This is a rerun from 9/8/13 and I should warn you it has a sad ending. Proceed at your own risk…
I mentioned here once about some unpleasant encounters in my life with folks who owned dogs. Here is the story of the unpleasantest. I tell it not to demean all dog owners or even any but just this one guy who I assume is either very old or very deceased by now. He was about 35 when this story took place in 1960. I was eight.
The house I grew up in had a rather large back yard. In the center of this yard was a set-up for tether ball, a popular sport of the day. You don't need to know how tether ball is played to understand what I'm about to describe. All you have to know is that we had a small hole in the yard into which concrete had been poured around a metal ring. The tether ball pole was inserted into the ring so the pole stood erect in the yard like a flagpole. Sometimes, as in the incident I'm about to describe, the pole wasn't set up so you just had this little circle of concrete and metal in the middle of the yard.
The back fence of the yard was metal links covered with a thick blanket of ivy. It was about six feet tall and on the other side of the fence was the back yard of a neighbor who lived on the street to the south of ours. I do not remember this neighbor's name so for reasons that will soon become apparent, we'll call him Jerko. Jerko was married but from all indications, he didn't love his wife half as much as he loved his Irish Setter. The Setter — he was called Duke — was pampered and hugged and combed and generally treated like royalty. Jerko was so proud of that dog. Another neighbor remarked that Jerko chose not to have children because if he did, he might have to spend as much as five minutes a day on them — time better spent brushing and petting Duke.
Duke caused us some problems. There was a terrible, foul smell that came from over the fence. It was so bad that I couldn't go too near that side of our yard. There were also awful noises. Whenever Jerko went somewhere and left Duke alone in the back, the pooch would spend the entire time howling as if in pain. It was so agonized that at least once, another neighbor called the police to report that an animal was being mistreated. Cops came to investigate and they reported that the dog was not being harmed. He was just lonely.
Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez.
Duke continued to howl much of the day and he began trying to scale the fence and get into our yard. Sometimes, he did that when Jerko was home, too. But it was a high enough fence that the Setter couldn't climb over it and so what you heard was the repeated sound of Duke hurling himself against the fence — over and over, sometimes for hours at a time. My parents and I were all concerned about it but when we told Jerko, he said it was nothing to worry about. And when we called the City Animal Shelter, they told us basically that since the police had been out and had reported that the dog was well cared-for, there wasn't sufficient cause to send someone else.
So day after day, Duke would howl and hurl himself against the fence. One day, he made it over.
I was playing alone in the yard when it happened. I looked up, saw the dog get his front paws over the top of the ivy and haul the rest of himself over. Then he tumbled into our yard. I was scared and I started to run towards our house. Duke galloped towards me. I turned towards him to try and shoo him away but he jumped on me, knocking me backwards. The back of my head hit not the dirt but the metal-and-concrete setting for the tether ball pole.
I didn't know what the pain was but I'd sustained a small crack on the back of my skull. What I did know was that something back there hurt like hell and I couldn't get up because Duke, who was not a small animal, had his front paws and most of his weight on my chest.
So I began screaming — partly in pain and partly in the hope that someone would hear and come help me. My father was at work and my mother had gone to the market but there were neighbors all around us. So I just screamed and screamed, and all the time the Irish Setter was licking me and drooling on me as he sat on me.
Finally, someone else came over the fence: Jerko. I don't think he emerged from his house in response to my screaming. I think he went to check on his beloved, found the hound to be missing and only then heard the sound of an eight-year-old boy shrieking in agony. He climbed over the fence, walked over to where the dog was still sitting on me and I was yelling, and he said, "Don't yell. That's his way of showing affection!"
I yelled, "Get him off me! He hurt me!"
Jerko made no move whatsoever to get his mutt off my chest. He stood there and said, "No, Duke would never hurt you! He's a good dog!"
This went on for several minutes. I was yelling for him to get the dog off me because I was injured and he was refusing to do this because his wonderful Duke would never, ever hurt anyone. Pinning me down to the ground was his way of showing he loved me. (Years later, I had a girl friend who…)
Finally, my mother got home, heard the commotion and ran outside. She ordered Jerko to get his dog off her son and he finally did, all the time muttering, "He's just showing affection." When she got me up and found blood on the back of my skull, she called Jerko a very nasty name, then scurried off to get me to a hospital. I have this vivid memory of her leading me into the house and of Jerko standing in our backyard with his Irish Setter. Jerko was still saying, "Oh, Duke would never hurt anyone."
She drove me to a hospital emergency room where they did a little bandaging and, I think, a bit of stitching. My mother asked the doctor if he thought there had been any permanent damage. With a solemn stare, the doctor said, "I'm afraid so. Your son has suffered sufficient brain damage that all he'll be able to do with the rest of his life is write silly cartoons and comic books…and some day if and when they invent the Internet, he may even start 'blogging,' whatever that is." And yes, I'm lying. He said nothing of the sort. What he did say was that the injuries were minor and would heal quickly.
That evening, Jerko called and asked if he could come over. My father told him yes, assuming the man wanted to see how I was and to apologize for his dog and, more importantly, for himself. Instead, Jerko came in, sat down, and without even asking how I was, he began explaining that Duke was shaken up but seemed fine. "He would never harm anyone, especially a child, so I have to assume your son did something to provoke it all." My father turned the color of Libby's Tomato Juice and told Jerko off but good, including a few threats involving lawyers and/or law enforcement. Jerko left, still convinced that somehow his fine pet was the victim in the whole matter.
That is not the end of the story but I have to warn you: From here on, it gets rather sad and ugly. The dog dies a pretty awful death and if you can't handle that, stop here.
A few weeks later, there were a couple of very rainy days in Los Angeles. Throughout them, as usual, we heard Duke howling as he always did. Then one afternoon, the howling took on a different tone — sadder and more desperate. It almost sounded like a human crying. My mother came into my room and asked, "Do you hear that?" I did.
It had stopped raining so I put on my little slicker and ran around to the other side of the block. Outside Jerko's house, there was a car stopped awkwardly in the street. An elderly man and woman who'd been in the car were out of it, standing next to it and looking very upset, trying to decide on some course of action. The first thing the man said to me was, "I didn't see it. It came running right out in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes but it's so wet and I skidded and…" And then I saw in front of his car, a pool of blood. There was a trail of it that led up Jerko's driveway and towards his back yard. "It was a big, red dog," the woman said. She was trembling and crying.
They had no idea what to do. They'd knocked on the door to Jerko's house and there was no answer. They'd knocked on a few neighbors' doors and there was no answer. They were standing there in the street by the car, hoping either a policeman would drive by or maybe the owner or some neighbor would come home. I asked if they'd followed the trail of blood into the backyard. They said no, that was private property and they didn't want to trespass. I think now as I did then that that was just an excuse because they didn't want to see the dog. It seemed cowardly but at least they had enough integrity to not hit-and-run.
I decided I would trespass. I followed the blood droppings through an open gate that I guessed Duke had somehow opened, and I crept into Jerko's yard where I'd never been before. I realized the agonized howling had stopped just as I came across the source of the dreadful odor we'd been noticing for months. The yard was full of dog excrement. Full. It was everywhere and since it had been raining, its aroma was enhanced by moisture. It was also squishy and to follow the blood trail, I had to delicately walk through a lot of it. I remember thinking we might have to throw away the shoes I was wearing.
I found Duke curled up in a corner of the yard, covered in blood and whimpering. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen in my life. It may still be the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life. He was alive but it didn't look like he'd be alive for long.
I ran out of the yard, nearly slipping in muddy dog excrement, and I told the older couple that I was going to go call someone. I still don't quite understand why they could do nothing but wait for an eight-year-old kid to come by and take action. I ran back around the block to our house, doing my best as I ran to scrape the soles of my shoes as I ran. When I got home, they were still clumped with unpleasantness so I took them off and left them in the patio. We actually did wind up throwing them away.
In the house, my mother called some city department that seemed to cover such matters. She put me on the phone so I could describe what I'd seen. A lady at the other end of the line told me that they would send police because there was no one else they could send at just that moment, and because the animal control people couldn't on their own enter private property without the owner present. I put on other shoes and ran back around the block while my mother got dressed so she could join me there.
When I got back to the street outside Jerko's house, the elderly couple was gone. I waited a few minutes and about the time my mother arrived, a police car showed up and I flagged them down and explained the situation. The officer I spoke to said, "We'll go take a look but there's probably nothing we can do and there's no way we can get anyone out here from Animal Control for an hour or two." I warned them about the lake of liquid dog poop in the back yard and they donned some sort of plastic covers for their shoes and went back. Soon, they returned and said the dog had apparently died.
They asked us if we were aware of the dog being mistreated. That was not a simple question to answer but we did our best. We told the officers that Jerko seemed to love his pet and pamper him…but the dog did, after all, spend most of his life howling and trying to get out of that yard.
We went home after that. I have no idea what happened next between the police and Jerko but later that evening, we had a visitor. It was Jerko and he was very upset. My father, who sensed trouble was looming, sent me to my room while he and my mother met with Jerko in our living room. When I heard yelling, I came out anyway.
Jerko was basically accusing me of having let his wonderful dog die as revenge for that silly incident wherein I "wrongly" believed Duke had injured me. I still do not know what he expected me to do, aside from what I did, that might have saved the dog's life but he was furious that I hadn't done it. He was also mad that I hadn't gotten the license number of the car so he could track down the murderers…so much so that I half-expected him to accuse me of having been behind the wheel.
Oh — and though he was furious I hadn't done more to save Duke, he was also upset that I'd caused the police to enter his private property. The officers had cited him for a health hazard in his back yard and he had something like ten days to clean it up or face jail time. I remember thinking, "Oh, I hope he doesn't clean it up."
My parents yelled a bit at Jerko, then I yelled a little at Jerko, then my father told him to get the hell out of our house and never come back. Jerko announced we'd hear from his lawyer and then he stormed out of our home and we never heard from his lawyer or from him again. Within days though, the smell from his yard went away and within a month or two, so did Jerko. He moved out. Another family soon moved in…and they didn't have a dog but they did have a son, a bit older than me, who became a good friend.
The whole thing left an emotional scar, along with the one on the back of my skull. In the years that followed, I would flinch and cringe when we were out and someone came by with a big dog on a leash…anything larger than, say, a Scottish Terrier. Everyone but my parents thought I was afraid of dogs but really, I was afraid of dog owners. Eventually, my feelings about them went away. I met some nice, responsible ones…folks who seemed to place human beings on a level at least equal to their canines. I still feel an occasional twinge of anger at Jerko — you should see what I called him in this piece before I decided to soften it down to "Jerko" — but I accept he's atypical of those who own dogs.
So now I'm fine with dogs and dog owners…though I really do prefer cats and by a significant margin. I don't feed stray dogs but I feed every stray cat that comes within a couple blocks of me. The cats may have Jerko to thank for that.