Dogs: The New Kids

It's painfully overdone, isn't it? Referring to pets as children. But they are, in a way... take mine, for instance. Fighting among themselves because of an aborted fight with a stranger's dog. Was one mad at the other for not kicking ass? Or for not letting him kick ass? Or is it all just instinctual response personified by humans with nothing better to do?

Probably the latter, but since that would be no fun, I'll pretend it's not.

Anyway... so last night some douchebag let his dog run around off of a leash. Now, I have no problem with that. In fact, I do it all the time. The difference here is that while I let my all-too-wild dogs go running in the middle of a desert, or a forest, or a mountain range (you know, the middle of nowhere), this asshole let his dog go in the middle of a populated neighborhood.

Caveat #2: Had this particular dog been better-trained, I wouldn't have had a problem, either. But it wasn't. In fact, as soon as it smelled my dogs, it went into kill mode. Too bad a fence was in the way... that dog would've learned what pack dogs (mine) can do in a brawl. Scary, yeah, and I'm not too particularly fond of the fact that my dogs are such competent hunters and killers, but they're animals... and I like letting dogs be canines.

Where was I? Oh, yeah... asshole. So his dog runs up to the fence my dogs are behind. Now, anybody who's been following the adventures of my pets know that my alpha male is kind of a dick. He's not neutered (can't bring myself to do it, no matter how much he deserves it) and at barely 35 pounds, he's managed to make an 80-pound German Shepherd submit to his will. He was a stray when I got him, and he still likes to feed himself from time to time (so I let him... don't tell the people whose pet birds are missing).

So now there's this unknown dog on one side of the fence, and my three dogs on the other. Alpha male goes nuts, strange dog goes nuts. I think that the alpha gave an order to the German Shepherd to kill something, and the next thing I know, the Shepherd attacks my other dog. What. The. Fuck? Honestly, the Shepherd had NEVER done something like that before (first time for everything, I guess). I don't notice it at first, but one of the Shepherd's claws catches my other dog just right and the claw rips open the skin above my other dog's stomach. Yelps of pain (of a type I've not heard before) lead to a few moments of confusion, and then I see the blood when the poor guy tries to clean his wounds.

Ugh. And leave it to the local area to have shut down their own emergency veterinarian hospital (make note, pet owners... if you're going to have a catastrophe, do your best to schedule them during normal operating hours).

So I grab a small first aid kit and apply a dressing to the wound (stomach wounds are tricky... it always cracks me up whenever a TV show or a movie shows a medic applying pressure to the stomach). While I'm doing so, I hear my alpha male start kicking the crap out of the German Shepherd. Literally. There's crap everywhere. The (other) poor guy shit himself.

Wait... I forgot to mention that while my first injured dog was yelping, the owner of the other dog simply sat in his driveway and watched. I should've jumped the fence and kicked his dog in the mouth. Or the owner in the mouth... I'm not a huge fan of hitting animals, even the misbehaved ones (of which I own three).

Okay, back to story: one dog with a tear in his skin; one dog with shit in his coat; one dog sitting there with an Alfred E. Newman expression on his face. I suddenly debate obtaining pet insurance. Then I debate cutting the alpha's nuts off. Then I debate exchanging my dogs for three new cats (just kidding... I still have two cats... they'd eat me as I sleep if I brought home more).

So what do I do? I double-check the dressing, convince my sister to let the wounded dog sleep in the house, then sneak the dog onto the bed. In the morning, I take him to the vet where he gets cleaned up and stapled. There's a moment when his lampshade makes him walk into a door, and while I can't help but laugh my ass off, I remove it from his neck. He's already in pain, why submit him to torture? And mockery from my other pets (oh, snap... there I go personifying again).

I do learn that the alpha male gets seriously depressed when I separate him from his adopted brother. He's outside right now, sitting in the middle of the yard, waiting for the other to come out and play. Unfortunately, that's going to be a few days.

There's no point to this story. I just like talking about my boys (yes, all three dogs and both cats are boys). It's kinda like when people show you pictures of their ugly children and you're forced to sit there and smile. Nyah.