I don’t like dogs.
But that’s not enough to do what I want to do, what I would like to do.
Maybe if it was a cat. I can’t fucking stand cats. It’s their… let’s call it insincerity, their dishonesty, their slyness. Sneaking into your freshly dug flowerbed to have a dump in the clay when they think you’re not looking. But at least cats have a purpose in mind, even if it’s just to take a shit.
With dogs, there’s no end product, no purpose. No point. Time was they dug holes to bury bones, but I’m not sure anyone gives their dogs bones anymore. You’d probably get done for cruelty these days. Half the dicks around here are probably rearing their dogs as vegan.
In any case, this dumb bastard, a dog I’ve never seen around here before, stops burrowing outside my door and looks up at me with this stupid look on his stupid face.
Looks like a smile, but I don’t care.
Even when I drop down off the step and grip the shovel like I’m about to swing for the bleachers, using its head for a ball, it just looks up at me with its tongue hanging out like a slice of cheap ham.
It loses interest then and just saunters off, sensing neither a belly rub nor the bloody assault I’d been contemplating coming his way.
Instead, I use the shovel to put the muck the bastard dug up back into the hole he made.
I don’t consider myself a good person, but I’m not a bad person. Not bad enough in any case. And it takes bad, more bad than I have in my bones, to do what needs to be done.
All the shit that’s wrong with this world, all it needs is someone willing, with intentions that are good and who possesses just the right amount of bad.
It’s having a conscience is the real problem. But is conscience even real? Or is it just my fear of offending, of upsetting? Other people’s feelings get in the way of what needs to be said, of what needs to be done.
If I was the last human being left on this abused rock, would I give a damn? If there was no one around to see, to whinge, to complain, to get all upset. I wonder if I’d feel free and unchecked enough to pancake every dog I saw eyeing my garden.
I know, look, I must sound like some psycho.
I’m the furthest thing, really, but they do have my respect. It can’t be denied. They have certain qualities, that will come in handy when shovels have to be picked up and the world’s shit has to be scraped away.
Photo by Antonino Visalli on Unsplash