The Wrong Dog’s Ass
NOTE TO THE READERS: This is a true story of a dog fight I broke up during the early months of the 2020 Pandemic. Everything written happened, at least as I remember it.
It was a time of unrest for many species, apparently. He found this out as he always did: after it had already begun. What had begun, first, was an enigmatic virus that melted minds. People broke in half and, many, in full. In its first wake, a common instance of Americana occurred. Don't mistake this categorization for forgiveness; it's simply pattern recognition. It was an old, familiar sickness, unlike the world-halting one we were all still figuring out. The days were suspicious. The anticipation of what could was always stronger than what did.
He watched them gather across the street one morning. It was something he did a lot of recently; watch. One of the men in blue saw this, and approached him. He must've seemed friendly enough, or the man in blue simply had to piss that bad. The man asked politely, and no reason for denial could be conjured, and frankly, any rejection would be based more on allegiance toward an idea than any semblance of personal concern or worry. Not to mention, a man with a full bladder is just a piss balloon waiting to burst. Not much of a threat.
So he guided the man in blue through his sanctuary of weed, hand sanitizer, and paper products. He asked that the man step over the scattered post-it's scribbled with platitudes. and kindly overlook the Glock-shaped water pipe that one must look suicidal to puff on. And the man in blue obliged. The man went about his business as only a man full of piss could; hastily, and (presumably) with his eyes closed.
As he backtracked his way out, he felt it necessary to say, as if to preemptively ease any potential feelings he sensed of guilt-laced collusion: "Look, if it matters, I think the guy should be in jail for what he did, too".
He waited for sounds that never came, that night and the nights that followed. If the sounds were there, they weren't as loud as he imagined they would be. Mornings quickly became nights, and days became an irrelevant metric. When more became known, the fear eased for the half-broken, and outside was safe again. That was where the unrest resurfaced, in the same place the man in blue appeared.
He wasn't watching on this day. He saw, but didn't stare. What he saw seemed ordinary, yet precarious: two neighbors unfamiliar to him, but seemingly familiar to each other. They talked a body length apart, while their dogs, one stout and wiry, the other slender and composed, shared sacred space. The slender one sat still, staring intently at the stout bulldog who yapped before him.
Maybe he thought of the imagery as he passed. It was a microcosm of the moment: the Small, yet ferocious, barking in the face of Authority, who stood tall, awaiting the moment of provocation so they could pounce, bite, drag, and plead, "SEE?! I told you they only came for blood!".
When it came, no one could truly say with impartiality which side initiated conflict. The moment illuminates a truth inside of you. A split second where you're subconscious tells you what side you’re on.
Now halfway up the block, the shrill of screaming dog owners reverberated through his spine. “HELP! HELP!” As he lumbered down the street (why is it so hard to look cool running downhill?), towards the standoff, his thoughts of heroism quickly deflated as the mother of the stout, wiry dog, the one whose cheek fat was trapped between the jaws of a fucking athlete in canine terms, cried out, "PUT YOUR FINGER IN IT'S ASSHOLE."
He had never heard this phrase, let alone heard it yelped in such a conciliatory manner. It was like a eureka moment. "I've got a solution! finger bang the damn thing!" This, apparently, was a common solution to breaking up dog fights, and, in retrospect, he imagined the effect it might have on him, and realized this couldn’t be the dog mom’s first rodeo.
He watched the neighbors as they danced with the dogs, each tugging on the hind legs of their respective mutt, but it was useless, hence the suggestion of sodomy. The stout and wiry one was now foaming at the mouth. The moment was here, and he jumped into action, finger first.
As his finger soared through the air, the question of why he was assigned this job, and not the job of leg tugger flooded his brain, He wished he had time to ask.
"WRONG DOG!". It was a declaration that would holster even the quickest finger in the West.
He was going for the stout and wiry one. The one foaming at the mouth. He almost fingered the wrong dog's ass. Even the slender dog, the one composed until it wasn't, shot him a look, like, "Christ, this fucking guy has no idea how, or who, to help!"
Thankfully, the look of indignation required that the slender and, once again, composed dog release its grip. When it noticed its faux paw (cute, huh?), the slender pup shot back at the frothy snout of the bulldog, who was now throwing up bile, but he was held to the ground by the guy who had no idea how, or who, to help.
He pressed the slender pup into the pavement, holding it still. It quickly broke from its animalistic reverie, and looked around like it had just come to. A slight wag of the tail. After all, they're animals, acting on impulse. They have an excuse.
He walked away from the fight with a fecal-less finger. He was hailed a hero by neighbors, who clearly had not witnessed his near complicity in an inter-species sexual assault. They suggested worse outcomes had he not been there. "I thought someone was dying", "Thank god you were here", "It could've been killed!". They weren't entirely wrong. His sprung finger served as the proverbial warning shot amidst a barroom brawl. The threat of a life forever changed. Whose, we won't know until after.
The rest of that day was lost to him. Man was in a state of unrest, and apparently, so was dog. In a moment of panic, of intended benevolence, he'd nearly committed the cardinal sin of ambivalence. He'd nearly fingered the wrong dog's ass.