Redlining

I’m not a dog person.

I’ve tried. I really have. But even the sweetest puppies become stressed and start growling in my presence. They can sense my anxiety and terror.

I don’t blame them.

I was walking home alone after dark. I was a scrawny six-year-old, small for my age. But growing up in the small village of Korovino near Kiev, I knew every human, pig, and sparrow and felt no fear.

I picked up Nick from my ex-wife’s house in the South Side on an unseasonably warm Friday evening in December. I had my son for the weekend. As we walked to the bus stop for the long ride north to my place in the Chicago Ukrainian village, I turned to look at him and saw a Christmas sweater that matched mine in ugliness and a smile that matched mine in joy. Holiday lights brightened every house, Christmas trees could be seen in every other window, and Run-DMC’s classic “Christmas in Hollis” was blasting from a passing car. A perfect holiday evening.

Except for all the barking dogs.

Every time I heard a bark, I felt my entire body tense. I tried in vain to control it for Nick’s sake, but he already knew this about me and pretended not to notice.

They met me a block away from the house where I lived with my parents and grandfather. The one we called Earless, a semi-feral mutt the size of a small horse, blocked my path first. He wasn’t really earless, but his ears had been bitten so many times in fights with other dogs and grown back in such strange ways that they looked like small, alien appendages sticking out of his head.

Four other feral dogs emerged from behind Earless. I had never seen these ones before. All of them different sizes, shapes, and colors, but all with just two things in their eyes. Hunger and hatred. Earless was normally a loner. Alone, he stayed away from people. But now he had assembled himself a pack.

I’ve attempted to conquer my fear through knowledge. I’ve read many articles about dogs. They all have ancient instincts inherited from wolves, plus newer, more specific traits acquired through selective breeding. Some were bred for hunting. Some for herding. Some live to rescue those in distress. Some just want to climb into your lap and fall asleep.

It all sounds great in theory. But all I know in my bones is they are dogs.

“Hey dad,” Nick said suddenly, “can we walk to your place instead?”

“Really?” I replied, “It’s a three-hour walk.”

“That’s OK.” He paused and smiled mischievously. “Could I… maybe… get a Coke? To have energy for the walk?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Sure. Don’t tell your mother.”

We stopped by a convenience store, and I bought him a special holiday-edition glass bottle of Coke with Santa Claus on it.

About half an hour into our walk, in a quiet neighborhood with no one else out in the street, we stopped to admire a beautiful three-story Victorian covered with Christmas lights of every color, with a lit-up Santa in a reindeer-driven sleigh on the front porch and a full Nativity scene in the front yard.

And then I sensed something. A dark shadow, half-seen in my peripheral vision and half-felt in the pit of my stomach. My muscles contracted, and my breath caught in my throat. I turned slowly in the direction of the shadow, careful not to disturb Nick. Across the street, one house was completely dark. No lights on inside, no decorations outside. And in the front yard of that house, I saw him.

Two of the feral dogs that I didn’t know moved to my left. Two to my right. Getting ready to hunt in a team, like wolves.

I felt panic setting in. My breath started coming in faster and faster. I was no longer in control of my body. I took a step backwards. Then another. And then I made my big mistake. I turned and ran.

If I had stepped forward, or shouted at them, or started throwing rocks at them, maybe they would have backed down. But by running, I sealed my fate. By running, I told them I was prey, and they had to chase me.

He was browning-gray in color, with short, slick fur, weighing in at 100 pounds or more of pure muscle. From my extensive study, I judged him to be half pit bull, half mastiff. As I examined him, our eyes met. That was a mistake on my part. He took it as a challenge. Glaring right into my eyes, he started walking slowly towards the front of his yard. I, on the other hand, found myself unable to move at all.

I felt a movement next to me. I forced myself to turn my head and saw that Nick had stopped looking at the house and was instead staring at the same thing I was. “Dad, why is that dog by himself in the front yard?” he asked, and after a pause, added, “With no fence?”

I forced myself to take a deep breath and relax my muscles a little. “I’m sure they have an electric fence,” I replied, faking a calm and steady tone of voice, “It’s invisible.”

I hoped I was right. But even if so…

Here is an interesting tidbit about pit bulls I learned in my reading. They can do something called redlining. When they redline, which is to say, when they reach a state of sufficient agitation, in full attack mode and hopped up on adrenaline, they become nearly immune to pain. They can run straight through an electric fence and barely care.

Earless caught up to me first. I turned my head in time to see him leap at me. He knocked me off my feet with his front paws and began ripping my shirt off with his teeth. The rest of the pack was upon me a second later.

I curled up into a fetal position, put my arms around my neck and head, and screamed for help. I kept screaming as they bit my arms and legs, tearing away skin and flesh. I had never felt pain like that before, and never felt anything like it since.

I don’t know how long it went on. Suddenly a gunshot rang out like a thunderbolt, and the torture stopped. Four more gunshots followed. Then everything was quiet, and no one was touching me anymore. After a minute I uncurled my body and looked around. The dogs’ bodies lay next to me, and my grandfather was standing over me.

He had gone outside for a walk when he heard my screams. He had run back in to grab his handgun, an old Tokarev semi-automatic he had kept since World War II and maintained in perfect condition, and then followed the sounds to the source.

My mother treated my wounds, and eventually they healed. The visible ones, that is. The ones in my mind, the deeper ones that would cause me to wake screaming from nightmares at least once a week, to cross the street when I saw a family with a golden retriever, to avoid taking my son to Millennium Park because it had an area where dogs could play off-leash – those stuck around and festered for the rest of my life.

The dog walked close to the front of his yard, bared his teeth, and growled. I felt a shudder run through my body. And then Nick made the same mistake I had made so many years ago in the old country – he dropped his half-finished Coke bottle, turned, and ran.

“No!” I shouted, “Don’t run!” Nick stopped a few yards away, but it was too late. The deed was done. The dog took his cue and started running too. As he reached the front of the yard, a loud crack sounded, and he was thrown backwards. He had an electric fence after all. I knew it was only a momentary reprieve. He was redlining. He was going to try again.

The unpleasant truth is, what I wanted to do at that moment was turn and run, just like Nick. Indeed, the even nastier truth is I wanted to overtake Nick and keep running. After all, I wouldn’t have to run faster than the dog. I would only have to run faster than my son.

But I didn’t do that. What I did instead is take off my Christmas sweater and wrap it as many times as possible around my left forearm. With my right hand, I picked up the Coke bottle by the neck and slammed it on the sidewalk, breaking it around the middle.

Here is another interesting fact about pit bulls. Contrary to the popular myth, they do not lock their jaws when they bite. They do, however, have both a strong bite and a stubborn personality. When they bite down on their target, they are very reluctant to let it go.

The dog got back up and started running again. Both of my hands were shaking. But I felt something else besides terror. Something new. I forced myself to look the dog in the eye again. “Hey!” I shouted, “Here! Look at me! Don’t look at him, look at me!”

The dog accelerated and jumped straight through the invisible fence, with just a quick shudder and tiny whimper as the electric shock hit him. He ran across the street, straight at me. I put my left forearm out. “Here!” I yelled. He jumped and bit down on my arm, through the sweater and through my skin. The searing pain hit me like a thousand needles. But I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I didn’t scream. I gritted my teeth, snarled, and shook my arm, leading the dog to clamp down even harder. The pain didn’t get worse. I was redlining too.

“That’s right,” I whispered through my teeth, and I think at that moment he realized what was about to happen. His eyes widened in fear, but he could not unclamp his teeth. I brought the broken bottle around to the back of his neck and thrust it in, just under the base of his skull, with one forceful motion. He gave me one more quick look – a mix of pain, terror, and possibly sadness – and then the light went out of his eyes.

The dog’s jaws slackened, and he fell to the ground, with the now blood-soaked sweater still in his mouth. I looked at my left arm and saw blood, flesh, and bits of bone sticking out here and there. I could feel the adrenaline leaving my system, and the sight made me a bit dizzy and nauseous. I sat down on the sidewalk next to the dog’s body.

Looking up, I saw Nick standing a couple feet away. His mouth was wide open in shock. I tried to speak but found the task overly burdensome. With my right hand, I fished my cell phone out of the pocket of my pants and showed it to Nick. He understood immediately.

“911?” he asked. I nodded. “And mom?” I nodded again.

I sat and waited for the ambulance, wondering how many minutes I had before I would pass out. Somewhere a dog barked. And for the first time, I felt nothing. No clenching of the intestines, no sharp pain in my chest, no shiver.

I turned to the dead dog next to me and noticed that he had a collar with a name tag. I grabbed the tag and read his name. Then I opened my mouth and forced out a few words.

“I’m sorry, Diesel,” I said, “and thank you. Thank you for fixing me.”