Dog Blog Number 2: Hanging Around

Warning: The following blog contains graphic material which may offend some readers.
It was a light brown, smaller to medium, stray dog. No collar. No fear. Just a mutt that wouldn't stop hanging around our rural dead end road property. Probably a drop off situation.

 But we didn't have money or interest in another mouth to feed. Mom had more than 15 cats, after all. A dog would be just too much. And, he disturbed the feline community that populated itself in the back woods. 

 I was about 15 or 16. I took matters into my own hands.  I called Louie, my neighbor. Louie was a small kid, younger than me by a year, but his face looked like it was made of stone. He had a heart to match.

 I had a medium sized string, not even a rope, about a clothesline width.  I thought I could do this dog in without a fuss. It wouldn’t leave. It followed me everywhere. I tried to get rid of it, yelling, throwing rocks. Nothing worked. The mongrel was a sucker for punishment.

So I  did it. I called Louie. He showed up in five minutes, driving his daddy's pickup even though he wasn't quite old enough to legally drive.

 Louie took the small rope, tied it around the dog’s neck and secured it in a common square knot. The dog didn’t want to be led. It balked, stiffening its legs and sliding through the dead leaves. Louie continued to drag it into the woods. I didn't dare follow.

 Louie told me the dog would get tired of being dragged and would run ahead, eager to explore. He came to a clearing with nothing around it and threw the end of the rope over the low branch of a tree.

Louie hoisted the dog off the ground by tugging hard on the other end of the rope. The dogs' front paws instinctively hugged the rope as it yelped and howled in pain, kicking and struggling against the rope. The body was two feet off the ground. Louie held on, watching the dog struggle for air, yelping, twisting, howling. It was too much to watch. He turned away, afraid he’d done permanent damage and not wanting to do a halfway job. But as the seconds ticked by, and he thought for sure the dog would succumb; it seemed to gain more energy from its desperation.

Foam came from the sides of its mouth as it tried to bite the rope, twist out of the rope, kick against it, and struggle to howl in pain.

"Did he die?" I wanted to know. 

 Louie just kept telling the story in a matter-of-fact voice, avoiding my eyes. It was as if he were enduring a painful memory. "I kept thinking the dog would give up and die, that its tongue would stick out and its head slump over and its body grow limp," he said, barely above a whisper. "None of that happened."

 I had never tried to hang anything alive before, and this news certainly wasn’t making my day.

 I began to have serious doubts about my arrangement, and questioned why I did it in the first place. What kind of person was I, to arrange to have a dog hung?

 I should have just shot him, but I didn’t own a gun at the time. Besides, I thought this would be more discreet since no one would hear a gunshot.

 "After what seemed an hour, but was probably close to a minute, I let the dog drop to the ground," Louie continued. "He got up and started to run. I thought he would be in a daze, or fall over, or something. I yanked him back and pulled again, raising his feet off the ground once more. His body kicked and swung, and came free of the neck hold. Crazy dog staggered off into the woods. I never saw it again. Not sure if it died or not."

 I felt terrible. I decided I needed to buy a gun and make these things go more quickly and less painfully.