The Crying Dog
1/2/23
One morning, sounds of crying and whining and howls for love could be heard by all the tenants in the surrounding buildings around a lot where a dog was tied to a cylinder. The day was a holiday, so most businesses on the street were shut. There was relaxed police presence in the parking lot across the street. Then the one police car put on its lights and sirens and sped away. It was a relaxing holiday, but someone had chained a good ol’ gray dog to a dumpster cylinder.
Inside, people felt pity for the dog, though they could not see where it was.
As the minutes of its crying passed, some thought, ‘Where is the owner?’
A cousin who could not see the dog reasoned, ‘Obviously this dog should not have been left as it is, and it must be chained to a post or the dumpster, because if it were not the dog would have run away.’
Others were less tolerant. To them, the chained dog’s crying sounded like squeals.
‘This dog is annoying.’
‘Shut it up.’
‘It’s still crying! Wow!’
One young man took a bowl from his cabinet, filled it with sink water, then walked down his hall with the water in the bowl. He brought the bowl of water down to the street and raised his eyebrows at anyone he passed assuming they might have heard the dog crying too. The air was cooling his skin and a fluorescent mural had been painted on boards on the side of a building where there was also a poster promising new windows to be put there instead of the painted boards.
There was a fence across the street.
The young man followed the sound of the dog to find it had been chained to a dumpster cylinder.
This dog appeared to have a sulking face, big cheeks with white and black whiskers, muscular shoulders, and a collar with spikes around its beefy neck, but it was long haired, unlike the usual American Pitbull, so the one who brought the water was unsure what kind of dog this was though knew it was some kind of mutt-pit. He put down the water by the dog’s jowls. Soon a young lady wearing a lavender beanie brought over a pocketful of dog treats. She was on the phone with the police as she approached. Then a green car drove down Federal Street and parked at the curb in front of them.
The man in the Civic stepped out and the dog immediately began to rejoice.
“Woof! – Woof! Woof!”
“Are you the owner?” asked the young lady.
“I am.”
“Why would you leave the dog here, in this place, of all places?”
“I’ve washed my car. My dog hates the carwash, so I left him here before.”
“That’s not okay.
“As soon as the first water pistols begin to spray the car, he gets to spaz real bad.”
“Yes, but he was yelping and crying here,” said the young man, who had left his bowl on the ground so the dog could drink.
“The police are on their way,” said the young lady.
“Why would you call the police?”
“The dog was making all sorts of awful noises here. He was crying so loudly all my neighbors were lifting their blinds and coming to the windows. I came out before he arrived and went back in to get treats, hoping to calm the puppy down.”
“Yes, but only you two came to help the dog, so it must not have been too awful or more people would have stopped.”
“Maybe more people called the police.”
“Why did you chain him on the dumpster?”
“I don’t know – that’s a good point,” admitted the dog’s owner. “I suppose I saw the post and I didn’t want to put him anywhere too exposed, thinking he might be stolen. I did not expect him to cry so loudly. Of course, you can see he loves me. He is glad I got back. I am good to my dog.”
“Okay.”
“But I must tell you something else,” said the dog’s owner.
“What is it?
The man moved his boot, kicked a rock.
The young lady looked at the man’s beat-up car.
“What do you do for work?” she asked.
“I’m a car salesman. I’m on vacation this week.”
“Do you think your dog appreciates being left alone behind dumpsters sir?”
“It was only one dumpster, missy.”
The young man who brought the water bowl picked the bowl off the ground. He pet the dog’s head, and he returned inside. The young woman and the dog’s owner stood there debating about leaving the dog outside. Then he began to tell her about something strange that happened to him.
“Last Tuesday,” he began, “I was driving my car. Someone at my work had put in a complaint about me.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I was torn up about the complaint because it means that I’m going to have to meet with management…they’re going to assess whether or not I was in the wrong. I didn’t do anything! But anyway, I had just put in windshield wiper fluid. I tried the windshield wipers, and they did not work! I was super frustrated!”
“Ah.”
“But – and this is what I wanted to tell you – they worked later in the day! The windshield wipers worked when I was no longer in such an awful mood. So, it’s like, maybe my mood changed the windshield wipers?”
From inside the building, there came the young man. He was holding another bowl of water.
“I heard more crying,” he said.
from 2023