One Good Dog Read Online Free

to identify ourselves to one another. So, for convenience sake, I will say Dad was a blend of several types of “breeds” that have power and stamina; Dad was a mix of pit bull and rottweiler or boxer, maybe a little old-fashioned bulldog. Dad’s rottie parts gave him his height and bulk. His pit bull parts thinned out his back end but gave him a Bluto disproportion in his front end. He was a tough one in the ring, knew his game well, and he never gave ground. They called him “Fitty,” after some rapper they admired. It seemed to me, even as a youngster, that calling a gladiator like Dad “Fitty” was a bit silly. Although Dad and I were neighborhood champs, our boys were not contenders on the real dogfight circuit; thus were able to pass mixed breeds like Fitty and me off on their equally amateurish friends.
    Naming conventions have ever puzzled us. If we don’t come when called, it’s likely that the appellation assigned tous is unacceptable. In my life I’ve been called many things, some of them not polite. We know one another by the names shouted at us, but more intimately by our scents. I think of my mother not as “Bitch-dog,” but by the warm scent of her particular skin, her particular odor nursing my less fortunate littermates. I was the big one. I was the one on the top teat. My lesser sibs perished in the boys’ brutal effort at selective breeding, tossed like so many field mice into the training cage.
    On the street, my friends, and I’ve had many, are untethered by spoken names. I can visit them, even if they are out of sight, by their markers. Ah, there’s the tough little one. I see that the bitch who mates with big dogs has been hanging around the alley. Maybe I’ll wait for her. A further snuffle and I realize that she is now pregnant yet again. I see her in my mind’s eye, her teats swelling and her self-satisfied tongue lolling as she seeks out a safe haven for her nest. We think in pictures.
    I picture the cellar in which I was born, comforted by the rich, warm scent of my mother’s skin and hair; curious at my first whiff of blood, the sweetish scent of it coming to me beyond the partition that separated us from the makeshift ring; not knowing what it was, but equating the smell of it with the sounds that came to me, the sounds of combat. My senses prepared me for my own experience, so that when I first saw blood, first engaged in a fight, it was as familiar to me as if I had studied the textbook.
    When it was time to put aside childish things, I left my mother’s kennel and moved into isolation. I believe I may have howled on that first solitary night, but I was quickly quieted with a smack. Ever since, I have ducked my head at the sight of a fast-moving hand. My assailant tossed in a hard rubber ring,which I proceeded to gnaw, ingesting the slurry and vomiting in the night before I finally slept.
    I picture the heavy chains that were looped over my head and onto my shoulders as I was paraded in the mean streets by the boys. They gave me a strong dog look, and I confess I might have swaggered a bit. I wasn’t fettered by the chains; I was proud of them. Around my neck a perfect uniform of tackle suited to controlling an uncontrollable animal. A collar that when jerked pressed prongs of metal into my thick neck. A leather collar fitted out with pointed studs was my dress uniform, the one I got to wear on formal occasions, like when the boys took me out to show off to their crew.
    By the time I had reached my full size, the boys had begun my training in earnest.
    Though I most resemble my mother—longish body, muzzle like a shoe box, whiplike tail, I am big like Dad. The rottie parts are pretty thinned out, so I’ll never weigh in at ninety pounds like those bruisers, but I’m in the heavyweight category for my sport. Fifty pounds, all muscle and bone and spit.
    How do we know what to do the minute we’re dropped into a pit? We don’t. The first time, all we know is that our men