Don't Mess with the War Dogs

You know, I never understood people who dislike dogs. It’s like a ball of endless love and devotion and sometimes endless energy. Dogs are like furry babies that never truly grow up. Indeed, dogs display behaviors associated with wolf pups. Dogs are basically oversized, human-loving wolf pups. I love dogs. I’ve always loved them. I own a dog in my private life and work with dogs professionally. Working with those animals is therapeutic, I guess why I’ve decided to work in a K-9 unit and a dog trainer. I needed that therapy dogs are naturally capable of providing. I’ve been through some rough situations in life, mainly the Russian draft, during my youth that country was embroiled in some nasty shit. Unfortunately, I had to take part in some of that.

After I’ve moved here, long before I’ve had my family and all that, I had nobody here. The loneliness; it was killing me. That was hard. The demons from my past haunted my mind ceaselessly at the time. To combat these issues, I had opted to go for an unconventional treatment; I adopted a dog. She was a black lab mix named Cleopatra. It was a love from the first sight, so to speak. Once our eyes locked, I knew I’m taking this one home, and I’m sure she felt the same way. All in all, we had a great relationship and partnership that lasted 16 years. She had led a great life and passed away a few years ago from natural causes. I’ve ended up adopting another black lab mix named Jessica a couple of years ago. She’s also doing great, and like her predecessor, also helps me work with the other dogs. Cleo was my rock for the longest time. She was the closest person to me for a while. Yep, I went there. Dogs are persons too. At least that’s what I believe.

While Cleo had a great life and was at the top of her game and in good health until her advanced years, she did have one serious injury. It was something that almost sent me spiraling down some awful path. Imagine coming home one day only to find the person you love the most laying down in the front yard bleeding and barely holding onto consciousness. Stings, doesn’t it?

Now think that you find your pet in this state. Awful, isn’t it? Probably feels just as bad, maybe worse, as long as you’re not an asshole pet owner. It’s almost like seeing your child hurting. It’s a frightening notion.

That’s what I was facing one day after coming home from work. Cleo was cowering behind the oak in my front yard. Her hindquarters were bleeding, and she was clearly distressed and in a lot of pain. The sight forced me into an anxious state. I knew I had to act quickly. God knew what had happened to her. I was genuinely afraid of losing Cleo. A lightning speed trip to the vet saved her life and health. Apparently, the internal damage wasn’t too bad. Still, the veterinarian told me that it was a good thing I had arrived before she could lose too much blood. The staff questioned me about the circumstances of the whole ordeal when the nature of her injuries became clear. I didn’t know at the time what had happened, so I had no information I could offer. Now, when I found out what caused her injuries, that’s when I snapped. It’s like I’ve been thrown back to Grozny, faced with once again with the filthy Chechen animals. I didn’t scream or thrash or anything like that. My blood just boiled, figuratively and actually literally too. I could feel my temperature rising as rage coursed through me. The vet told me that something elongated was pushed into Cleo forcefully, repeatedly. In other words, my dog was violated.

Just the thought of that made me want to tear through whoever was responsible for this, using my teeth.

I was beyond pissed. I was losing my shit, pure and simple.

Luckily, Cleo made a relatively quick recovery. She was a strong girl, after all. I was beginning to forget the whole thing when she got back to her full strength.

That awful event almost completely escaped my mind until one night, when I was sitting alone in a local park. I was sitting there, enjoy me some fresh air when suddenly this drunken bumbling fool showed up out of nowhere with a bottle of scotch at hand. He was completely out of it. Couldn’t even keep his legs straight. He was completely wasted. So, I was sitting there on a bench and this guy came over and almost fell face-first into the concrete. So I caught him. He tried collecting himself before mumbling out a thank you to me and offering me a little bit of his drink, which I declined.

So, this man, who by the way was a local priest named Christian Wolfson set next to me in his drunken state and started rambling; “Y’know man, you look like a killer but you don’t have the heart of one,” he said.

“Thanks, I guess, aren’t you a man of God? You shouldn’t be drinking out like this,” I retorted.

“Indeed, I’m… Truth, truth… You know, God forgives all sins, brother. I’ve sinned a lot. I would know,” he managed to blurt out. “Do you believe in our lord?” he asked me.

“No…”

“Why’s that?” he tried to sound as serious as he could.

“I’ve served in hell, hard to believe there’s a heaven after seeing what I’ve seen,” I answered.

“What, tour in Iraq?” he questioned.

“Chechnya. In the Nineties.” I retorted coldly.

“Ahhh… Fuck,” escaped from his mouth, “Pardon my language, ahah,” he continued chuckling.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him, a drunk man cannot control the effects of alcohol; a priest or not.

“You know, man, I’ve been through a hell of my own…” his voice turned almost anguished, and that’s the first time I looked into his eyes, they were tired and masked a lot of pain.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah… It’s so fucked up, man… I am… Forgive me for reversing our roles here, but I need to get this off my chest," he said.

“It’s fine, go on ahead,” I said, thinking I found a somewhat kindred spirit. How wrong I was, we were nothing alike. Nothing alike.

“I… I… Uhh… How do I put this lightly? I love animals…” he said, his voice almost shaking.

“Don’t we all?” I retorted.

“Nooo, I love-love them, like uhh a woman… Heck, man, believe it or not; it’s better than a woman.”

My stomach turned and twisted into a knot hearing his words.

“I can tell you won’t… like this… but… I also tend to uhh put them down… I don’t want them to suffer… You see…” he continued.

“Yeah… I don’t wanna know, that’s fucked up, man! That’s really fucked up,”, I said without even being able to process fully what this man was telling me. He was abusing animals and then killing them. It took a few moments to sink in properly.

“You know, the last one… I didn’t kill it. A beautiful black bitch… Couldn’t… Couldn’t do…” he spoke.

Hearing this, the gears inside my head turned, and these terrible thoughts started flooding my brain. The images of this bastard assaulting a dog, my dog, my Cleo bombarded my mind. I was feeling myself about to turn into a bomb. I knew I needed to get away from that sick son of a bitch before I lost control. Sadly, I wasn’t in the motherland anymore, and here you can’t just beat someone up without suffering the legal repercussions. It’s not part of the local culture to settle stuff with your fists. It’s all about the police and the lawyers. Though, even if we were back in the motherland, I wouldn’t just beat him half to death; I’d probably beat him to death and the feed him to Cleo.

“I don’t… I can’t listen to you anymore! This is too much, get away from me!” I barked violently at that.

“Fine… fine…” he stumbled away from me, murmuring something under his breath. I couldn’t care any less about what he was saying to himself. All I knew is that if he didn’t leave my sight soon enough, he’d be dead.

He stopped not far away from me, turned to me and yelled out, “Beware of the big black dogs with yellow eyes!” before stumbling onward as I told him to go fuck himself.

He screamed in response while backing off, “Listen to me! I see them, they’re everywhere, and they’re rotten! Evil!”

At the time I had no idea what he had meant by that, neither did I care. Now I know what he was talking about, and that’s an important detail.

In the next few months, I’ve had to live with the knowledge that a local clergyman is an animal abuser and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even seek legal justice because I had no evidence of what he’d told me. On top of that, I had to live with the fact that I’d occasionally see the bastard in town. Every time I did, I was sure I’d pounce on him like a wild dog and tear him limb from limb.

The piece of shit hurt my girl, and he needed to pay for that.

Pay he did, eventually.

Revenge is sweet, really is, especially since those who deserved to exact it did.

I did nothing to him, quite literally. I could’ve done something, but I didn’t – that’s why he got what was coming for him.

It was a really beautiful evening when that happened.

I was out with Cleo at a little forested area on the edge of town that evening. We were just chilling there after a hike. Out of nowhere the panicked screaming of Christian Wolfson disturb the pastoral silence all around us. Cleo, recognizing his voice, most likely tensed up and started barking.

The monster was crying for help.

When he got closer, I could hear something else, something behind him. There were barking noises following the terrified calls of the priest. The barking wasn’t of anything I had ever heard before. It was way too deep and guttural for a typical dog.

Cleo was losing her temper once she could smell the bastard that had hurt her. I had to grab her collar to avoid her from tearing the man apart. Labradors are usually the friendliest dogs. However, this one – she was pissed.

Once he was in my line of sight, he was screaming for help. Yelling about something chasing him.

Monsters, hellhounds, according to his cries for help, at least.

He was begging for my help, screaming that he has no chance without me against those beasts.

I had some ideas as to what he was talking about because the growling and barking behind him made it obvious. I thought these were just dogs he had attempted to assault that got the upper hand on him. Cleo was about to break free from my grip, and that’s the last I needed at that moment.

Good thing they came into her line of sight. When she saw them, she immediately calmed down and sat beside me, playfully wagging her tail.

"Odd", I mused, considering the circumstance.

Needless to say, about five seconds after I first saw them, one pinned Wolfson to the ground. It howled in victory while the cretin beneath it violently thrashed attempting to get out from beneath its paw.

The others appeared soon after, encircling the sick bastard and stalking him as if to play with their hopeless prey.

They even laughed, in their own canine-like way.

See, the things that came for Wolfson were some sort of dog-like entities; they were massive black hounds with fur that seemed to be made up of dancing flames, each had four yellow eyes and massive teeth and claws. These were definitely not your typical dogs.

Wolfson howled in despair for help from these so-called hellhounds.

My response was, “You know, an old Latvian tale about a man that went to court after a scuffle with his neighbor. In court he revealed himself to be a werewolf. Not only that, but he also claimed his neighbor was a witch in league with Satan.”

Wolfson just howled for help as the creatures stood there, seemingly waiting for me to finish my speech.

“Now, this werewolf man said that werewolves were soldiers of God sent to hell to fight with wicked witches and demons. So, here’s what I think, Chris, this story probably has some truth to it given your current circumstance. I assume you messed with the wrong hounds and now the war dogs came to give you what you rightfully deserve. That means I can’t really help you.”

The beasts smiled a toothy dog-like grin when I said that.

I’ll leave what happened next to the imagination, just keep in mind there was a lot of tearing and popping noise along with blood splashing everywhere. Regardless of what you might visualize, rest assured that only a few piles of dog shit remained after the hounds were done with him. He didn’t even have time to scream. The one on top of him tore through his throat once they all dug into his vile carcass.

Cleo and I watched the gruesome execution of the sinful priest, and we loved every moment of it.