Wednesday morning I woke early, to help my parents out with my younger siblings. My dad has hurt his back, his L1 through L5 look a little fucked up, according to the radiologist, so he is now in the first stages of pain management. My mum went through this when she had her back injury several years ago. You talk to a pain management specialist, and decide the best route for you. In both my parents’ cases, steroid shots was the way to go.

If you don’t know what steroid shots are, don’t think my parents have the “rage”. Its cortisone, that wonderful stuff that makes the body feel better, just like hydrocortisone cream heals the skin. I have been told this by my beautiful friend Brandi, who is an esthetician, and knows all kinds of fun facts about the human body.

I had to get up early to make sure my brother got up for school, as he is all kinds of nasty when in bed at 7:30 A.M., and my mum wasn’t here to do the job. Then I had to take him to school, make a deposit, buy some smokes, and then I headed off to the gym, where I flailed around, unchallenged.

On the way home from the gym, which is one block away from my house (convenient!), I saw a black dog’s body laying on the sidewalk, with a white dog sniffing and poking at it. The white dog, which I later discovered was a pitbull, was running in frantic circles around the dead dog, in and out of the road. I made a U-turn, pulled into the closest parking lot, and ran over to see what the hell had happened.

The dead dog had clearly been hit by a car, and I say this because blood had leaked from its mouth all over the sidewalk, and the impact could be seen on the road–blood splatter, then tire tracks through the impact spot. I’ve never seen a dog thats been hit by a car before, and before I could really reflect on what I was seeing, a truck pulled over. A man got out and eyeballed the situation, same as I did, and mentioned animal control. I pulled out my cellphone and called 411, which directed me to K911.

K911 isn’t really an emergency hotline, it’s a voicemail that promises to call you back within 30 minutes. Nice. Not.

Within two minutes of thy friendly neighbor stopping his truck, the pitbull that had been whining, sniffing, licking, and nuzzling the dead dog then started to hump it. All over. Butt, face, torso, whatever. Dick had sprung and the pitbull was gyrating all over the place. One of the stranger things I’ve seen. Me and stranger look at each other like “What the fuck?” and then we both try and coax the pitbull verbally to stop doing that, it’s wrong, messed up, oh shit, stop, not in the face, yuck, ew.

After about 5 minutes of us standing there in a quandary over why a live dog would hump a dead dog, a police officer shows up.

He sits in his car for a few minutes, doing nothing, until stranger goes and sees what the hell he’s doing. Oh, he’s calling animal control, so strange man leaves, he has to work. Cop finally walks over and says that animal control is on its way, but for now he thinks we should put the dog in the back of his car. Ok.

Ok. Not really. The dog is some kind of pitbull. Which is fine. I like pitbulls. But, its emaciated, its ribs are sticking out, it has a choke chain and a spiked collar on with no tag, as the dead dog had a collar with no tag also, and its horny and hungry, and it ain’t going nowhere. Even me practically doing cartwheels and showing my carotid artery like I was enticing a vampire didn’t work. I danced, sang, whistled, made baby faces and sang songs….he’d get two feet away from his new necromanic toy and then book it back over there, to do the wild thing all up in the dead dog’s face. I half expected The Horny Necro Dog to start doing the electric slide in the puddle of blood me and the dead dog were in.

The cop mentioned to me that “We don’t know how aggressive the dog will be”. And I totally agreed. Obviously the owners didn’t care enough to make sure THND (The Horny NecroDog) stayed inside, was fed properly, or neutered. To that conclusion, with the spiked collar accents and the dog’s stocky build, I had a feeling the owners were some of the twisted individuals in this world that truly have ‘pets’, as in ownership of a being that you feel owes you something, similar to slavery. Basically, this dog looked as though it may end up fighting at some point. And considering he was horny and hungry, I didn’t know he would respond to us using physical force to come with us and take him away from his new plaything.

Inspired, I asked the cop if he had any food. I did not say donut. I should have.

He went to his car and found a pack of cheezits (Cheezits has not in anyway asked me to namedrop their crappy crackers), which I then opened and got THND’s attention. After I fed him one, I kinda crabwalked backwards, placing a single cheezit every three feet. Until he got right next to the car door, and I was thinking “Victory!” he turned back around and started humping again. Sigh.

I tried this like 3 more times. I have to go home and shower for work. I don’t have time for this. The cop wasn’t trying to force the dog anywhere, the pansy, so I just grabbed THND’s collar and dragged him slowly to the car. He was a stocky motherfucker, too, and trying to make him walk was like trying to shove a boulder. What happens when you cross an immoveable object (THND) with an unstoppable force (Jen)? Cheezits get crushed on a sidewalk.

Me and the horny dog got to the door of the car, but he didn’t want to get in. He actually liked me, enough to his wag his tail happily when he sniffed me and such, and I totally saw him giving the cop evil looks, ha. So I just looked at El Hornio and sighed, and I climbed into the back of the cop car, where there were cheezits waiting on the seat, at the end of the Hansel and Gretel trail. Of course, he hops in with me, wags his tail, and the cop shuts the door with us both in the car. It was a brief moment, lasting only about ten seconds, but I swear that dog looked in my eyes and I looked in his and we both knew what was going to happen.

It was like we were both old, so old, and so tired, and just sick of how it all ends up. We mentally exchanged a thought of “We know whats happening next. Human gets out of the car, leaves me here, don’t have a family, going to animal control, more than likely will never get adopted, because of the way I look, and I will die.” Dramatic as that may seem, when I slid out of the other side of the car, I felt horribly guilty.

I still do. Its not specific. Dogs, cats, bugs, humans. When innocence is manipulated by greed or ignorance, and the innocent suffers the repercussions, we should all feel guilty.

Spay. Neuter. ADOPT. Do not BUY purebred dogs, and then make money off their puppies. That is disgusting. Thats the same as slavery in the U.S. A female slaves gives birth….awesome. In ten years you’ll make a buck.

Realize that when you vote for tax breaks and help with your mortgage, the money comes from somewhere, and it typically comes from libraries, animal shelters, and other GOOD things our local government offers.

And also realize that means that instead of being able to give a lethal injection to an animal, because of budget cuts that YOU voted for, more than likely 20 dogs will be piled into a box and killed slowly with gas….like the Jews in the Holocaust.

I’ll never forget his eyes, his patches of colors on his face, how his paws looked tinted pink from blood, the blood on his legs and face, and the ribs that stuck too far out of his fur.

I’m sorry I couldn’t take you home with me. I can’t afford to buy you food, and give you a place to stay. I’d come see how you were doing at the shelter, but if you weren’t there and I was told you got put to sleep, I don’t think I could handle having my heart broken another time this year.

And I’m breathing and it’ll be ok.