My neighbours dog

Discussion in 'Real Life Stories' started by insertswearqord, Apr 8, 2013.

  1. #1 insertswearqord, Apr 8, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 9, 2013
    My neighbours dog is a small, white brown and black, hunting beagle. He is bred to hunt wild animals, specifically coyotes. The breed was a small, hyperactive hunting dog that hunted in packs, hunting with them had become tradition for some. He is so full of energy that the owners well meaning attempts have done nothing to stop him from being what he is.

    Coyotes are nasty demon-dog creatures that come out at night to kill sick cows, young sheep, and untied house pets. Many cats have gone missing in my neighbourhood for this reason.

    The dogs would be let loose by their hunters to flush out the coyotes. Then they would chase them until the coyotes had run out of breath, and the hunters would follow the tracks to find the kill. The dogs would surround and outnumber a lone coyote, usually mauling them savagely in a pure instinct to hunt and to kill. Then the hunter will arrive with a merciful bullet or snap of the neck

    Nowadays hunters use GPS, but "Buddy" doesn't hunt. Buddy was essentially a well mannered house dog. It was his almost identical brother who would cause trouble.

    Before, the dogs were tied up. There were two perfectly round circles trampled into the grass where the dogs had run around and around. In some places there was ditches cut into the dirt. A path also cut across the backyard into the woods, but that was from the owner. :smoking: Then, Buddy had gotten a shock collar. Little white flags dotted around the yard, showing the locations of the tiny sensors buried in the ground that will signal to shock if Buddy runs by. The owners were assured that if Buddy occasionally tried to become unrestricted,he would get a shock.

    One day, Buddy found a hole in the fence. One of the sensors had been placed too far or too close to another, or perhaps one had stopped working. Either way Buddy had found a way out. He was no longer restricted and felt the need to explore. He would adventure into the dense wood lots and occasionally would end up at the nearby beach. He would always end up back home. Buddy began chasing a animals like rabbits and foxes around the woods. This was fall and there weren't many coyotes around. He would run away after the owners left and terrorize squirrels and neighbour dogs. He would often arrive on the doorsteps of my old catholic neighbours with their small pearly white lap dogs.

    Of course Buddy had no sense of time, so eventually the owners would arrive and Buddy would be missing. They found out about the broken fence, and chained him up again. Buddy's flight had been grounded. His good time of adventure and exploration had ended. He couldn't chase the coyotes. He had the demeanour of a dog just locked behind the thin metal bars of a cage.

    Eventually the owners realized how hyper he was
    when he couldn't run around. He barked at cars and birds. Eventually they put the shock collar back on because he had taken it of and lost it. He began chasing people and on the road, ignoring the shock even in places where the fences worked. The owners could do very little to stop him, but when winter arrived they assumed he would be relatively safe to roam somewhat free with so few cars on the road

    The problem however was the coyotes. The coyotes were horrified and fled at the sound of his bark. They didn't want anything to do with Buddy. The real danger was what buddy wanted to do to them. In the winter coyotes start to pick off house cats, so they came closer to the neighbourhood and Buddy smelled the ugly things. As the winter went on, Buddy became more and more reckless.

    Now though, only a month left until summer, I am beginning to think Buddy will soon go the way of Jake, his brother. Jake was hit by a car a couple years ago around the same time. Soon, there will be pickup trucks and done up Pontiac's flying through the road. There will also be fast moving potato trucks, and tourist from as far away as New York have come to see the beaches. Any number of these cars could soon mean the end of Buddy.

    Perhaps buddy's owners are planning to fix the fence and cage buddy in again, but I feel they can only delay the inevitable. Buddy may not have a hunter or a pack, but he's still a hunting dog. Full of uncontrollable instinctive energy to do what hunting dogs do, Buddy is supposed to die after living well and young. He already lived longer than Jake, maybe too long.

    I feel that he is destined to complete the predetermined life cycle of a tethered hunting dog. He's lived free and not afraid to do something "bad" or unacceptable. Eventually it will lead to his death, even with his owners intervention he will end his life in a moment of doing the only thing he can. He has had a taste of the way he was born to live, and refuses to live any other way after being chained and fenced in.

    Buddy will have been a good dog, the kind of dog I would want to be.

    "My concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at 120mph and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that... and there I'd be, sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a case of whiskey next to me and a case of dynamite in the trunk, honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and fall down into that mess of steel mills. It'd be a tremendous goddamn explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt." Hunter S Thompson
     
  2. I liked this story, and I enjoy the irony in the fact that the one thing he does and that makes him feel alive will probably be the death of him.
     

Share This Page