I have officially run out of places I’m willing to walk our dog. The street we live on is a Boulevard, which means that it goes from one heavily traveled arterial road to another, thus being a favorite mile-long dragstrip for locals who should drive at the posted thirty miles per hour, but who are also chronically late or feel that speed limit signs are a violation of their right to be unsafe. Recall, this is Florida, where “turn signal” is a recent addition to the local lexicon.
So Toby and I used to spend as little time as possible on that stretch of otherwise unremarkable asphalt. Unremarkable except for the skid marks and blood stain at the corner of Mockingbird, where Port the yellow lab was smeared by a speeding knucklehead. The driver felt so little remorse for what he’d done that he insisted to the police he wanted to sue Sammy Hagar for the damage to his car.
At the time I originally wrote this, Sammy Hagar was the nickname I gave to the late Port’s owner. He’s a shaggy-headed older blonde man whose eyes look in two different directions. He really has no business owning dogs, but that’s probably not fair to say unless you factor in the irresponsible behavior that led to Port’s untimely death. He’s one of the Mockingbird Hillbillies, a nickname I gave to a disheveled assortment of men who sat just outside their tilted, broken garage door with one or both of their dogs. They often issued greetings to me in the dark by the light of their pulsing orange cigarettes, called me sir, and couldn’t seem to remember my name. I wasn’t sure by daylight who I had introduced myself to the night before, so I just said “Hey, how ya doin?”
There is a local leash law that most residents choose to ignore. Poor Port, he was the sweetest pup, a large, bounding, playful embodiment of happy fur and gladness at seeing another dog or human. We always stopped to play, even though Port made the much smaller Toby kind of nervous.
Port’s “brother” Zack is another big guy, white and brown splotches of Spaniel anxiety, afraid of the much smaller Toby, but curious and also generally off-leash. He was sporadically tied by rope to a metal lawn chair that choked him at the last second when he ran out to visit. All of this running, choking, and bounding has resulted in Toby not wanting to even make the turn down Mockingbird Drive, but we always did anyway because Port and Zach were harmless. Their humans have since moved away with Zach and a mean dog they bought when Port died. As they left, they spraypainted the rental house they were evicted from with fluorescent orange warnings about the “deadly” black mold within. It was as if algae were to warn pond-dwelling relatives about their dangerous fungal neighbors.
A bit further down the block was Trash McAllister’s house. This nicknamed residence had more occupants than is probably healthy or documented, an occasional see-ment mixer parked out front, with one or more young ladies hoisting a baby child on a hip and smoking a cigarette while they unloaded groceries. We met their dog Silvia, a beautiful gunmetal gray pit bull, late one night when she got out the screen door, no doubt unlatched for the safety of resident children. The sound of rapidly approaching, scratching paws on pavement alerted us to incoming trouble.
Silvia began to circle us, snarling because Toby provokes anything or anyone he feels threatened by, whether it’s an approaching turkey buzzard, motorcycle or pit bull. We scampered quickly up to the front door of the house across the street, ready to beg the owner for mercy when Trash appeared and called Silvia. I politely but firmly yelled, “Please call your dog!” and he did. I did not yell profanity and threats, since Trash is kind of a scary-looking dude who remains my neighbor in daylight. Plus, he has a see-ment mixer.
We have subsequently met Silvia in the light of day and she’s actually quite sweet, but Toby refuses to walk down that street anymore even though they moved too.
Ordinarily, we would continue around the block and turn left to begin the second half of our journey home. That leg of the trip has been generally uneventful, and for the longest time, we’d pass a beautiful black cat named Midnight who was brushed, fed, and watered for nine years by an uncommunicative older woman in dark glasses. Eventually, I assume something in the Floridian natural order of things killed the lady, the cat or both. No more cat. No more lady.
A bit further we passed a home with three little white yappy dogs who never get to go outside. It sounds like they throw themselves against the picture window when we go by the house, and on rare occasion they are tethered for a brief breath of fresh air by a man I’ve come to call “Fraidy Krueger.” I’ve given up trying to be friendly to Fraidy, since he almost always makes a fearful retreat back into the house when he sees us. One day I heard his wife shout for him to stay out with the dogs a bit longer only to be told, “You’ve seen that movie, Dog Without a Leash!” by her paranoid husband. For the record, there is no such film, so I really do think he’s delusional. He must have had heart palpitations the day a bald eagle battled with a bunch of vultures over a dead opossum across the street. And by now you’re probably thinking, where the heck do you live, and why?
A few more yards and we’re turning left again, home stretch. Other than the day Toby was attacked and bitten by a psychotic mongrel who escaped the backyard of some friends, this has always been the beginning of a safe zone. The owners were nice and offered to pay for the emergency veterinarian visit, after hours on a weekend of course. They immediately repaired the rusty gate through which the dog escaped.
There’s a long stretch of lawn that Toby realizes is his domain of last chance. Poop, Toby, poop for God’s sake! Unfortunately, this is exactly where the seemingly always-outside Bucky and Pepito the Burrito come unglued at seeing us pass by. They are nicknamed after characters in a Chicago children’s cartoon from my youth. Bucky is a raging black Lab mix, perhaps fifty pounds. Pepito is a Chihuahua who draws strength from his much larger brother. They are carefully chain-linked into their yard.
I repeatedly ran into Bucky at night on the leash of a Slenderman impersonator, so tall and thin he was barely able to control the dog and reluctant to take a different route when we passed by. I wore a bright headlamp that illuminated Bucky’s demonic green eyes in the dark and rendered Slenderman even more ghoulish and silhouetted. I would yell down the street, “Which way are you going?” No response. “Are you going this way?” No response. Finally, frustrated I yelled, “Hey, you!” No response.
The resident Grandma can be seen by day. A very pleasant lady who speaks little English, I would say, “How ya doin’?” They are part of a larger story that I’ll come back to.
There are other less noteworthy dogs, some controlled by owners and some not. At last count there were twenty dogs in our immediate vicinity. At the end of our walk, we cross our Boulevard and head up the driveway, having survived another journey. Until recently.
We long ago shortened the walk described above, at Toby’s request and out of my own desperation to reduce the stress of our twice-daily stroll. We began traveling up and down the nearest street to a strategically located yellow fire hydrant, and back. With each pass by the Slenderman family residence, Bucky would begin throwing himself at the chain link, barking fiercely and scratching at the ground with fortunately poor digging skills and setting Pepito off in a comical attempt to sound larger and more ferocious. For several years I considered our options should Bucky manage to escape.
And escape he did. One of the unforeseen results of Hurricane Ian was the arrival of roofers at the Slenderman’s, replacing shingles and leaving the critical gate open at day’s end. The owners didn’t think to check before shagging the dogs into the backyard when they got home.
Toby and I headed out for our 6:30 pm walk. It was 6:24 pm actually. I know this because we have a web camera pointed at our driveway. It views a distant stretch of street where we begin our walk. The video I captured over the next ten minutes is like watching a Zapruder film of my own murder.
Those options I mentioned about what to do if Bucky got loose? Yeah, nothing worked. The dog got out, spotted us a half block away, and took off running to attack us. I picked up Toby to protect him, probably a mistake since I was now essentially between the two dogs, and he felt it was his job to defend himself, or maybe me. But I couldn’t stand to see my little guy shredded by the much larger, clearly vicious, and amped-up hairy monster. I tried kicking, punching, kicking more and more. Nothing phased Bucky. Toby became mayhem in my arms and slipped to the ground, somehow coming out of his harness. A second level of nightmare now unfolded. Toby is a runner. We take great precautions to keep him in the house or on his leash. In the midst of the ensuing dog fight, Toby was snarling at a pitch that sounded more like screaming. The other dog had a much deeper, more fearsome sound. Toby yelped as he was repeatedly bitten, and then my left hand lit up like fire and ice, which is what I guess teeth shredding your flesh feels like.
Then Superman arrived. I’m kinda not kidding. A neighbor witnessed the whole event, ran out, grabbed Bucky by the fur on both sides, and pulled him off of us just long enough for Toby to take off running. Across a boulevard. I watched. He runs really fast for an old man of twelve years. Faster than I was able to catch up. A second stroke of luck, after Superman’s arrival, was the emptiness of the street Toby now blindly ran across. He could have wound up a smear of blood and fur like Port, a bit further down the road. Instead, I watched in utter disbelief as he tore to the bottom of our driveway a hundred yards away, turned, and streaked to our front door, where he stood panting and waiting for me to catch up. I was so proud! I would never have imagined him doing that.
Fast forward. Calls to the police and animal control. Both useless. They lectured the Slendermans on leash law and confirmed (under pressure) that Bucky was up to date on rabies vaccines. We still don’t know their real name. There was some cleanup needed along the bloody trail I left walking through our living room to the kitchen sink, then four hours and six thousand dollars at a local emergency room to get stitched up and be given antibiotics and x-rays.
I got lots of advice from listeners. What would have helped us? A gun, taser, pepper spray, a baseball bat, knife? I can’t honestly say. An enraged animal has superpowers, and most of what you can do, short of shooting a neighbor’s pet dead, will just piss it off, especially amidst the swirling chaos of two dogs fighting. Spraying bullets down a residential street would likely be taken much more seriously by the police than a “simple” dog attack.
We had a talk with the Slendermans. We’re hoping that insurance will cover our costs. If not, there will be another awkward conversation. And now I try to walk Toby around our property or not far from it. I haven’t seen a bobcat, snake, or alligator in our yard for quite a while, but I’m watching.
😎
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