Shorty

I had a dog named Shorty once. I got him from the pound, because they said they were five minutes away from killing him. Shorty
had one eye, a coat of about 7 different colors, and his back legs were
just a little longer than his front ones, making him look like he was
always in the mood to play. My friend Meiron said he looked like Frankenstein’s dog. When
I went to pet Shorty for the first time, he took a bite out of my left
hand, but he must not have liked the way I tasted, because he never bit
me again. When
we took him to the park on Saturday afternoons to play Frisbee, he
would always chase other people’s soccer balls instead and pop them,
and when a lady soldier was bending down to get something out of her
backpack, Shorty bit her on the ass. He
must have liked the way she tasted, because he didn’t let go for a
really long time, even though she was screaming, and it took her
boyfriend, Meiron and me together to pull him off. Meiron said we were probably the first people in the history of Independence Park, to be kicked out and told never to come back.

When I met Neta at “The Moon” one Friday night, it was love at first sight. Three days later she moved in, with a footlocker full of her CDs, Books and clothes. When
I picked her up from work on Tuesday night, we came home to find her
locker pried open, her CDs scattered and scratched, her books torn to
shreds and her clothes piled in the four corners of the apartment: one
pile had been shit on, one pissed on, one vomitted on, and on the last
pile was a very tired dog, sound asleep on his back.

“It’s him or me,” said Neta.

When we took him back to the pound, the lady smiled at me, took the leash without a word and led Shorty into the back. As we walked out into the bright afternoon sun, we heard her say “Poor thing, we were starting to wonder how long you'd be away this time”.