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{how to kill a dog} jade moss Killing a dog is different than killing a sick cow. It’s different than snapping a chicken’s neck because they are too old to lay eggs or slitting a pig’s throat because some Mexicans have come up from town to buy pork. It is different than pulling your shotgun from behind the seat of your truck to shoot a deer laying in agony beside the road. None of those things are easy, but they are easier than killing a dog. Maybe it is because a cow dog works the ranch just like you or maybe it’s because you feed it table scraps when your boss isn’t around or maybe it has to do with the way the dog sleeps with you on those cold and lonely nights up at the cabin. It’s hard to say why killing one thing is so much harder than killing another, but that’s so often the way it is. It’ll be tough; killing something usually is. The first thing you ought to do is to tell yourself that it’s what has to be done, because it is and because saying this will make you feel better. Tell yourself that you gotta do what you gotta do, that there’s nothing for it. Tell yourself these things because these are the things your father would say if he was here. Probably the dog is sick. Ranch dogs get giardia all the time from drinking from the river that cuts alongside the pasture or from the ditch that feeds the two duck ponds. Maybe the dog is injured; sometimes cow dogs get stepped on while herding no matter how long they’ve been doing it. Usually this will kill them pretty quickly, but sometimes the death is slow, all internal bleeding and crunched bones. In those cases it’s best to just do it yourself, because it’s always harder to watch something suffer. Other times, the dog is just old, dying from living the ranch life too long. There’s always the coyotes too. They can sneak up on a dog, slowly circle around it, and by the time you see trouble, it’s usually too late. This dog you have to kill today isn’t your dog; he belongs to the Sleepy Cow Ranch. In fact, you don’t even know his name. You just call him Dog. When you hadn’t seen him all day, you walked around the horse stables in the barn and out past the duck pond ringed in brown cattails and covered in paper-thin sheets of fractured ice. As if in ceremony, you followed your own footprints, those cavities in the coverings of fresh snow. It has been a long winter; snowdrifts have risen up to meet the sides of the house where you live like great frozen waves. They’ve come up so high that they almost touch the tips of the icicles that hang from the eves. On warm days, you can hear their slow dripping. Later, you drove the old blue pickup truck the boss left you around the pastures-turned-snowfields looking for him. You expected to see him in your rearview mirror, chasing the truck like he always did, but you never saw him. After a few hours you found him lying by one of the gates to the indoor riding arena. He’s a big white dog, some kind of mountain dog probably. He’s not a Blue Heeler or an Australian Cattle Dog because he’s not meant to herd cattle or sheep. Dog is kept around to let you know if a coyote or mountain lion is stalking up to the stables, through the leafless cottonwood trees, while you’re sleeping. Dog protects the horses and Dog listens to the Gram Parsons records you play when you need to hear someone else’s voice. When you found him, you knew that he was sick because he just laid there; he didn’t even lift his head up from the matted, stale straw. Your father always said that horses and dogs were alike that way—both would go to die alone. You went to the house and got some water and the left over steak you ate for dinner last night. But Dog didn’t eat or drink, so you covered him in your father’s Indian print blanket and carried him into the house. You waited a day to see if he’d get better, or at least get up. He didn’t, so now you have to kill him. You tried to move Dog out to the back so you could shoot him with the .22 you keep hidden behind the head of your bed, but Dog must have gotten sicker because each time you tried to pick him up, he would snarl and bite at your raw and calloused hands. Shooting him here in the kitchen would leave too much mess to clean up; you don’t want to scrub blood and bone fragment and brains off of the unfinished wood floors. Its not like you can just call a veterinarian either. Up here, seventeen miles past the last paved stretch of road, driving a dying dog to town this time of year isn’t worth the icy curves and un-graveled inclines. Your only choice is to do it with your hands. You’ll need to grab a small sledgehammer from the lean-to tool shed. It’ll be hanging on the back wall, by the rows of rust-eaten metal barrels and the chainsaw you use to cut wood for the potbellied stove in the cabin. Don’t worry if the only one you can find has rust spots; you just need one with a good amount of weight and a sturdy handle. Maybe the hammer isn’t such a bad idea anyways; sometimes a bullet will go through a dog’s nose or their mouth or their throat. Their skulls are just so small. Now you’re standing over Dog with a hammer in your hand and a clenching feeling in your gut. You kneel down beside him and put your forehead against his forehead. You pet the top of his head for a few moments and hope that he appreciates what you’re about to do. It’s important to aim for the top of the head and it’s important to have a good grip on the hammer, so you take off your gloves. You swing your arm back far enough, but not too far, and you look Dog in the eyes as you do it because if you’re going to take something’s life, you should look it in the eyes. So many of the things in this life boil down to respect. He looks back at you like he understands. The edges of your vision are awash in the bright greens and pinks and blues of your Indian blanket and in the moment before the hammer falls, all you see is color. You hit Dog exactly where you were supposed to but he’s still twitching, so you hit him again, harder this time. The thud of the hammer and the cracking of his skull seem so loud against the quiet of the evening. He goes motionless underneath your blanket. Shiny pink tissue pops out of the hole you have put in the dog’s skull and this makes you wince a little, but you’ve done the right thing. Still, you wish your father was here. You wrap Dog’s body in burlap since it’s the only thing you could find in the barn and you tie the ends up with pieces of baling twine. Carrying the heavy body all the way to the freezer out front makes you sweat through your long johns even though it’s below freezing outside. You could have buried the body in the snow until springtime, but since it’s not your dog, you decide to keep him in the freezer until the ground softens up enough to bury him. By then your boss will be back from Florida and he can tell you what to do with the body. You push aside the frozen cuts of meat and the bag of peas and you shove the sack into the icebox. That night, you lay awake in your tiny plywood framed bed at the top of the stairs listening to the howls of the coyotes outside. Their cries are long and desolate, the only sound for miles. Through the window you can see only the night sky flecked in stars and the faintly glowing outline of mountain ridges. The darkness falls, thick and heavy, around the ranch. You imagine the coyotes waiting, tucked behind the spruce trees and the juniper bushes that dot the snowy hillsides surrounding the ranch. You imagine them on the heels of the Colorado night. Their lonesome wails reverberate through the darkness and you shiver beneath your Indian blanket. You stay up all night, listening to see if they are getting closer. |
