A Big Little Life

Mamet, whom I would nevertheless forbid to operate on my dog.
    I felt at once that the left pelvic bone was thicker than the right. Trixie had been compensating for elbow pain for a long time, continuously shifting her weight backward, stressing the pelvis on that side until it thickened. Yet she had only begun to limp a few days ago.
    In the examination room, the surgeon manipulated the elbow joint, trying to make Trixie whimper. When he told me what he was doing, I wanted to pick up a surgical clamp and work on his nose until he whimpered, but I restrained myself. He needed her response to confirm his diagnosis, because this kind of congenital disorder didn’t always show up clearly on an X-ray.
    Trixie refused to whimper. She didn’t wince or start anxiety panting. She just smiled at me while the doctor forced her elbow into uncommon positions.
    “She’s a very stoic little dog,” he said.
    I had heard that comment before.
     
    IN FEBRUARY OF that year, Trixie had been bitten by a German shepherd that I am convinced was a trained attack dog. She reacted to the bite as if it had been no more than a kiss.
    On a Sunday afternoon, we were out for a walk. As always I had a little canister of pepper spray. I carried it in my right hand.
    We turned a corner and started up a sloped street we had often walked before. A boy of about nine hung by his arms from a tree limb in a front yard to our right. He looked as innocent as a choirboy, but as we drew closer, something about his attitude suggested there would be black candles on any altar where he served.
    Two steps farther, I saw what the property wall at the adjacent house had concealed during our approach: a huge German shepherd lying in the yard, back from the tree in which the boy did his monkey act. It was not on a leash or restrained by anything.
    German shepherds are beautiful, affectionate, and intelligent. Regardless of the breed, however, when you see a loose dog large enough to pull a Honda, caution is wise.
    The shepherd glanced at us, seemed disinterested. Nevertheless, I turned Trixie around and walked away, telling myself discretion was the better part of valor, though wondering what might be the better part of cowardice.
    I had gone maybe eight steps when the boy called out, “Yeah, you better run.”
    We were walking, not running, but I wasn’t going to get into an insult contest with a nine-year-old, especially not with a nine-year-old backed up by a 150-pound saber-tooth dog. I could always have my revenge when it suited me, lie in wait for him some morning on the route he took to school, beat him up, and take his lunch money.
    The kid’s behavior so appalled me, however, that I stopped, gave him my best look of disapproval, and asked, “What did you say?”
    He had said it once. He wasn’t in a mood to repeat himself. He spoke instead to the German shepherd, something like, “Get ’em!”
    The shepherd charged.
    The day was warm for February, the trees swayed hypnotically in a mild breeze, and until this point in the walk, I felt a bit drowsy. Nothing brings you as fully awake as quickly as a giant dog that seems intent on getting a bite of your testicles.
    As I aimed the pepper spray, I shouted, “Back!” and “Stop!” The shepherd heeded neither command, and I saw that he was charging not me but Trix, and that his trajectory would take him to her throat. So I squirted him.
    The stream splashed into his nose and spattered across his face. He changed course but didn’t turn entirely away. He seemed to bite Trixie on the left flank, just forward of the hip, and then he turned away and raced back toward the boy, sneezing.
    Fortunately, I didn’t assume the dog had been dissuaded, because sure enough he looped around and charged again. This time, the stream caught him in the eyes, which according to the instructions that came with the canister was the ideal hit. He turned away when he was six or eight feet from us.
    He charged again. The third stream splashed his eyes, and once more he arced away from us.
    Eerily silent through all this, the shepherd launched a fourth charge, this time straight at me because I had been such a bastard to him.
    There were supposed to be five squirts in this canister. The shepherd retreated after taking the fourth stream in the face, and I wondered what I would do if he had not one but two more charges in him.
    It might be cool to have the nickname Pegleg, and without a nose, I might have fewer sinus