The Dog

I remember my father’s dog better than I remember my father. I have no clear image of my father. Thinking of him is like plunging my fingers into a deep, murky lake, trying to touch something at the bottom. But all my hands come up with is cold water running down my forearms. My father is too far below the surface.

But my father’s dog I can see clearly. A monstrous creature that stood taller than a child, a clear descendant of the wolves its kind were bred from. Matte black fur so dark it blended into the shadows. At night, I could see only its eyes—a color I cannot recall clearly, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue, often no color at all. But I can picture its teeth, canines along its muzzle like fangs, saliva dripping in long threads, foaming at the corners of its mouth. Its tail was thicker than my little-boy arms, never wagged, was always tense against its back. My father’s dog had paws larger than my hands, claws sharper than its fangs. I can smell it. The musk, the mud, that sharp animal scent, its wet nose pressed against my skin. The thick scar that ran from its forehead down between its eyes. I can hear its growl, low as thunder. My father’s dog was a beast.

It haunts every memory of my childhood, lurks in every portrait of my family. I didn’t have much in the way of family. No siblings, no cousins, no uncles or aunts, no grandparents. There were no holiday gatherings, no birthday cards, no unannounced visits. It was just me and my mother, my father, and my father’s dog.

I remember the dog even in my father’s absence. Especially in his absence. Even then, it seems, my father was somewhere below the surface. But his dog was always there. My father trained it well. It was his greatest pride. Despite its beastliness—its size, its fang-teeth, its glowing eyes—no one else seemed afraid of my father’s dog. On walks with my father, no one gasped at the sight, no one stepped out of our way. They watched with detached curiosity and said, he’s so well-behaved. They praised its docility—how it followed behind my father, never leashed, tail tucked between its legs, always silent; how it sprang up at his voice; how, even when my father wasn’t paying attention, it never left his side. It sat behind him with ears perked, always waiting for his next command. Other dogs chased birds, barked at each other, ran wild, but nothing could distract my father’s dog. It never did anything my father did not tell it to do. My father’s dog was the picture of obedience.

My father claimed it wasn’t always so. He said dogs, like horses, need to be broken. You cannot train a dog unless you break it. To break a dog, first you must hurt it. In the beginning, it’s important that you hurt the dog no matter what. There are no good or bad deeds; it must be punished for everything. When the dog barks, you must hurt it. When the dog whines, you must hurt it. When the dog plays, sleeps, eats, shits, or yawns, you must hurt it. When the dog wags its tail, that’s when you hurt it most. But every time you hurt the dog, you must also give it love—treats and pure, simple love.

After my father hurt the dog, he would care for it. He would tend its wounds, set its fractured bones, scratch its belly, kiss its muzzle. He would break a bottle near its face, then take it for a sunset jog. He would take a bat to its back, then feed it treats, let it nap beside him on the couch. Eventually, the dog didn’t dare do anything on its own. It didn’t bark, eat or move without permission, and it never wagged its tail again. From then on, the dog never listened to anyone but my father, never went near anyone but my father. Now the dog was broken, the training could begin.

I know most will find this shocking. It might seem harsh, wrong even. But my father’s dog was a beast at heart; a wild, dangerous thing. Without my father’s breaking, it would have torn our world apart. My father said so himself. He was doing us all a favor. I still have the scars to prove it.

I was a kid when the attack happened. I don’t remember what age exactly, but young enough that I still didn’t know anything. It must have been very shortly after my father got the dog. I don’t remember when he got it, or why, or where it came from. One day the dog wasn’t there, and the next day, it was.

We had gone to the park, my parents and I, as we often did. It’s my first memory of the dog being with us, though I don’t remember much of the time before that. For the rest of my childhood and teenage years, the dog never left our side. The dog had not yet been broken.

I had been at the playground with the other children, going down slides and playing tag, when my father called me back. It was time to go home. I was a stubborn, hyperactive child and didn’t want to leave. Instead of listening, I kept playing, jumping from the seesaw, swinging from the monkey bars. My father was not happy. He tried to come get me himself, but I was faster, smaller, more agile. I didn’t know any better. I pretended it was a game, like tag with the other kids, and my father was It.

I’m not sure what happened then. Things are still fuzzy. One second I was giggling, running circles around my father, and the next, the dog appeared. Like it materialized out of thin air. A monster straight from my nightmares. Larger than anything I had ever seen, growling its thunder growl, barking so loud it echoed in my chest. Adrenaline pumped pure fear through my veins. When my fight-or-flight kicked in, I chose wrong. I should have played dead.

I ran as far as my little legs could carry me, which can’t have been very far at all. But the chase seemed endless. I remember running and running and running, the dog at my heels, barking like a hellhound—so close I could smell it, feel its saliva on my skin. I still have nightmares of that chase, where I’m running in place, my father’s dog behind me. I never see it, but I know it’s there.

The dog pounced on me, clawing at my back, tearing my Superman T-shirt to bloody shreds. I fell to the ground, my small body folded into a ball, my face pressed into the grass, swallowing handfuls of dirt. When I threw my arms over my head and neck, its fangs sank into my forearm, so deep they scraped against the bone. The taste of my flesh or the smell of my blood must have sent it into a frenzy, because it bit down harder, dragging me across the ground, mauling me, slobbering. Pain ripped through every part of me—where the dog bit, where its claws carved my back, where the rocks scraped my skin raw. I wanted to scream but couldn’t make a sound. Fear and pain had paralyzed me, locked my body in that fetal curl, my mouth full of dirt and pebbles, blinded by the tears streaming from my eyes.

Then the dog was knocked off me, so violently it tore a chunk from my forearm. I remember screaming then—wailing, choking on blades of grass until I vomited mud and bile. My father had the dog pinned down, his knee pressed against its neck, a bloody rock in his hand. A deep gash split its forehead, spilling crimson into its eye.

This is why dogs need to be broken.

I was taken to the emergency room, where I got surgery, a dozen stitches, and several shots. Over the next few weeks, my father didn’t leave my side. These are my sharpest memories of him, clearer than a mountain spring. He insisted on cleaning my wounds and changing my bandages himself. He bought me ice cream, candy, soda—all the things he never allowed me to have. We played video games and watched cartoons, his blue eyes glinting, laugh lines deepening each time he smiled. He’d fall asleep next to me on the couch while my mother read me stories. He even let me watch sports with him, which he usually forbade because I was too loud and distracting.

My mother cooked all my favorite meals, made me hot chocolate with marshmallows every morning and warm milk with honey at bedtime, which I sipped while she rubbed my back. My parents told me how brave I was every day, like the superheroes I loved, because I had fought a monster and won. My father said I was a real man. As horrific as the attack had been, this was the happiest period of my life.

Funnily enough, now that I think about it, I don’t know where the dog was during that time.

I made a full recovery, and I guess eventually the dog came back, or maybe it had never left, and my parents had just kept it away from me. But I started hearing its barks at night, and my father knew better this time. He understood the dog’s true nature. He said it was a danger to everyone and to itself. So, he broke it, then trained it, until it became something else—a still, obedient creature that never stepped out of line. My father never planned to get rid of it. He said our family needed the dog, that it was there to protect us, to keep order. Despite its new, tame nature, my fear never faded. If anything, I grew more terrified of the animal lurking in our home. Every time I saw it, I could feel its fangs scraping against my bone.

But I saw less and less of my father. He sank beneath the murky water. He’d surface sometimes—twinkling eyes and laugh lines—pat my head on his way out, leave a Superman figurine on my desk. These appearances became rarer, but he trained the dog to guard us when he was gone. When I got up at night, the dog was there, blending into the shadows, watching me with its shifting eyes. I would wake in a cold sweat from the nightmares to find it at the foot of my bed, drooling at the mouth.

I learned to tiptoe around the dog, to never look it in the eye. To move quietly, to hold my breath. To never disturb it when it slept. As much as I despised the dog, I knew I could never escape it. I had tried running once and would never make that mistake again. I learned to make myself small. I learned to play dead. I became a lonely kid, with little in the way of friends. I never invited anyone over, terrified of anyone seeing my father’s dog. I never went out either. Not for birthday parties or field trips. I wasn’t allowed anywhere the dog couldn’t watch me, and eventually the invitations stopped coming.

The dog watched my mother, too. It watched her most of all. Since I never went near the dog again, it was her job to walk and feed and bathe the beast when my father was away—as he was, more and more often. But the dog didn’t allow itself to be led by anything other than my father’s hand. I must have been a young teen when I began to notice the bite marks on my mother’s skin, the claw marks across her face. The animal scent seeped into her clothes. At first, it was nothing, the occasional scratches. But slowly, it got worse, more frequent. I’m not sure why it got so bad toward the end. I think that with my father’s long absences, without a master to guide it, the dog was bound to revert back to its true nature.

I came home from high school one day to find the house in disarray, and it made my stomach turn. My mother dedicated every second of her life to keeping our home immaculate. She did little else. Every dish was promptly washed, every pillow meticulously fluffed. But that afternoon, empty bottles lay shattered on the tiled floor. Chairs and plants were knocked over. Dirt was scattered across every surface.

A trail of blood led to the patio.

From the garden, my mother’s scream pierced the air. I ran outside to find the dog on top of her, its fangs sunk into her neck, its eyes glassy and feral. The memory of the dog on my back, tearing my tiny body to shreds, washed over me. I finally understood my father.

I grabbed a garden rock and with all my strength, struck the dog in the mouth. Its teeth shattered, spilling in shards straight from its jaws. After I knocked it to the ground, I didn’t stop. With the rock in my hand getting bloodier by the second, I hit and hit and hit until the dog’s skull caved in and it collapsed with a yelp. I broke my father’s dog. I couldn’t tell you what happened after. I must have been in shock for a long time.

Eventually, my mother and I moved out. Despite the terror it had brought upon our live, we found it unbearable to be in that house without my father’s dog. Without it, we felt empty, hollow.

My father never came back. I remember sitting outside with my mother when she first held my face in her hands and told me that my father had shoved the barrel of a gun in his mouth and swallowed the bullet.

It’s been years since my father’s dog died, and I still tiptoe around at night. I still move quietly, still hold my breath. It still chases me in my nightmares.

So why, why, why can’t I remember the name of my father’s dog?

The thought hits me when I awake with a gasp one morning, damp with sweat, my heart racing, the dog’s smell still in my nostrils. I try to calm down and catch my breath, cursing myself for still being so afraid of my father’s dog, when I realize I can’t remember its name. The thought nags at me for the rest of the day, then the rest of the week. Between jogs, lunches, and conversations with colleagues, I wrack my brain, in vain, for the name of my father’s dog.

So, I go to my mother’s house. She doesn’t hide her surprise at my visit. Since I moved out, my mother and I speak rarely and see each other even less. We’re not comfortable around each other. She eyes me intensely, tracking my movements across the room. I never look her in the eye. We make perfunctory calls on birthdays, I send flowers on Mother’s Day, and we sit through short, awkward dinners at Christmas, where we talk about everything but my father—and my father’s dog.

My mother offers me coffee and cookies. I know she wants to ask why I’m here, but she gives me a small smile instead. She says it’s nice to see me, that I look well. She asks about work, my roommates, and my nonexistent love life. We make inane small talk until we run out of things to say, and she looks at me expectantly.

“What was the dog’s name?” I finally ask. The look on my mother’s face turns quizzical.

“What?” she says. She must not have heard me well.

“Dad’s dog,” I say. “I can’t remember its name. Do you?”

My mother looks at me for a long time. I can’t read her expression. When she grabs her mug and takes a too-long sip of coffee, her hands shake. I know it’s the first time I’ve mentioned my father in years, but her silence is unnerving.

“Mama?” I say. “Have you forgotten the dog’s name too?”

She sets her mug down and closes her eyes briefly. Her lips are downturned.

“Honey, your father didn’t have a dog.”

The shock of her words stills me for a moment before a sharp laugh bites its way out of my mouth. My mother’s face is still unreadable. The laughter dies on my lips.

“Are you fucking joking?” My skin prickles beneath my shirt.

“No, I’m not joking,” my mother says, rubbing her temple, her eyes darting nervously. She doesn’t like my cursing. “We’ve never had a dog. Your father hated dogs. And honestly, so do I. I think it’s the only thing we ever agreed on.”

A lump of coal ignites in the pit of my stomach.

“Then what the fuck is this?” I ask, rolling up my sleeves to expose the keloid scars on my forearms—the lacerations where the dog tore a chunk from my flesh. My mother turns her head at the sight.

“This,” she says, “is exactly why I hate dogs. People get these things and don’t know how to train them. That beast attacked you at the park when you were eight. You were running from your dad when its owner dropped the leash and the dog just . . . chased after you. Your father had to beat it off you with a rock. He pressed charges against the owner and that’s the last time we let you anywhere near a dog. How could I ever let something like that into our home?”

Silence stretches between us.

“Honey?” my mother says, when I still don’t speak. She reaches to touch my shoulder, but I flinch. My face is frozen. Slow, mounting panic grips my throat; saliva pools inside my mouth.

I try to recall the dog—the eyes in the shadows, the drool at the foot of my bed, that stale animal scent. The fear that gripped my every waking moment. Tiptoeing in the dark, moving unseen from room to room, and always, always, the dog watching me. The memories slip like water through my fingers, pooling into a puddle. A deep, murky lake.

“But . . .” I stammer. “I remember it. It was there.”

The sadness in my mother’s eyes breaks something inside me. I stand and pace the room. I want to escape.

“It attacked you!” I yell, turning toward her. “You . . . you had these marks everywhere. Bite marks. Scratches!”

My mother swallows hard. “Those were bruises, not scratches.”

I sit on the floor to keep from collapsing. My mother hasn’t moved from her chair. The image of the dog flickers in my mind, the details melting away as I try to grab onto them. What color was its fur? One second it’s black, the next it looks gray. I imagine it a deep, dark brown. Its eyes shift—yellow, then blue, then empty, soulless voids; tear-soaked, childish eyes.

I may not remember what the dog looked like, but there are things I can see again now—the dog at my father’s side. The dog, obedient and quiet, following my father around. The dog, asleep beside him on the couch. My father patting the dog’s head, kissing the dog’s muzzle. Bringing his bat down the dog’s back. Glass shattering next to the dog’s face. The dog’s cries. It’s all real. I remember the pats like he was patting my own head. The shards of glass like they cut through my own face. The blows like they landed on my own back. I hear it—the dog slobbering in the dark, the dog’s growls, his howls late at night, the dog chasing me, the dog mauling me, my mother’s blood inside the dog’s mouth.

“But Dad trained him . . .” I whisper—to myself or to her, I don’t know. “He said he had to break it. To keep it in line. So it could watch us. When he wasn’t there.”

“Honey,” my mother says, tears down her face now. “Your father was always there.”

Something freezes in my veins, like ice water poured into my blood. I feel myself waning. My reality is a slippery surface I can no longer stand on. A final memory submerges me—bloody rock, caved-in skull, shards of teeth. I sink to the bottom.