Why we have to put down the dog
Sarah Gallagher
Glimmering flanks of purple steel wane a cry of empathy, as I place the four-legged fiend on the doctor’s table. He had become rabid, he had become gluttonous and he had become all too familiar. Time and time again the people adjusted their hearts and fed him more. He had become so consumed in our lives, that everyone had begun to subdue their fretting when he would piss on the carpet. Remember when he was young and flush, immersed in his genitalia phase? I don’t.
Remember the day I brought my family around to meet him? I was embarrassed beyond belief, I could not justify his thoughts or actions and I was left driving alone, listening to the scratched disc glitch of post modernism, ‘What is art?’. He had become autonomous and no longer listened to reason. I thought the other good dogs he played with would rub off on him over time, like a sickly thick tar. Yet his polished coat gleans brighter everyday from all the pats he gets from licking the bowls of gentlemen.
It’s wrong to kick a dog, but how do I make him stop? He’s everywhere I look now. I left alone last Saturday afternoon, locking him inside and travelled into the city. Meandering through the stores flicking through copy-paste clothes he had caught my eye; he had gotten up onto the main shelf some how (he doesn’t even have thumbs). I briskly push through the matte bodies towards him. Hushed under the public noise I said, ‘‘Dogs aren’t allowed in here.’’ He just looked at me with his eyeless, faceless eyes in defiance. ‘I’m serious, if people see you in here we’re both going to be in a lot of trouble.” …I tried to pull him down before anyone saw but soon glazed eyes began wandering. I left him there. I wanted no further part in his escapades. If he wanted to make a fool of himself he could do it of his own accord. Returning home, he was there already, sitting atop the television set in silence wearing a smirk on his mouthless, eyeless, faceless, mouth. The fractious dog’s days had become numbered in this four white walled home.
It’s a beautiful day, bellowing foliage drips from his head but he stands devoid of any notion of emotional absorption. I push him “Hey!” I say “Hey!” “Who keeps giving you all this money!?”. He is too tall now though so he can’t hear me, I’m just yelling at myself and looking crazed with jealousy. People are taking pictures, people are taking selfies with him and all I can do is nod when they ask, “Does he belong to your parish?” I can’t explain him and neither can my uncle R. Hughes. People seem to like him though, but people have a tendency to revel in things that aren’t necessarily good for them. Codeine was nice to nibble, until it gave me stomach ulcers.
I’m not the first to try and put him out of his unknown misery and probably won’t be the last, at least I’m doing it in a humane way. The previous tenants planned to make the puppy bits fly with remote grenades…they were terrorists though they weren’t acting as altruisticly as I intend to. It is no time for being merciful, the balloon has to pop in order to save the rest. I can’t do this alone-he’s a big dog. Will you help me put down the dog and curtail our feeling of bereftness?
