Confronting Rocky

December 1999

The dog jumping the fence dream came from a memory before my official memory begins. Wait, that's not true either. I have always claimed that I remember my crib and a press board train that fit on the rail of the crib. This was later. This was pre-kindergarten and Mom had taken me on the bus to somewhere and we were walking together. Mom was dressed up and was wearing a hat. I was so happy and proud and excited to be with her. We had been on the bus and had lunch and we were headed back. We were on a residential street. There was shade and morning sun coming through the shade and it was peacefully quiet. I had a joy and contentedness that was just I don't know, hasn't been matched since. I was looking at the houses as we walked down the tree-lined street. I saw the dog-- it was a big black dog, maybe a short hair lab-- and got a little skittish but I saw that he was behind a chain link gate. The dog started to bark and Mom took my hand and said, "It's ok," using her dismissive, sing-song voice. The dog was jumping straight up and barking hysterically. I was trying to get to the next house. I didn't want to see the dog but I was already turning my head to watch him. That's the part that I believe is real. I say I believe because I dreamed the whole thing over and over for a long time after the incident. In the dream the dog clears the fence and charges us. All of it done in complete silence. Then Mom moves away. She doesn't walk or run and she doesn't speak but it's like she is suddenly repositioned and suddenly, inexplicably across the street and half way up the block. I would wake up just as the dog leaped at me.The dream went away after awhile but the memory of the dream never did. It made sense then that I grew up afraid of any dog that barked, jumped, ran and was larger than a loaf of bread.

At first I wouldn't tell anyone, not even when Jeff Ward down the street got a Weimaraner and the back yard smelled of dead grass, sun baked cinder blocks,dog piss and dog shit and the dog, I think his name was George, would jump up and put his paws on my shoulders. I wouldn't tell Jeff how scared I was. But by the time I got to high school I made it in to a running gag. That way it could serve dual purposes: it was humorously ironic that a "big" and "tough" football player was afraid of dogs, and I generally liked playing against the stereotypical jock anyway; and it could notify owners to keep their dog at bay.

One October night when I was 19 or so I was trying to find a house where there was a Halloween party going on. I can't remember if it was an official sanctioned church party or a party given by friends from church. I think the hosts were the Albarians, but I could be wrong.In either case it was a house I had never been to and neither had Robert, my good friend. We were somewhere west of Van Nuys Boulevard, maybe it was Canoga Park, and we were on the right street but we didn't have the address. There were a lot of cars--some of the were familiar looking-- and we had narrowed it down to two houses. They were both dark but we figured maybe that was for effect. There was music but it was hard to determine where it was coming from; it was muted and sounded as though it was hovering over our heads. The house directly in front of where we stood had a chain link fence around it; the house to our right had none.
"Would an Armenian put an ugly cyclone chain link fence around his front yard?" I asked incredulously.
"I think this is it though," Robert said.
"You sure?"
"No, but I got a 50-50 chance."

That's when the dog came blasting out of nowhere, a stupid looking, mangy tan and white little sheep dog with the comically short legs. He was barking manically, savagely like we were resident puppy killers. I jerked and jolted as if Old Scratch himself has crept up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and singed the skin with the touch of his white hot sulfurous hand.
"Whoa! Easy there, Jack."
"I don't like dogs.
"No kidding."
"I used to have bad dreams when I was little about a big dog hopping a fence."
"This dog's no threat. No chance he's getting over the fence."
"Yeah? You don't know."
"Look, you want the dog to shut up you have be the alpha dog."
"The what?"
"Hey, dog! Quiet! Down boy!"
"Way to go, Robes. He's ten times crazier."
"Wait a minute now, if this is the Albarians, then the dog speaks Armenian."
" Ha-ha. Yeah, maybe."
"Seriously. Watch this. Shoon! Soos!"
"It's not working. Maybe you have to know his name."
"Everybody calls their dog shoon."
"We name our dogs Dog?"
"Of course! We're a very practical people."

But the dog was more hysterical than ever. He was trying to push his face through the bottom of the fence, all the while snarling, barking and making other guttural sounds.
"Come on Robes, let's get out of here. I don't like dogs. I told you, man."
"A tough guy like you?"
"Right now I'm all flight and no fight. I'm very practical."
"This is the place. Come on, tell that dog to shut up in Armenian. Confront your fears and prove that we're at the right place."
"Soos shoon, soos!"
We were barking out our commands when the owner of the dog came out, asking us in a manner rather rude if there was someway he could help us. Much to our ok make that much to my mortification, the man wasn't Armenian. He was highly annoyed though.
"Oh yeah," Robert said nonchalantly, "we're looking for the Albarian residence."
The man pointed to his left, then told his dog, Topper, to shut up and go inside, which the dog did immediately. I don't remember much about the party except that I was still rattled by Topper for a long time.

That's how it was. I hated people who said of their barking dog, "Just ignore him," or "He hasn't bitten anyone. Not yet, anyway!" When my oldest was five and began begging and bartering for a dog, I eventually gave in. I got the wrong dog though and he grew to be the size of Marmaduke. When he ran away for the fifth time, Grace and I said to each other, "Run Sherlock, run." But owning a dog was different than encountering one. We did better with a smaller dog and currently have two of them. Nevertheless, I still am nervous and jumpy around big, barking dogs behind fences. There is a huge German Shepherd around the corner from us; we haven't walked our dogs for years. Sometimes though one has to, as Robert said so many years ago, confront the object of fear, be the master of it. I was perfectly content at being better safe than sorry until the day I had to face down my worst fear.

We were delivering Christmas presents to kids whose mom or dad was in prison. The present was addressed from the imprisoned parent and was purchased by benefactors from churches that participated in the program. The parents described the gift so there would be no guess work or some vague, generalized, one size fits all gift.It was really a great idea and despite what happened, it still is. I thought that the delivery of the gifts would be a great activity for the youth group of the church; the ideal lesson having to do with the verse where Jesus says, "Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done it for me." It seems that if there is no outreach program the church is only a social outlet. But our church had several good things going on: we gave food out in November;we gave heavy jackets away in the winter;we participated in Cropwalk, which raised money for local foodbanks; we offered tutoring for the neighborhood elementary school kids. It was mostly planned and executed by the adults in the church;the kids typically played broom hockey and ate pizza. And so this time the kids were invited to participate. Grace and I had five or six presents to deliver. Our daughter, Kelsey, 10 at the time, was with us. We loaded up the Dodge Caravan and rolled through some pretty rough neighborhoods. For the most part we treated graciously. On a couple of occasions the participants were the parents or grandparents of some of my students. The look on the faces of the young children when we announced that their father was thinking of them at Christmas was the richest kind of blessing I have ever experienced. I was very happy that Kelsey was with us.

We were on our last or second to last stop, somewhere around Belmont and Maple. It was a small house on a block of small houses in varying degrees of disrepair. There was a cyclone chain link fence around the front and broken toys and car parts strewn about. The house had a front porch and the front door was ajar.

"Well, this must be the place," I said to Grace, "looks like they left the door open for us." I put my hand on the latch but Grace stopped me.

"Wait, there's a dog."

"Where?"

"Right over there."

The dog began growling as if on cue. It was a white pitbull, quite muscular, replete with studded collar.

"He's on the side yard isn't he?"

"Hello?" Grace called out, "We're here to deliver the presents? I called this morning?"

"Yes," an unseen man's voice replied from inside the house, "come on in."

"Could you please secure your dog?"

"He's on the side yard. He can't get to the front and the back door is closed."

So I opened the gate. We were about halfway to the front porch when the dog just materialized. and stood before us, ok, not exactly before us but a little to my left. We all slowed our pace but as I found out later, Kelsey never saw the dog. I immediately began thinking of strategies. I remembered from elementary school it was widely held that kicking a dog directly on his lower jaw would knock him out. But by way of twisted selected breeding a pitbull's face is mashed in and there wasn't much of a jaw to kick, and odds were I wouldn't hit the target even if it were the size of a hatbox and this wasn't the time to revert to or rely on schoolyard mythology. The dog was quicker, stronger and far more ferral than I could ever hope to be. There was only one strategy that I could think of: I would have to make sure the dog attacked me so at least my wife and child could escape. I had to assume that the owner had a shovel or a crowbar or a pistol to eventually separate me from the dog, but by God, I was going to protect my family. I locked eyes with the dog. I couldn't remember if it was something you were supposed to do or never do, like the moment of a car accident do you turn into it, out of it, brake, pump the brakes? Who knows? Anyway, I decided to stare the damn dog down. Let him know it was between me and him. And the dog watched me all the way to the front porch, slowly leaning his head forward. The dog was bracing himself when the owner, a shoeless man in sweatpants, a Raiders shirt, a goatee and Ray-bans,came to the door and called out, "Rocky, no," and Rocky suddenly relaxed and trotted off to the backyard.

We delivered the presents, more than a little annoyed that the man's inattentiveness created our brush with catastrophe. He insisted the side gate was closed but offered no explanation as to how Rocky might have made it to the front yard. I'm thinking that in dream like fashion, Rocky silently hopped it.