I Want to Kill the Dog (4 page)

The Monster from the Black Lagoon

I
t is said that good things come in threes. And so do bad things. Never light three cigarettes with one match. Then there were the famous three blind mice, not to mention the Three Stooges. They were our role models.

So along came Samantha, our third dog. Samantha was not an attractive girl. She was plucked from a local shelter less than a year after we lost Shea, who was eventually adopted by some agility dog trainer, whatever that is.

Meredith claims she had taken our daughter Lily to look, not adopt. Right. Lily has been disqualified as a witness because she was too young to remember. How convenient. I was just numb at this point, busy checking my back pocket to see if, by any chance, my wallet was still with me.

Sam was the most unappealing female I had spent time with since college. There had been that heavyset, funny-looking girl in the sorority up the street from my dorm, but that is another story. It is amazing what hard apple cider will excuse.

Sam was hefty, with muscular legs. The animal was built like a linebacker. She had buckteeth, or was it fangs? Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes you just remember the good stuff. Occasionally I noticed how sharp those instruments of death and destruction were. Sam’s jaws did seem particularly powerful.

Plus, there was something foreboding about Sam. After the dog grabbed on to a ball or stuffed animal, usually there was not much left to play with. I would obsess about razor-sharp teeth in my troubled sleep. Truthfully, I was afraid of the animal.

Sam’s bark was shockingly robust and very unladylike. Some might even call the throaty eruption threatening. Of course, what can you expect from a female version of Mike Tyson? Do you get the feeling I am leading up to something? Willie had gone to a better place just in time, I figured. Sam would be his warm and cuddly stand-in. Right.

Sam terrorized the neighborhood. People were genuinely afraid of her. Meredith and I routinely receive a lot of Express Mail, FedEx packages, and the like. When delivery trucks roared down the street and timidly ventured onto our driveway, a loud, lumbering lug with a deep bark and bayonets for teeth would take charge of the Welcome Wagon. Reactions came swiftly. No complaints, just raw fear.

The frightened UPS driver traveled part of the way down the driveway, put away any thought of a signature, and heaved packages out his open sliding door before Sam could jump in and eat his leg. Occasionally I would witness the encounter. The look of utter terror on the guy’s face was hard to describe, resembling Barbara’s in
Night of the Living Dead
when she first confronted a ghoul.

Other companies delivering goods and services simply refused deployment to the war zone known as our property. I watched the mailman age over time, as if he were the president in a time of war. Sam sat on the front steps each day, flexing and waiting, ready to do battle.

There was no way I was going to lock her up indoors. You do not invite a terrorist into your home. We were perplexed, not to say worried. In my mind, we were going to need a legal team to hold on to the property when the lawsuit inevitably came. Miraculously, it never did. Mer said little, but I thought she seemed weary.

Meredith’s former assistant, Amanda, remembers Sam attacking her regularly when she arrived to work at the house. “That dog snarled and tore my clothes before I could make it inside.” Amanda moved her family to Tennessee. She claims her husband is in the Navy and was reassigned there. I think I know better.

When the crazy carnivore was kept in the house, unattended and free to roam the interior, anything could happen. Raw steaks left on counters to defrost went missing. Baked goods in bags were reduced to mere crumbs, packaging torn open and left for dead. Nothing edible could be left out, and Sam seemed to have a cast-iron stomach. She could devour anything.

Even Meredith knew we had to do something. That alone was shocking. “I will talk to the dog lady at
The View
,” she assured me. I did not know what a dog lady was, maybe half woman and half dog, but I was desperate and ready for anything.

The dog lady introduced us to Mike, a dog trainer with some draconian ideas about whipping errant animals into line. Mike was about to be deployed to Iraq. This guy will do fine, I thought.

“When dogs do something wrong,” Mike explained, “you have about one and a half seconds to deal with it. Then they forget what they have done.” I have no clue where he got that one, but I told him I thought he was overestimating Sam’s intelligence.

Mike brought along a special electric collar, delightfully dangerous and more portable than an electric chair. This was no ordinary electric collar, designed to put out a modest charge to keep dogs on the property. This collar generated enough electricity to drop a cow in its tracks.

One of us (me, I insisted) would handle the remote control unit and do the deed as needed. It will be emotionally wrenching work, I said to Meredith, but one of us has to do it. What I won’t do for the community. The idea was to hide the control device and stay at a distance so the dog believed it was God or the Great Pumpkin wearing the executioner’s hood.

Here was the plan. When Sam went for the postman’s leg or the lamb chops on the kitchen table, her inevitable move for the meat, she would get zapped. “How much voltage can I throw at her?” I asked Mike. I couldn’t wait. He shrugged. “Up to you,” he answered. “Just bake something and leave it on a table.”

I waited outside the back door and watched. It did not take long. As Sam’s paws hit the top of the table, the current hit the bottom of her neck. A yelp and Sam fled, cake intact, dog freaked out.

I had a surging sense of power. Years of frustration would burn off when I pressed a button and sent the painful message to the animal: “I am watching.” Meredith looked more than troubled. I told the wife I was going to buy her a present, maybe her own electric necklace, if she did not stop stocking our house with psychotic animals. The threat scared her so badly she ignored me.

It was time for the next step, to make our driveway safe for democracy. The delivery people needed to be free from fear. I put a comfortable chair on the front stoop and grabbed a newspaper. After all, a man has got to be informed and keep a lethal weapon hidden from sight.

And along came the FedEx truck, followed by a speeding bullet and a burst of a bark, the yelp heard ’round the world. The predator was dropped in her tracks. The battle was won. Singing munchkins danced around our property.

Sam ignored the music and returned unsteadily to the stoop, tail between her legs. I could get used to this, I thought. If this seems cruel, remember that it saved human legs and probably the dog, which sooner or later would have disappeared into the night if I had anything to do with it. And I would leave no evidence.

All was quiet on the western front for a while. Commerce once again flowered and bloomed on our street. It may have been an uneasy peace, but that has worked in the Middle East for decades.

Then one summer afternoon, our dear friend Anne stopped by on an errand. Anne had been around Sam enough that she paid the dog little attention. Anne just sauntered into the house through the front door. Meredith turned the corner from the living room just in time to witness the dog launch her attack.

Sam sank her teeth into Anne’s hand so ferociously that it took a visit to the emergency room and stitches to make Anne whole. If the victim had been a stranger, the calls from lawyers would have come soon enough. Anne was forgiving and left the matter in Meredith’s hands.

I was on a train home from New York City when the call came. Meredith was in tears, not only because of Anne’s injuries but also because the vet had told her that Sam should be put down. My good wife was undone. When I saw her later that night, I realized it would never happen. A humane doggie demise was not in the cards. Lethal injection is fashionable in Texas, but Meredith would find another solution.

Through our vet, Meredith found a farm in Utah that took in troubled dogs. They were reluctant to take Sam, preferring to work with animals from inside the state, but Meredith put enough money on the table that they thought adopting Sam was a terrific idea. It took a while to make the arrangements. Sam needed to be flown out West. I asked Meredith if Samantha would be flying first class. She ignored the question.

The preparations for the transaction took long enough that the vet prescribed doggie downers to sedate the animal and keep her from chewing up our neighbors. Sam remained in our custody.

Occasionally I slipped an overdose to the dog, though not enough to do her in. I guess I just wanted to imagine what she would look like laid out. Very mature of me. My explanations were at the ready. I don’t know, honey, maybe she had a heart attack.

Of course, nothing happened to the killer beast. I think she would have shrugged off cyanide or a lethal injection. Finally, cute little Samantha was crated up and shipped off. Gone. The Liberty Bell tolled that day.

Meredith immediately started talking up the idea of traveling to Utah to visit Sam. I told her I would rather take the short train ride up the river to visit Sing Sing. I said that I saw no reason
ever
to travel to Utah and promised if she did make the pilgrimage, our house would be empty when she returned.

A new sense of well-being was mine for a few months. All was right again. Peace had returned to the house. Meredith cheerfully agreed to lay off the dogs for a while, perhaps a long while. Maybe forever. Her affable demeanor should have been my first clue that we would be going to the dogs again soon. But I chose to believe her.

Foolish, foolish boy. What could I have been thinking? I took Meredith at her word. No matter how often Lucy yanked the ball away at the last second, Charlie Brown did not doubt her and put his all into every kick. Like Charlie, I ended up flat on my back.

I stopped at the kids’ school one afternoon, looking for a ride home. There was Amanda, Meredith’s trusty assistant at the time. We headed out. I rode shotgun. Gabe and Lily had after-school activities. Ben was in the backseat. Amanda turned to me. “Do you know?” she asked with a straight face. She wore no expression but looked away, pulling out of the school’s busy driveway. Silence. Instantly I knew. “Know what?” Ben demanded. Again, silence.

I did not ask the dreaded question, but the answers flowed fast and furious. After school, Meredith had taken Lily into a pet store next to Jasper’s, a favored pizza hangout. Later, Gabe joined them. They were in there, Amanda remembers, for what seemed like hours. They took turns holding the adorable puppy. And he
was
adorable. What puppy isn’t? A purchase was assured.

Of course, I was furious, not that anybody noticed or cared. Our no-dog treaty had been abrogated. There was little I could do but sulk like a ten-year-old, which made me the youngest one in the family. This would be my Spring of Discontent, but the family did not look up from the new puppy long enough to take note. Spring would melt into summer and all the seasons thereafter.

Over the Edge

J
asper quickly grew from puppy to dog. He looked a little like Willie. Whatever his faults, Willie had been relatively calm, emphasis on
relatively
. Jasper was noise in motion, hands down infinitely more annoying than Willie.

Jasper was a little strung out, probably already on some controlled substance. Even as a puppy, there was a hideous shrillness to his tiny bark. This was when my teeth started to hurt.

The house was up for grabs. Jasper was cast in a supporting role at this point. His moment would come. When it came to destroying family tranquility, Jasper had to wait his turn. The cats had become Public Enemy Number One.

Every dog needs a cat to keep the cartoon moving. This film would become a horror movie. Over the years, we had lost two cats to old age. Now we were blessed with two more, big, inbred New York City street cats that carried loaded weapons and took nothing from anybody. Natural-born killers.

Game on.

Our New York City vet had pawned the cats off on Meredith, yes, and me when they were kittens. I did not really get a vote, anyway. Surprised? The kids were in on this one, and I was outnumbered.

The vet probably figured we were not bright enough to know that kittens grow into cats. Among her finest qualities, Meredith also is a cat person. I am such a lucky guy. Go ahead and shoot me.

I think cats are horrid animals. There is no cat litter on this earth that can mask what these cats leave behind. But, to make matters worse, the latest citizens of our land became enormous felines, menacing, take-no-prisoners predators. The neighbors were warning their children, locking their doors.

Felipe is jet-black and so large he could give any jungle animal a run for its money. Felipe is a panther that allows Jasper to clamp his powerful jaws around the empty feline head and drag the two-hundred-pound cat all over the kitchen. They both belong in a traveling circus.

Felipe has such pleasure in his eyes. Excitement. We may have the weirdest sadomasochistic pet shelter in the county. I am quite certain Felipe could eliminate Jasper with one big bite but enjoys his secret pleasures too much. Their relationship has not always been so openly sexual, but their comfort with each other has defied cartoon caricatures.

Felipe’s sister, Sweet Pea, is a coconspirator. The smaller cat jumps onto counters with Felipe to tear open loaves of bread and any food they can reach. Once, I brought home a deli sandwich for Ben, securely wrapped and sealed in a bag. I put it on the counter and yelled for Ben to come and get it.

By the time Ben flew down the stairs, the packing lay on the floor in shreds, and the sandwich and cats had vanished. We began storing baked goods and assorted other foods in dish cabinets around the kitchen.

The cats are on the counters, whenever they please and regardless of whether we are around or out of position. They troll for whatever we are careless enough to leave around. One evening we were going to sit and watch the news before dinner.

“Do you want some cheese while you watch the news, Richard?” Meredith yelled out as I headed down the stairs. “Sure,” I answered, and walked into the family room where the television sits. Meredith was standing in the adjacent kitchen. There on a table sat an empty cheese plate. A fat cat was missing in action.

As I was writing this sad story, I wandered down to the kitchen one afternoon. The big garbage drawer had been left open a crack. That was all it took. A criminal needs only a small opening to find what he wants.

The garbage was everywhere, spread around the large kitchen floor. Felipe sat nearby paying no attention. I yelled at the top of my lungs. I hissed at the animal. That used to scare him. Felipe remained motionless, appearing bored.

The next morning, the sun had not even made an appearance when I looked up from the newspaper to see this black panther perched on top of the garbage drawer, which he had casually pulled open. I hissed, this time loudly enough to awaken the neighbors. I might as well have been hissing at the stove.

Felipe just looked at me, making no move to jump down and get away. In the predawn silence, I thought I heard him swear at me. Then he went back to his digging. The scorn on the cat’s face gave me pause. Only when I started to get up did he walk—not run, but amble—away. If cats had fingers, it was clear where the middle digit would be pointing. I knew he would be back.

Who lives this way? I demanded.
We do, I thought. The cats have figured out how to pull virtually every cabinet open if it is not nailed shut or has no armed guard posted in front of it.

We have lost entire loaves of bread in a single instant. Tell me again, I beseech Meredith desperately. Tell me. Teach me. I need to know. Why do we have these animals? “To enrich our lives,” we answer together.

Felipe really does look threatening, like he should be roaming the mountains or guarding a high-security prison. The animal is lithe and large, all muscle with a penchant for bloodshed that any serial killer would admire.

Felipe disappears for days and returns home carrying dead birds, squirrels, rodents, and any formerly living thing he can bury his claws into. They almost always land in the kitchen. I live in fear that I will come home one day to see the animal dragging around a mangled mail carrier or neighbor.

Do you have any idea what it is like to open the back door on a sunny summer morning, inhale deeply, and find a dead animal so mangled it is impossible to identify? How about a fat squirrel without a head? Does anybody else live this way?

Sweet Pea is also fond of bringing all kinds of small animals into the house. These chipmunks, or whatever the little beasties are, come in alive. Sweet Pea is a pacifist. She spends her time batting them around like badminton birdies before releasing them.

Then the fun begins. The race to beat the executioner to his prey is on. Hysterics break out because Meredith and her glass jar have showed up. She is determined to rescue them before Felipe discovers Sweet Pea’s captive and seals the deal.

The wretched cats still walk the earth. In fact, they seem to like life at our address. Living with all the animals is so relaxing. One of the cats wanders the halls at night, with the creepy habit of wailing at the top of its lungs, as if he or she is perishing in pain. Meredith could sleep through a nuclear attack. Not me. I am up, wondering if this is the ghost of Christmas past.

My new theory is that the wailing comes from both cats, their collective guilt for torturing and, well, let’s say, helping other animals into the big sleep. Certainly it couldn’t be that they are crying out of sheer joy, knowing that once again, they are enriching our lives.

In school, facts like these were known as
context
; in our case, they’re the backdrop for the ascent of Jasper in our lives. The blessed feline beasts have only been a sideshow for the kids. The dog is the main attraction.

Of course, our children had their own lives, school, soccer, the stage. What did they care? They could fiddle as Rome burned. I was in a different place. Four barking dogs, three French hens, two prowling cats, and a partridge in a pear tree were more than enough for me.

Sam had retired out West, and it really had been time to stop; this time for sure. But there is no stopping my good wife. I do not know why. Meredith still manages to keep a straight face, clinging to her claim that Gabe told her that animals restore joy in families.

The woman has been dining out on that one for years. Of course, there were no witnesses to Gabe’s observation. My son is at school in Chicago now, presumably living, well, a colorful college life. He has no recollection of the statement, but the old memory bank may just be overdrawn.