A Boy and His Dogs

I was screaming.  My mother was shouting nonsense into the phone at my father, not knowing what was happening.  Blood was spilling out of my mouth and pattering onto the brown carpet and fragments of my teeth that lay entwined there, and I wasn't exactly sure what happened until I worked things backwards from the tears:

-She spun around and her mouth was in my face, and her teeth were sharp.
-I was a veterinarian and I was trying to help her, so I cornered her and picked her up.  There was a black purring in her chest and throat as I softly slid my hands under her belly.  Hm.  I may not have thought this through.  She doesn't seem very happy with me.
-She always kept her distance from me.  She always seemed kind of afraid.  But, I'm five.  And I'm nice.  Here, girl...
-She was a puppy some time ago.  We left her outside to play and run some errands.  We came home and found practice arrows strewn across the backyard, and those weird neighbor kids hanging on our fence laughing and pointing.  Our puppy was trembling in the grass among the arrows, terrified of these evil children.

Ah.  Now it made sense. 

The first dog in memory was that one, Samantha.  She was a young, gentle brown Cocker Spaniel who loved my father hopelessly and followed him everywhere, and was terrified of children.  That day we came home and found her quivering in the backyard, she was never the same with me.  Children had worked a ragged scar of fear and pain across her mind, and I was their size.  She was always respectful and kept her distance, though.  Until that stark day of my failed career as a veterinarian.  I'll always remember her, though...there was an intelligence inside her that I have yet to encounter in a dog again.

I've had other dogs in my life, and they were each varying shades of dumb.  There was the one who ambled around the house with a perpetually confused, blank look on her face.  We'd work on obedience with her, but she always seemed more interested in chasing and nipping at the rays of sunlight that dappled through the windows.  Or now, the boob who is an absolute sweetheart, yet feels there are demons in our digital camera and screams and runs in circles whenever it is taken out.  No, seriously.  It's not howling.  He screams.

Dumb as they may be, though...they're swell companions.  I just don't want to be a veterinarian anymore.