Dogs That Fight

a vignette.

This morning, with foggy eyes once again, I walked with Lucy. Watched her pace and pant and sniff and chew. She moves suspiciously. Abashedly I might say, like a panther with a problem.

Sweet Lucy. So sweet, until she isn’t. Attacked another dog yesterday on the banks of the Chatooga.

Newman, I later learned was the victim’s name. He was cowering on the beach with a jagged chunk gone from the tip of his ear. “He’s the sweetest dog you’ll ever meet,” said Newman’s owner tearfully as I helped her pack up her things in the blood-spattered sand.

Carnage, sorta.

My dad had waded into the water trying to separate them, Lucy clamped firmly onto the back of Newman’s neck. Wish I could say it was the first time my dad had hurled himself into the havoc of dogs in that red blindness.

I wonder why this family seems always to have dogs that fight like that. Lucy. Riley. Rainer, with his crooked jaw and always-out snaggle. I wonder why Lucy only attacks the meekest ones, and apparently at random.

She’s here now, looking at me with that wide Pitbull head in a way that says she’s always learned there’s something she’s done wrong.

Sweet Lucy. Wild in ways that matter. That’s enough for me.