The Man Who Kills Dogs

It was just scrap pizza, more dough than nutrition really, but it was food and when you are on the streets you learn very quickly to take pleasure from whatever you can get. it had been thrown out with the trash from the back of the Italian restaurant on Seventh, the place that always smells so good as I pass (and even manages to lift my head upward momentarily, instead of staring at the pavement). It is a place that makes me dream of sitting inside its faux Venetian walls as an attentive waiter brings me ‘most everything on the menu along with a nice cold drink to wash it down. Barney always used to help me find food, but now Barney is gone. Barney was a dog and the Man Who Kills Dogs stole him away from me.

* * * * *

I came across Barney in this very alleyway, just before I suffered my first winter. He had been a stray for quite a long time, I could tell. He probably weighed less than fifty pounds and a hand run down his side would have bounced across each of his straining ribs and felt the frightened beat of his heat. His coat was an interesting mix of brown and black with a distinctive streak of white on his underbib, though it had long since lost any of the sheen it might once have possessed. His body might have been losing some fight or other, but not his eyes. They were big and wide, great ochre disks set in hopeful white opals.

At first he was as wary of me as I was of him but then I could see as his nose twitched at the bacon pieces I had found in the dumpster. I offered some out to him and he came a little closer. In the end I placed a few pieces on the floor and retreated a few feet, gave him a chance to get acquainted at his own speed. It was rotten but I’ll bet it smelled like a still sizzling steak to his hungry nose. After a few moments of edging forward and retreating with an unsure look creasing his eyes he rushed forward, grabbed the meat from the floor and rushed back to his dark corner again to eat. We performed this tentative routine for almost half an hour before he gained the confidence to take the food directly from me.

Barney became my friend. My only true friend, and we stuck together ever since.

It was nice to have a companion, and I guess over the next two years or so I grew (in some ways) to love Barney. He never complained, never criticised and took me purely for who I was. That’s the thing with dogs - it’s why I love them so much more than humans - they demand less of you and seem happy purely to be by your side. They genuinely seem to care.

Barney had a good nose. Before he joined me I would often skulk down an alleyway and search for hours for scraps of food or leftovers, but once he became my constant companion so, it seemed, did a better and more regular supply of food. It’s alluring scent never escaped his nose and on occasion we ate until we could eat no more.

Life was better then. I had a friend and I had food to eat.

I miss Barney more than I can tell.