Gunplay at the dog park

You already know there’ll be a gun. This is Florida—and not just Florida, but the Panhandle, a hotbed of evangelical conservatives—so there’s always a gun. Even here in this relatively tranquil expanse of crabgrass and palm trees, there will be a gun. But whose? And why, and why, and why?

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We were visiting North Florida for the funeral of my mom’s eldest brother, who had died at 66 of cancer. He’d been full of youth and fire right to the end, a sailor and restaurateur. There was a lot to commemorate and celebrate and a lot to mourn. As a brief reprieve from the intensity of it all, and knowing our dog would be cooped up while we were at the service later that afternoon, my dad and I decamped for an hour at a local dog park.

We passed through the chainlink double-entrance and joined 30 or so dogs and owners spread across the football field-sized park. The Florida humidity draped over us like a hospital gown, awkward and ill-fitting. Our boxer explored as my dad and I strolled and talked about the weekend—plans for my uncle’s funeral, relatives who’d arrived in town, how my mom was holding up. It had been a heavy couple of days and only getting heavier.

From halfway across the field, I spotted an early-twenties guy slink through the entrance gates. He held up his baggy, beltless jeans with one hand, a cigarette dangling from his lip, as he leaned down to unhook the leash of his pitbull. Immediately the pit set off in a sort of hunting trot, belly low to the ground, seeming to survey the other dogs as he wove a shark’s path through the center of the field. I pointed this out to my dad when I spotted it, and we quickly called our boxer back to our side.

The pitbull shot past several dogs before it zeroed in on a docile cocker spaniel, then it leapt from behind, catching the cocker by surprise, teeth to the throat, and the pair fell together in a pile. The cocker spaniel kicked his legs and writhed but couldn’t get any purchase, as the pit had a precise hold on his jugular. This occurred at roughly the center of the park. My dad and I were close enough that we arrived within seconds of the attack. The few dozen other dogs raced to the scene, barking and yelping as their owners snatched their collars.

I understood that the cocker spaniel would soon be dead if no one intervened, and I’d learned somewhere that if you choked a pitbull whose jaw was locked—essentially closing off its air supply—that was the only way to get it to release. 

I found myself astride the two dogs, throttling the pitbull. The cocker spaniel emitted a high-pitched scream, a sound I’d never heard before or since, the panicked cry of an animal facing imminent death. I tuned out the frenzied noise coming from the pack of dogs and owners surrounding us, trying only to hear my dad. He held back our boxer and shouted instructions or encouragement or warnings. I momentarily worried about the pitbull releasing the cocker and attacking me instead, but since I’d already committed, it seemed riskier to let go. I had to keep hold until the scene played out, one way or another. The incredible muscles of the pit’s neck rippled under my fingers, and I redoubled my grip, sensing that there wasn’t much time left.

And then the owner of the cocker spaniel burst into the circle. He was around 60, wearing a tucked-in golf shirt, khaki shorts, and white socks and sneakers; I was eye-level with the lower half of him as I straddled the dogs. From my vantage, I was the first to see him reach for the handgun strapped to his belt.

He drew the weapon, aimed it toward me and the dogs, and he yelled over the cacophony of the scene, his voice crackling with emotion, “I’m gonna shoot it.” The cocker’s high-pitched wail grew more desperate and strained, his eyes bulging. 

I screamed back, “Do not shoot. Do not fucking shoot. Do not shoot.” Part of me thought I still might get the pitbull to release, while another part knew that if he fired the gun, I could be be hit. The dogs and I weren’t exactly a stationary target.

The man compromised. “I’m shooting in ten seconds.” And he started counting down.

Apart from the horror of what was happening, there was a fleeting moment in which I saw the whole thing as a sort of twisted Greek tragedy that we were performing. I was in the center of the ring in a mortal struggle with these two beasts, as the chorus jeered and lunged at us. And suddenly a new force had entered the circle, a terrifying deus ex machina in khaki shorts, come to resolve our deadlock with a bullet. The countdown began.

10.

No one in the crowd dared touch the man. I had his eyes on mine, trying to get through to him, pleading with him as he called out the numbers in an unsteady yawp, the gun cocked and aimed at where I still held fast to the pitbulI’s throat.

9. —Do not fucking shoot.

8. —Listen to me. Please.

7. —Do not fucking shoot.

6. —Do not fucking shoot.

5. —

The pitbull released its jaws at the very second its baggy-jeaned owner arrived. I fell back when the dog let go, not knowing if the pit had unclamped from the cocker with the intention of turning on me. The owner grabbed the collar and, holding up his pants with the other hand, started dragging the pit to the exit, both of them crouched low to the ground as they moved across the field. The pit’s owner spoke not a word to any of us. 

I sat on the grass for a moment. I didn’t know if the cocker would survive, but he sprung right up and went to his owner, who holstered the weapon as he knelt down to comfort his dog. My dad and our boxer came over to me, the dog nuzzling my face.

In the aftermath, everyone seemed to stay there at the park for a while, winding down, letting the dogs recover and run together. Our boxer wouldn’t leave the side of the cocker spaniel; she was like a therapy dog, staying shoulder-to-shoulder with the cocker until he stopped trembling and seemed to get comfortable again. They trotted over to a water bowl and took turns drinking.

I can’t recall what my dad and I spoke about as we walked and decompressed. All the ingredients had collided for something awful to occur, but then it had abruptly concluded, and everyone hobbled away in one piece. We’d encountered death in several forms that afternoon—the cocker spaniel on the brink, a live gun waved in my direction, and a few hours later, we’d be wearing dark suits at my uncle’s funeral. We took a few minutes to get our heads straight, then drove back to join the family. I don’t think we told them about what happened until much later.

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When I‘ve returned to this memory over the years, its meaning keeps shifting. At times it feels weighty and instructive, at other times simply an amusing story for a dinner party. But more often now it has come to remind me of my luck—not just the luck to have survived that moment intact, but my larger, existential luck on a planet that seems increasingly to have lost its way. All in all, the dog park incident was minor and inconsequential, nothing akin to the steady tide of bloodshed and grief that comprise the daily bulletins, both domestic and abroad.

My kids, of course, share in my luck. At the end of each day, they don’t come home to a neighborhood destroyed by violence or to a barren dinner table or to missing parents. How do I help them recognize and make sense of that good fortune? A different roll of the dice could have placed them elsewhere, in this world in which tragedies flare up with agonizing constancy, a world in which children their age are woken by air-raid sirens and explosions.

They could be resting in a hospital bed when a rocket reduces the building to rubble. They could be dancing with friends and family at a music festival when everything turns to carnage.

What can each of us do in such a world? Everywhere a clash of darkness and light, beauty alongside turmoil, and whatever dose we receive on any given day is beyond our control.

These past few weeks have put me in mind of my favorite Auden stanza, the closing of “September 1, 1939.” On that day Germany invaded Poland, signaling the start of WWII. The poem’s speaker receives the news while sitting in a midtown New York dive bar, thousands of miles from the atrocities that were just underway in Europe. I don’t know if this provides any sort of answer for our current moment, but it’s something.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.