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Live Through This
Should You Out-Crazy Men?
A reflection on female rage.
On Sunday I took an early walk with my dog Fish. If you’ve been following Fish’s story, you know that he’s a complicated guy. Now, more than four years after driving him home from the Lancaster animal shelter, he’s transformed from a scared little thing that shook like a leaf when I opened the door, to a dog who leaps with joy when I pull out the leash.
He has also developed a set of beliefs that boil down to this: if someone gets too close to me he should rip their throat out. I don’t think he can really help it; I did a DNA test on Fish early on to figure out what I was dealing with, and this is the math: his dad was a full pit bull, and his mom was part pit bull, part Rottweiler, part German shepherd, part husky. The pit bull, Rottweiler, and German shepherd make him protective and the husky makes him stupid. (Don’t @ me, husky lovers, you know I’m right. And of course, not all huskies).
Fish holds grudges. If a golden retriever barked at him from behind a gate two years ago, he loses it when we walk by that gate even if the dog is nowhere in sight. A year ago an unleashed dog ran out of a house to attack Fish, and even though this was a grave miscalculation by the other dog, Fish still loses it when we walk by the house.
