The Tortured Dog

The torture of animals. It’s hard to watch. It pulls me in. The longer I watch, the harder I feel some pain attached to this sorrowful event.

It just lies there, as good as dead. It’d be better off dead. Its spirit could roam freely. I ponder for what it has four legs, for what it is alive if it cannot experience anything but complete turmoil. It has a beautiful shaggy coat of hair. It is on a chain. It has a kennel and a patch of grass, only a short distance from its kennel, and that is its entire life and existence. It remains chained 24 hours a day. In my opinion, the owners are abusing this animal.

It howls sometimes, tormented as it is. I can hear it now, in fact. The poor creature creates a level of sympathy within me, rather than distress at the sound, which if I think selfishly it does send any listener. It looks and sounds just like a wolf howling, looking for some moon.

Hard not to think a bullet through its brain or heart would be a kindness, but I wish I could somehow release it from that specific existence. I am told the animal is half wild now, which would make sense. I have watched its owners ignore it, as if it didn’t exist. Maybe it’s a ghost dog, maybe only I can see it and hear it. I know others who can hear it too, but they don’t seem to feel the pain of how wrong it all is. I guess it is for us to respect the lives of others, but such people shouldn’t own pets. Especially not ones that were designed to help what look like fat slobs to get fit and were abandoned within days.

I can find a place, some dreamland, where such an animal can devise a plan to escape, to unchain itself and find a safer place, a place away from neglect and tragedy. Where it can even find some help of other such animals and create a masterplan. One night it would return with its newfound friends, bide its time, and attack its owners and devour every last morsel of flesh from their selfish bodies. The instinct would come from having been kept as a caged animal, beyond all necessity, becoming wilder and wilder through abandonment and a final violent explosion that leaves a bloody picture of some war. The battles of life, unnecessary and endless. When one comes to pass another one commences. It’s an ugly part of our world. I can only wish for some salvation for that creature out there, on the other side of this window. I can still hear the howling as I release this piece of work in your direction...