Wet Dog

A Story by ZackOfBridge

A memory without context

The dog was wet, dead on the dry side of a flowing ditch. A golden dog, its blonde fur shining in the sun and furthered in luminosity by the water absorbed in its coat. Even with the dog on its side, its chest neither rising or lowering, its tail a flat line like that of a heart monitor finished with monitoring, I would have loved to take the dog home with me.
“There is a dead dog over there,” I said to the Mexican man on his lawn, he lived alongside the ditch and it was that ditch that had killed the gilded dog. The man should know there is a dead dog just beyond his grass. He could move it before the sun dried its fur and dried its nose.
“No, no, not my dog,” The man said to me. A shame, this was a dog to be grieved over. I did not accept his indifference, but I kept walking home.