And yet, there is a blemish upon this surface. At a level approximately one foot up from the foundation, along the back wall of the house, there is a complex brown stain. The stain is abstract, elongated, and misshapen; diffuse and surreal at the edges, building toward a thick grime at its center, as if a dim brown cloud had been pressed into the building's hem. Its vulgar cause is a small dog--the kind of terrier with the Fu Manchu whiskers--whose daily ritual consists of gleefully rubbing its backside against the house in an effort to quell some feral itch. It is quite a sight, this small beast moving gracelessly up and down the imposing, perfect wall, its behind wiggling rapidly, its face plastered with that speechless, dull expression of joy that only dogs can countenance.
I was perversely obsessed with this little dog and its dirty monument. Like most people, I am both attracted to and repelled by dogs. I am not so inhuman as to not understand what it is about dogs that is appealing, yet I am still too prissy, too innately convinced of my own species' superiority to blindly accept some of the lesser ambitions of a dog. Unlike cats, dogs are unfiltered animals. Cats are premeditated, manipulative, and ultimately secret to us: We are too often prey to their fatuous ploy of appearing psychologically complex. Dogs, on the other hand, are blunt, improvised animals; overeager, grossly spontaneous, and joyfully devoid of deeper meaning. We own cats because we like to see nature obscured from us and we like to feel humbled by it; we own dogs because, on some level, we like to be reminded of how base life on Earth can get.
This dubious reminder was certainly my motivation in visiting the dirty little dog with the large white house. I used to go jogging near this house, and in fact developed the habit of waiting for the little dog to come out and do his primitive business. It was, to me, a rare vision--the arresting spectacle of a dog adrift and free of its eternal, human context; a dog gone wantonly canine.
And yet, in a paroxysm of schadenfreude, I couldn't help but wonder what the little dog's masters must think. Surely, they could not condone such behavior, I reasoned, when it so flagrantly opposed the aesthetic of their home. I began to lurk in wait for extended periods of time, hoping to witness some interaction between the little dog and its masters, hoping to gain some insight into this obviously flawed relationship.
My dishonorable intent was excessively rewarded one day when, as I watched, the owner--a heavyset man with a furrowed brow--opened the side door and came out with the little dog and a garden trowel. It was an early fall afternoon, with metallic sunlight playing brilliantly off the whiteness of the house and reflecting into the density of rhododendron and pachysandra where the old man worked. As he weeded and scraped with his trowel, the little dog ran energetically about, now and then stopping to stare intently at an invisible vision or bury its nose in a loose patch of earth. Presently, it ferreted out a filthy tennis ball and solicited an innocent, excited game of fetch with its master.
After a few tosses, the man grew tired of the game and stopped returning the ball. But the little dog persisted, depositing the ball and barking excitedly, standing over it and tapping it with his snout. The master commanded the dog to be quiet, but the dog barked on. Both grew more frenzied, until the master became enraged and yelled loudly, taking the ball and locking it inside the house. The little dog moped about momentarily and then ventured around to the side of the house. Now thoroughly enthralled, I watched as the dog began to scrape its backside along the wall, its face growing rapturous, the soft sound of friction audible to me across the street. Looking up, I noticed an older woman (the man's mother?) peering down from a window at the little animal, her face growing pale and concerned. She called for the man, who came angrily around the house and struck a disapproving pose. He stood for a moment before yelling "Bad dog!" at the little terrier and advancing menacingly toward it. The little dog glanced up, its face suddenly nervous and guilty, and met the man's eyes. Then, almost in unison, the woman upstairs, the berated terrier, and the now-disgraced man retreated from one another, all sunken in private defeat.
SHAME SPIRALS
According to Mark Stover, the relationship of this man and woman to their little dog represents a classic "shame spiral." Stover is one of the city's few dog psychiatrists. ("I was one of the first guys in the country some 30 years ago to put 'behavior modification' and 'dog' in the same sentence," he crows.) He sees the world of dog disobedience as explicitly dualistic: On the one hand, he says, is the dog, with its innate limits. "You're dealing with more of a hard drive than software when it comes to so many things with the dog," Stover acknowledges. "You're dealing with a lot of physiological psychology, essentially."
On the other hand, there's the expectations of the dog's owner. Stover believes that owners are almost always complicit in their dogs' problems. "Most of the problem behaviors that dogs exhibit--housebreaking problems, general disobedience, separation protest anxiety--are due to lack of direction," he explains. "Some people feel relatively hopeless, and keep too low a bar on what they expect the dog to do."
Moreover, Stover believes pet shame is very much aggravated by the unique identity problems inherent in canine-human relationships. "In a lot of cases where owners are ashamed, it really depends on how much they think the dog is a representation of them," he explains. "The more they would like it to be, the more shame the animal can possibly be bringing on its owners." He points out how many people view dogs in extrapolated, humanistic terms--dogs are not so much an independent species as an artificial construct of human desire. "They're definitely providing an emotional crucible for a lot of people," says Stover. "Just walk down the street with a dog, and you can see how different people will do things, engage with you because you have that dog... and by yourself, you're not much."
I am contemplating Mr. Stover's words over a cup of tea at the Joe Bar, when an attractive woman with a green squirt gun and fashionable leather shoes ambles up with two well-groomed pugs. They are, to my taste, vulgar little animals with faces like wet rags, snorting and coughing and exhaling mucus from their eyes. But they are obviously a source of pride for this woman. She ties them to the leg of a table, explaining her actions to them in that strange, pidgin English that Americans reserve for foreign children and cute pets; then she gets a cup of tea and a cookie and sits down. A friend walks by and they launch into a conversation, from which I pick out the curious phrase, "Amber and I have matching stools."
I look arrogantly down at the little, panting, wheezing dogs, who stare up at me, eager and fawning. They are round and stocky, living fuselages with short legs. I hold out my hand and the dogs come over and lick it happily. I catch the woman's eye; she smiles at me from within her conversation and I smile back. Then suddenly, the two little dogs are hopelessly tangled around the legs of my chair, bound tightly to each other and stuck. They grow confused and begin barking--sloppy, ignorant sounds. The woman looks sharply over and grabs her green squirt gun, spraying the dogs repeatedly as she scolds and untangles them.
She apologizes and tells me their names are Pop and Otto, and that they are the same breed of dog that Josephine trained to deliver love letters to Napoleon, tucking the notes under their collars. We begin a casual flirtation centered on the subject of dogs. As we talk, I notice that she is constantly berating these two lost animals, her voice leaping from the sunny tones of our conversation to a military precision in commanding Pop and Otto. I ask her if she is ever ashamed of her dogs, and she admits laughingly to being embarrassed by their snoring and farting ("God willing, you're outside when it happens," she says). I press her further, and she hints at an incident in which Otto sexually befouled an angora sweater. She tells me she is on her way to the dog run at Volunteer Park, so I invite myself along, and tell her the story of my aunt's dog, Aaron.
DOG PRIDE
Aaron was, in theory, a great source of pride for my aunt. She was quite proud of his breeding--purebred Irish setter, with a costly pedigree--and she lavished attention on him, brushing his flowing, ochre fur and feeding him expensive gourmet dog foods. She somehow overlooked his shrunken head.
Exceedingly pointed and mysteriously bony, Aaron's head retreated a bit too hastily above his protruding brow to a substantially premature finish. The cap of his small skull was bisected by a sharp fin of bone that you could almost pinch between two fingers. Not surprisingly, he was quite stupid. His eyes were sparkless; his countenance forever demonstrating a universal incomprehension. He would, if unwatched, invariably eat until he vomited, and he was never truly housebroken. He habitually barked at the most random stimuli--bugs, music, minute changes in wind current--and frequently grew confused and aggressive. He would chase the shadow of a Frisbee into the side of a barn, and, upon waking from the resulting concussion, beg for more.
But Aaron's most demonstrative "trick" was consuming his own waste. With manic predictability, he would rush out to the perimeter of the yard, eat his poop, and come running back to the fold, fetidness pouring out over his hot, moist, flapping tongue. As children, we were gleefully disgusted by this foul sewer of a pet. We taunted him mercilessly, throwing sticks at him and enjoying the sight of his forlorn confusion. Best of all, we would lead Aaron out to the margins of my aunt's yard, encourage him to gobble his waste, and then run complaining to my aunt, relishing the deed in that evil nine-year-old way, the spectacle of her face draining as a wall of shame washed over her. At these moments, she would become so overwhelmed with disgust that she would beat the dog violently with a rolled-up newspaper. ("It just scares him," she insisted.) The dog would then slink off to eat more shit in a bitter, despairing funk.
I finish my story just as we arrive at the dog run. The attractive woman looks strangely at me and then curtly takes her leave, fleeing into the distance and leaving me on my own. I look around at the landscape of dogs of every breed laid before me--dogs chasing each other around, digging obsessively, shitting, and barking. To my left, an enormous young Great Dane eagerly sniffs a bulldog's rectum. Three nondescript dogs tear through my field of view in hot pursuit of a smallish collie, barking with abandon. In a far corner, I notice a thin, Labrador-type dog mounting a smallish Akita derivative, both nipping at each other's faces with erotic intensity. A large, happy Burmese mountain dog watches contentedly.
As I watch these simple animals struggling to express themselves freely, it occurs to me that dogs may actually be a parallel, enslaved race. Bound to a universal system of definitions utterly at odds with their inner natures, even their few moments of free, canine expression must transpire under the judgmental gaze of a tribunal of humans, who reserve the right to punish based on the extent of their distaste. The irony is that, unlike cats (or horses, or cows, or goldfish, for that matter), the innate habits of dogs are almost universally distasteful to mankind. Of all the dog's intrinsic traits, only barking still serves any remote function for humanity, and, increasingly, even that function attracts negative attention--especially in urban areas.
Thus, the dog must approach its life in a permanent twilight of veiled threats, striving eternally to suppress its inner nature in order to live up to a man-made moral code. The problem is that by bowing to an entirely foreign policy of moral definition, the dog has lost its innate sense of itself. Indeed, the oft-complimented "good dog" is, in fact, a dog utterly un-doglike in exposition; a dog obsessed with the impossible task of humanizing itself.
And yet, 10,000 years of domestication have not managed to bring about a beast that is adequately humanized. In fact, dogs are the most legislated beasts on the planet, subject to federal, state, and local laws that govern almost every facet of their behavior (last summer's massive Animal Control Ordinance revision added two new categories of dangerous dogs to existing city definitions). Moreover, as societies grow increasingly urban, the enslaved dog is thrust ever deeper into an increasingly hostile civic space, where the pressure can be so intense as to drive a dog crazy.
ACTING OUT
I am riding along with Seattle Animal Control Officer John Megow near Laurelhurst, where we are zeroing in on a cipher. We are at the corner of Northeast 50th Street and 47th Avenue Northeast, responding to a report of a lone aggressive dog--likely a stray--reported to be holding the corner and growling at people passing by. "I got the call last night, so there's a pretty slim chance that the animal is still in the vicinity," Officer Megow says, his head veering left and right as he searches for the errant animal. A woman with a small Jack Russell terrier approaches from the left, and Megow rolls down the window and asks her if she's seen a dog matching the description: big, black, barking and growling. "Oh, no. These are good dogs in this neighborhood," she says defensively.
Officer Megow circles a few times, peering past hedges and down alleys. "There was a problem dog; I thought I remembered it was near here," he muses as he pulls away. I shuffle through the reports on his dash: a couple of dead dogs that need to be disposed of, a call about a barking dog, a few more reports of strays. We turn onto Lake City Way and head north to investigate an off-leash report. "We've had the occasional snake report or a bobcat call," Officer Megow tells me, "but the bulk of our calls are dogs, and the bulk of those dog calls are aggressive dogs or dogs running free."
We pull over to investigate an off-leash report, walking toward a broken-down house with Tibetan prayer flags strung over the porch and blackberries pushing at the sides. Officer Megow knocks on the door, and a young lady in her 20s answers. In the gloom behind her, I can see two Labs peering out, shy and keenly aware of trouble. Immediately, the young woman guesses the nature of the call--she has been busted for an off-leash dog before--and she spouts profuse apologies to Megow. He lets her go with a verbal warning, but requests that she renew both of her pet licenses ($15 per year) and pay late fees.
As Officer Megow returns to the truck to fetch some paperwork, I strike up a conversation with the young woman, asking if she is ashamed that her dogs have been so naughty. She laughs and tells me no. I invite myself into her house to pat her big, bouncy dogs and share something my friend Charles told me.
Charles--a burgeoning Buddhist--believes that dogs represent a sort of loophole in the process of reincarnation. The dog state, according to his beliefs, is a sort of supplemental repository for the reincarnated spirit outside the realm of normal cycles of rebirth. The theory goes like this: The spirit traverses the cycles of life from plant to flea to horse to the climax stage--the human stage--upon which it may pursue enlightenment, and achieve release. However, sometimes in the climax stage, just a bit of fine-tuning may be necessary, and so before the enlightenment may be granted, the spirit is channeled into a dog for one last round of bestial conditioning. By this explanation, dogs are unique among animals, because they are the only creatures with memories of a human life buried within them. "You can really see that in their eyes," I explain to the woman, holding the face of one of her dogs up to her and smiling.
Officer Megow returns, and the woman hastily gives him her $45 in license fees and closes the door on us. We meander off to the house next door, identified in another off-leash report. The front door is open and a tremendous woman sits inside, watching TV at high volume. Officer Megow explains the nature of his visit, and she yells to her housemate, who is on the phone. The housemate says he will be right with us, but continues to talk on the phone. We stand waiting as the housemate continues to talk in a loud, nasal voice. All I can pick out is the repeated phrase, "That fucking slut."
As we wait, a call comes crackling over Officer Megow's headset, indicating some sort of emergency. He leaves his card with the tremendous woman and we get back into the van, headed for the University District where some dogs have broken the law.
We pull over next to three patrol cars, two ambulances, and two fire engines. There are gawkers milling about and the place is energized with the ether of spectacle. I get out of the van and am immediately lost among cops, firemen, and EMTs. A fireman asks me something, but I don't hear him because I have just seen a woman with her face covered in blood; blood running down her cheeks in symmetrical swaths from a mangled-looking area around the bridge of her nose. Some EMTs are bandaging her knees with large strips of gauze, through which blood instantly seeps. I draw closer: Underneath her large, black eyeglasses, her nose looks perforated, and she is quite visibly in shock, affecting that strange, yammering monologue of details too cleanly observed, her voice calm but shot through with a palpable core of terror. EMTs surround her as I turn away.
I look across the street at the apartment building where the incident took place and see a greasy, seedy-looking dog--the kind with short hair and big balls--peering down at us from a second-story window, which is covered with some kind of plastic supplemental fencing, as if to keep him from leaping out. Behind the dog, an ugly man with thick glasses sits smoking and staring. Officer Megow is speaking with the cops and a blackened chimney sweep--a key witness--trying to piece together what happened, when a young woman with long blond hair and clenched cheeks explodes from the side of the building, her eyes wild, scanning the lineup. She is visibly shaken and her face vibrates rapidly. "I take full responsibility for this," she blurts out at the police. "My dogs did this. I take full responsibility," she repeats, and bursts into a searing, shattered weep.
At this moment, I see the ugly, bitter specter of dog shame at its most complex. I see this woman, broken by her dogs, her hand over her mouth, her eyes arching and searching Officer Megow's face for something--understanding, complicity, explanation--as I stand grotesquely alongside, suddenly ashamed of my prurient obsession. As he explains that the victim is being taken to the hospital, she shakes her head in terrified disbelief, then stares blankly at the sky. Officer Megow asks her delicately if the dogs have exhibited problem behavior before. The woman looks confused, then says, "I swear to God, they've never done anything like this... they're good dogs, I swear."
I begin to think about something Mark Stover told me, that most dogs who turn violent do so without putting out warnings first; that most acts of aggression simply come out of the blue. I asked him what he thought the reason was. He offered, "The thing is, everyone just wants to get their leverage on this, click their mouse on that, change the channel--this is one place you just gotta put your sweat equity in. If it has anything to do with cell division, you gotta work at it. These are wild things, and we're not gonna change that, but hopefully, we can at least get to a point where they know the limits."
The seedy-looking dog and his chain-smoking owner step out the front door of the building, drawn by the air of scandal. He is wearing a T-shirt that reads "Same motherfucker I always was," and he holds his dog on a leash made from climbing rope. "It's so strange--them dogs are really normally friendly," he tells me. "Usually, we have four of them in the back yard, out of the five that live in this building, and they're just playing with each other."
I notice a sweet-looking collie watching the scene from the window of the building's first-floor apartment, and it occurs to me, as one of those obvious revelations, that buildings that allow dogs must inevitably pack them in. In fact, in the chaotic profusion of dogs, it takes Officer Megow a good 20 minutes to get a clear overview of what happened. At least three dogs were involved, it seems; one of them--a pit-bull mix--was clearly the leader. Two of the dogs were from one household; one was from another. Meanwhile, the suspect dogs and one of the key witnesses are nowhere to be found: They have fled the scene.
The wide-eyed blond woman's boyfriend arrives, and she grabs for his hand. "What happened?" he asks her, in a hushed voice. "Pele just went crazy and attacked this woman, and then Loki and Shasta joined in," she tells him. "It was really bad. She had to go to the hospital." I see the woman's neck straining as she obsessively looks around and then fixes her boyfriend with her eyes. "I just... I just want to kill them, you know? I mean, once they've done this once...."
Another owner presently returns with his dog Shasta. She looks like Lassie, with a long snout and flowing, tan mane. She pants happily and looks amiably around as the man tells his story. "I was here, just reading in my room there," he says, pointing at a basement apartment. "And then Shasta, she just bursted out of the gate--we have a gate on our door there--and I was up. And then I came to the door and heard screaming, so I just come running out and I see this woman just laying on the ground there, and I see these dogs--Shasta and the other two--just like 'grrr' in front of her. And she's screaming and then, uh, Pele was just gone. I saw him just dart--he was freaked out, too, man."
I begin to feel dizzy, so I sit down on the front steps of the building. Two police officers are chatting away, and I fixate on their guns. I ask if either one of them has ever shot a dog. They don't answer. I look to my left, where Officer Megow continues to interrogate the dog owners, and I ponder the possible reasons for these dogs' psychotic breaks. Were their owners somehow complicit? Had the dogs themselves grown so resentful of their lack of humanity that their epiphany took the form of violence? Had their owners been stingy with their "sweat equity"? Were the dogs exploring some bestial refinement necessary for ultimate enlightenment? I grow confused and close my eyes, letting the warm light of the sun glow red through my eyelids.
Officer Megow finally locates the second of the three suspect dogs, Loki, who was hidden in the apartment building's basement. She is black and white, and looks to be a mix of Lab and bulldog, not too big, with floppy ears. She is visibly frightened, and digs her feet in as Officer Megow loads her onto his truck. Megow explains that he needs to quarantine all three animals and observe their behavior to determine if they are irreparably aggressive. "If the city decides they are aggressive, we will make an order that they be euthanized," he explains, as he hoists Shasta up into a cage. "At that point, you have the option to sue the city if you wish." Ironically, the lead dog, Pele, is the only one still at large when we leave the site and head back to the pound. Officer Megow gives the blond woman his card, and tells her to call when she has located Pele.
When we return to the pound, Officer Megow and I walk to the back of the truck to unload Loki and Shasta into the quarantine area. The light-blocking outer door to the truck's cages is opened, and I see the dogs through the mesh of the inner doors. Their eyes are now wide and they are shaking--they are obviously terrified. I watch as they are pulled off the truck and dragged through the steel doors into the concrete interior of the pound. They are just dogs. I wonder if they will ever exit to the light of the sun again.
