable control by a young man I went to see in Grand Rapids. It was a pit bull, or what my understanding of that is. He had a compact, but very muscular body, with an oversized head and big jaws. He had very short brown fur, and old marks and scars were readily apparent. He was an intact male. “His name is Brutus,” said the man, but we just call him Brute.” He didn’t bark. He didn’t growl. He didn’t look malevolent. He sat, quietly, unrestrained, next to the man. “Hey, check this out,” the guy said.
He led me out the back door, and pointed to a tree. On a limb was motorcycle tire, suspended from a chain. The bottom of the tire was six feet above the ground. Brute sat next to the guy, apparently looking at the tire. “Watch this,” he said to me. “Go,” he said to Brute. Brute launched himself from the back porch with surprising speed, ran the short distance, and leapt into the air, grabbing onto the tire with his teeth. He shook repeatedly; the teeth were dug into the tire, and Brute’s whole body quaked with frenzied force. His entire body weight was suspended from the tire by the grip he had on the tire. After several moments, the man said, “OK.”
Brute dropped to the ground and sauntered to where we were, and sat calmly by his owner’s side. There were rips and punctures in the tire. Was this a bad dog? Not really, but he had the potential to cause devastating damage. Was he a dangerous dog? Absolutely. I mentioned this to the guy, who seemed to take it as an appreciation. “Well, yeah, I know. He has bitten a couple of people. The first time it cost me a lot of money. The second time, my girl-friend claimed she was the owner, since I had a strike against me, and that time it cost even more money. But really, he’s usually just fine.”
The guy didn’t say the dog was always fine. He said Brute was usually fine.
I said, “I’d like you to put Brute in a bedroom and close the door. I don’t think you have anything I want badly enough to sue you for, not even that big screen TV. I’ve got a TV. Just put Brute in a room, or down in the basement, and shut the door.”
The guy complied without further discussion. It seemed likely to me that Brute was a trained fighting dog. He was dangerous, and he had that history of biting people. We concluded our business, and, while I continued to see the man, I never heard any stories about Brute after that.
THREE DOG LADY
She lived in a downstairs apartment of a house. I needed to see the guy upstairs. I’ll guess she was 70. Her dogs were in the front yard, unleashed. I never heard the dogs called by name. They all appeared to be mixed breeds. One was fairly large, like 60 or 70 pounds. One was more in the medium range, let’s say 35 pounds. And then there was what looked like a Chihuahua mix, under 20 pounds.
All three dogs greeted me as an intruder, with soft growling, and showing of teeth. The woman instructed the dogs to behave, and kept doing so insistently. Her pleadings had no discernible effect. I kept my briefcase between myself and the big dog. I kept my free hand toward the mid-sized dog. The dogs moved forward and back, clockwise and counterclockwise. I moved my feet with utmost grace (for me) to keep myself in the best defensive stance I could manage. I focused on the larger dog, and paid a secondary level of attention to the medium dog. I couldn’t see the little dog without losing track of the other two dogs. The little one ran behind me and bit me.
It drew blood, as was obvious by the lower rear part of my khaki trousers. The wounds weren’t bad. Little dogs have little teeth. But the skin was broken. I was glad the wounds were bleeding some, which is perhaps better than relatively dry punctures.
“Your dogs don’t have collars,” I said. “Have they been vaccinated against rabies?” In hindsight, that was not the smartest question. Was I prepared to take her word for it? Of course not. What I did was contact the county Animal Control Office. They had nothing on file for the woman to suggest that she had dogs that were licensed or vaccinated. They sent someone out.
The little dog was taken in for quarantine. He would be kept for ten days – we all hoped – and observed. Then he’d be returned, if asymptomatic. If he was rabid, he’d be destroyed as soon as the diagnosis could be made, and I’d begin treatment. The bad news for the lady was that she was on the hook for ten days of boarding at the doggy equivalent of jail.
The little dog was released in ten days, symptom free. I didn’t worry a lot, but it was a relief to get the report of no rabies. There was no need for me to undergo any medical treatment, reputedly very unpleasant. I don’t think the cost of the quarantine was that much per day. But I also don’t think she had much. In hindsight, vaccinating her dogs might have been cheaper. I never considered suing her. But I did purchase some good pepper spray, and submitted the receipt as a business expense.
The blood came out of my trousers nicely, in a cold water wash.
