Sep 21, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Torrent of Consciousness, or Leashless Grammar, Punctured Punctuations, OR:
DOG-FIGHT!
September 21st, 2014
Vijaya Sundaram
So I’m walking down one of the dog-inhabited streets in my neighborhood enjoying the cool evening air and thinking how nice it’s to be walking with my dog Holly who is the most beautiful Standard Poodle in the whole world and who is the goofiest 9-month old pup you ever saw with no vanity no vanity at all just a tumbling mess of poodle who happens to look elegant after coming home from the groomers with a bow around her neck with silken puppy hair cut close but not silly and with gently waving curly fantail like a flourish of joy and I’m thinking that when I get home I’ll be making dinner for my sweet family and then grade some papers and feel like I’ve finished off the day to my satisfaction when I’ve written my self-inflicted obligatory 100-word short story for the flash fiction group that I’m a part of online when my dog and I see a quiet cat sitting in feline fashion at ease with itself and with life, near a car. And I say to Holly look look there’s a cat, and Holly who has seen an actual cat only about two or three times in her conscious existence is fascinated and leans closer and the cat is getting ready to flee or fight when the cat’s neighbor, a woman who might be in her mid-thirties or early forties shows up with a wheeled garbage bin and she and I get to talking about the stray cats in the neighborhood which her neighbor to her left feeds freely and this woman and Holly greet each other and the woman seems really nice when suddenly out of the right house a lumpen misshapen ungainly bulldog comes gallumphing towards us and i tense up because Holly sometimes is reticent in manner towards older male dogs and gets nervous. However the bulldog seems friendly enough and greets the woman whom it seems to know and like and touches noses with Holly wagging its little non-existent stump-hint of a tail, and out of the corner of my eye, I see its presumed owner come trotting tensely up the street towards us, clearly somewhat alarmed that his dog had rushed out of the house, when suddenly, GRRRRROWL, BARK!
DOGFIGHT! Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God DOGFIGHT!
This beastly barrel of a bulldog is charging mindlessly towards my dainty but feisty Holly, who is yelling back, backing away all the while, while the bulldog’s plunging forward, aiming for what seems to me to be my dog’s neck, and from there being two dogs, there’s a sea of dogs around me, one pulling away, yet staying close to me, and the other pushing madly at me and at my dog, in pure and terrifying attack mode, and not remembering or even knowing at that moment that one should NEVER EVER separate two fighting dogs by hand I plunge into the mêlée and shove the bulldog away from my baby pup who is by now so terrified that she’s slipped her own collar and leash and is in abject terror but still unwilling to leave the general vicinity of her mom.
And in pushing the bulldog away from my baby I get BITTEN BITTEN by that horrid beast of a bulldog with its ugly fanged mouth and this creature commits this heinous deed in a thug-like remorseless way and meanwhile his owner wrestles him to the ground and I’m crying my hand my hand, it’s bleeding. I hope my dog isn’t bleeding, will you hold her please she’s slipped her collar and I can’t seem to get it on and I’m close to tears and the woman I’d been talking to puts her hands around Holly’s shoulders and gently steers her into her house inviting me to come in and she’s comforting both of us offering Holly a bowl of water and looking around for a treat to give her but I say I have a treat here it is Holly and Holly looks fine and her tail is back up and she’s not bitten OR bleeding and she looks less freaked out but I am still in panic mode and I’m holding my hand under running water in the woman’s kitchen sink, while her husband (“I’m Laura, he’s Dan,” says my kindly host) looks through his emergency First Aid kit, fishes out a Bandaid and ointment, no I need some alcohol first I say, and he finds an alcohol swab which I use on my (now paper-towel-dried but still bleeding finger and then apply the Band-aid, thanking them both the while and I’m chattering nonstop I hope that dog’s had his shots, I hope my finger’s going to be okay, I say, and Laura says, he’s a good dog, he has never bitten anyone before and I’m so sorry because he was running up to say hello to me because I give him treats, and it’s my fault it all happened. I say to her that the dog had not had a collar, and as we’re talking the dog’s owner knocks at the door and enters and looks terribly contrite and upset and says I’m so sorry about what happened and he assures me that his dog has had all his shots and I ask did he slip his collar and leash? And the man says, I should never have let Max out without his collar and leash this is the last time I’ll do that for sure. And I’m thinking you mean, you let him out like that every time? but I say, how come? and he says, well it’s a short route from his door to his truck, and Max usually just comes out and jumps in.
We stand around digesting that information, and the silence is big.
And I surprise myself because I find myself saying it wasn’t his fault, it was just an accident, Max didn’t mean to bite, it was just an unfortunate series of events, don’t worry about it. The man looks relieved, but says, I’m right next door to Laura, if you need me for anything at all, and I realize he’s talking about vet visits for Holly or doctor visits for me, and I say, I’m sure it’s nothing, just a small bite, please don’t worry about it. Thus we mutually reassure each other and he goes back, still looking very upset. Meanwhile, my panic level has come down several notches, and I’m glad I didn’t get upset and angry with the poor man whose dog might have almost killed mine (but didn’t) and bit me, because, after all, he’s just an unfortunate wretch to be the owner of that belligerent unpredictable bully of a bulldog* and one HAS to feel sorry for him.
And I thank my hosts and sally forth down the street with Holly and reach my home and THEN burst into tears and tell my husband and daughter about it all and get comforted and then I get to work prosaically cutting onions and other vegetables for dinner and happy that my loving husband and child had already helped by cutting cabbage and getting that ready and I cook a fantastic dinner and everyone is fine again
Except that my finger is infected and I see the doctor two days later and here I am downing an antibiotic twice a day for five to seven days and feeling resentful about it all but at least I have a story to tell, right?
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P.S. I add this a few days later: I actually thought it was an okay, even nice, dog at first, and I don’t hate bulldogs, although their faces are harder to read, and they can be like barrels ploughing into one, when they want to. I still don’t hate that dog, although I wrote about it in a fit of resentment. Also, it could have bitten my finger OFF, but it didn’t — the bite, though stinging, was not terrible, so all is well, right?
🙂
Tags: bull dog vs poodle, dog-fight, punctuations be damned!, real life incident, Run-ons, Stream-of-consciousness, unleashed