I ventured from my abode yesterday, from the comfort of my warm cocoon and commode, to meet some friends at a beer garden. It was a celebration of birth; a testament to life's tenacity, and to revelry. Fun was had by all.
There was a dog in the bar, a puppy, a little lass on the verge of adolescence, displaying a dogged geniality and thirsting for affection. Now, we were in a bar, mind you, and the owner of this precocious pup had the dog on a leash, presumedly to prevent her from pestering us Bacchanalian bystanders. When the woman saw us approach the fluttering and friendly four-legged friend, she informed us, emphatically, that she was training her to not engage or interact with people. This notion, to me, seemed less like training and more like torture; the equivalent of taking a recovering Augustus Gloop to Hershey's Theme Park. I watched as the foul smell of frustration smeared itself across her face, her lip-curling eyebrow-furrowing anger crescendoing as the pup accumulated a retinue of petters, until finally, overcome by indignation's overture, she reiterated: I'm training her not to talk to strangers.
She was mistaken. She wasn't training the dog not to talk to strangers, she was teaching it to be as miserable and lonesome as she was - so it could never leave her. As I looked at the clear-eyed canine one last time, I saw a glimpse of the future wrench the dog's face into a gravity-ravaged mess; a puckered, saggy, wrinkled lattice of stress cracks and tension where smooth skin used to be; a disfigured, forlorn head, with hopeless eyes and withered ears too tired or too indifferent to stand.
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