Before The Happy Ending : Part I

FOREWORD:
The below is a true account of my experience as an abandoned pet, of how I was reduced to a savage stray on the edge of death, and how the love of two human beings turned my fate around.

This is not here for the sake of being a sob story. Me, Duke the dog, do sob stories? I don't think so. But you have to know this - the world has to know this, if only so a few more abandoned strays have a voice. This is my story. This is where it began.

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I don't know how long I'd been here. Bound to that bush by a tangled chain that was eating its way into my body. Sometimes I could smell the stink of rotting skin and a kind of hell that existed for me and me alone. I'd heard humans talk of heaven and hell. Animals don't believe in such a concept. I didn't either, but I was starting to.

Flashes of abusive kicks and punches ran through a doggy mind that tried to forget. We are not beasts that remember well. But some things are all too hard to let go of.

Perhaps they just needed something to be mad at. Something to use as a punching bag. Because of course dogs are trained not to fight their masters. Even a big fella like me is no match for a truly angry, irrational human being. And somehow all the madness endedup in me being not onlky abandoned but imprisoned in the cruelest of ways.

How long was it that I struggled and starved? From two days, to two weeks to...what, two years? Felt like forever. Cold, confused, going blind with frustration, and then finally despair. This was it. I was going to die beaten and bruised and wrapped in stinking maggots. Damned chain!! Why had I been put here?

What had I done to deserve this?

* * *

Daylight. Sweet smell of last night's rain. I wouldn't have bothered opening my eyes, except that something big was hovering over me - perhaps to kill me.

I wouldn't have minded, honestly.

Except pure instinct took over. I had to guard myself. No matter what.

Hmm - human, tall, a bit of beard. Smelt clean. Leave me alone, please, you don't know what it's like. Are you a bigger version of those kids who throw stones at anything furry that moves? Get the hell away.

Now he was prodding me - well, not quite. I didn't know what he was up to. But being chained up like a dangerous beast tends to make you behave like one. I leaped up and snapped at the hand.

Owww oww OWW. Chains pulling at me, biting deeper into the skin. Stupid, stupid! What the hell were you thinking of? But of course I wasn't thinking - at all. I was pissed; I was in pain; I would have tried to kill anything that touched me. Ahh, this is so far from the charming cad in the commercial and the pictures.

What was this? Water. Food, even. The tall human looked me in the eye with not a hint of disgust. A little fear, maybe. He wasn't stupid. But there was nothing in his manner that suggested he was going to beat the crap out of me. So I let him push the food and water till it was a few inches from my shivering snout.

I watched him warily till he began to back away. Once I was sure he wasn't going to try anything, I slowly prodded the food, licked it a little, then began to bite into it bit by bit. You have no idea how strange food feels in your mouth after you've been denied it so long. It felt so good, too, even though I dared not let myself enjoy it.

Perhaps tomorrow he would come back.

Or perhaps tomorrow I would die.

I didn't care. Finally the food and water was finished; I lay down, exhausted and not as starving as I had been, and went to sleep.