Dogfight

I googled a friend to find his address. To my surprise, one site had him mentioned in a lawsuit of a few years ago. It seems he was cornered in his backyard by a vicious rottweiler from the neighborhood, and his wife had to call the police to rescue him. The dog escaped into the nearby yards causing damage to others, so my friend was not directly nor legally involved in the suit. "What an opportunity!" I thought to myself upon reading this, "A chance for 'man bites dog'!" Having myself been surprised and bitten five or six times by dogs when I was younger, I developed not only a dislike for the non-human species but also a fantasy in which I am cornered by such a growler. In response to Fido, I loudly bark, show my teeth, and await his attack. He bites me, but damnit I grab his tail or legs, and spin and smash him against a wall. (Did I mention I don't like dogs?) The fantasy was prompted, I suppose, by what happened in real life: After a bite from a particular dog while on my bike on my newspaper route many years ago, I told my older brother. He responded by going to that dog owner's house at night, inticing the dog, and then breaking its jaw with his own hands. (Mike didn't like dogs, neither.)

Many moons later, two of my children each acquired a pet dog. Slowly did I learn to trust and pat each dog to the point at which they (the dogs, not my kids) and I are comfortable with one another. Thus have I been "saved" from my distrust and disdain of "man's best friend." Would I now have the nerve to counterattack an attacking canine? Probably not. But I still occasionally fantasize about its eyeballs spinning in circles, its skull cracking against the cement, its blood and brains splattering across my clothes, its legs breaking with the sound of matchsticks, its voice howling like . . .

-Old Doc