If you’ve been following the chronicles of my relationship with my neighbor then you know all too well the problems that I have with his dog, but if this is your first foray into the Jack Daniels haze induced world of the aforementioned drunk Macedonian, then let me introduce you to the one reason why I put up with all of his bullshit. On many occasions in the past the Humane Society has been called because of the abuse and neglect that this animal has suffered. Inadequate shelter from cold and heat, being made to live in his own fecal matter, never being washed, and his food, when it does get to him, is mixed in with the garbage that surrounds his living area. But none of this can even touch the sheer loneliness, the sadness that I feel emanating from him every time I see him. It breaks my heart because he is just so fucking joyful every time I come near him; it makes me sick to my stomach to know that I am the only one who touches him, who shows him any sort of respect and love.

"He is for hunting. No pet." He grunted at me the very first time.
"No petting. He is hound. Mean dog." That was the second time.
"No feeding. He is hound. Need to be hungry."
Well he’s hungry all right. In fact he’s so hungry that he’s fucking malnourished. Sometimes late at night I can hear him howling and barking and it makes me feel so helpless because no matter how many cans of food I smuggle to him, or how many times the Humane Society is called his situation hasn’t improved at all. And Doc Ock knows this. In fact I think Doc Ock has been playing me all along. He knows that it bothers me to hear his dog crying like that; he also knows that it will always bring me outside no matter what the weather. He knows that the only way he can draw me into a conversation is to start talking about what I can and can’t do with his dog. He knows that he can use the dog to get to me and it sickens me. But what I didn’t know was that the dog knew that he was being used and he was just as sick of it as I was.

It begins like this: As usual a few nights ago I was woken up by the now familiar howling of my poor pal next door and as usual I turned on my bedroom light, but what was not usual was the face peering through my bedroom window. Correction, the face itself was very familiar, but the fact that it was staring at me through my bedroom window was totally unexpected and completely unwanted. What bothered me even more was the idea that this might not have been the first time it had happened; it was just the first time he had been caught. After telling him in no uncertain terms to bugger off I began to make a mental list in my head and it began with the dog. You see the dog has never barked at me, he only whimpers and wags his tail wildly, therefore the conclusion is that the dog will only bark when there is an intrusion that he doesn’t like. Well in this situation the word ‘intrusion’ doesn’t come close to what I felt. It got me to thinking about how many times I had heard the dog barking in the night and if his owner had been the reason behind it. This idea has been swirling around inside my head since the incident happened, but last night it turned from fiction and speculation into cold hard fact. The barking began at 1 A.M. but this time I was wise, I didn’t turn on the light. I could hear strange noises coming from the backyard; it was the kind of sound that someone makes when they’re drunk and trying not to make a sound and it immediately put me on high alert. He was in my yard again. I could hear him rummaging around in my recycling box and muttering to himself, and I could see the dimly lit outline of his bare back and flabby arse as he searched for bottles and cans. It was at this point that I had noticed that the dog had ceased barking so I looked through my open gate and saw my four-legged pal. Who was wagging his tail and looking right at me. I didn’t open the door. I went quietly back downstairs and tried to get back to sleep but the silence was too much for me. It is a fact now that my friend was trying to warn me. He wanted me to know what his master was doing when I wasn’t looking, he was trying to teach me to be aware and in doing so he was protecting me in the only way he knew how. Lessons learned. Lesson #1: The next time I catch my neighbor peeking through my window I won’t call him names. I will call the police. And lesson #2? Some animals truly are smarter than their so-called masters.

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