Tears flew, trickling down every inch of my face, each feeling heavier than the last. At that moment, my family and I didn’t care who was watching, but did whatever we had to in order to protect the poor, helpless creature in front of us. The squealing grew louder from both his and our parts immediately after we witnessed blood splash across the floor, ever so gently but traumatizing as we saw the piercing red dots emerge amongst our toes. Blood transpiring, noises arising, we grabbed whatever we could off the shelves and threw it on the floor. Bang! Boom! Sounds originated at every corner in hopes that something would diminish the sight before our eyes. It was one of the most gruesome moments my family and I had endured. Although it lasted for a little over 5 minutes, it seemed as an eternity. Then after, the fear never went away and our love and passion for Cosmo grew. 

When I had received my first dog, I never imagined my love and compassion to be so bold and significant towards a small, fluffy creature due to such a traumatic event. With that love, I cherished every moment I shared with Cosmo, our current four-year-old golden doodle. No greater love seems relevant than the relationship I withhold with my pet; therefore this next experience had struck me with an overwhelming number of emotions. When we had initially received Cosmo, being a couple months old, he hadn’t been fully trained and wasn’t disciplined. We took him to classes at our local Pet Smart, hoping for a little discipline and mannerism. Every few weeks, we would be dragged to the class as a family to evaluate the progress we noticed in Cosmo where we would be nagged to participate in certain events/ activities to help supposedly train both the dog and us.

That week, we went to the class and the instructor asked us to engage in the activity of the day. She suggested that we walk our dog up and down the aisle without having them walk in front of us, giving them a treat for every time they obeyed and a tug for every time they disobeyed. Easily enough, we followed the instructions, disinterestedly passing other friendly dogs as we strolled up and down the aisles. On our last stroll, we reached the end where Cosmo met with an American Bulldog. Well, met? Maybe I should rephrase that. We reached the end of the aisle where a bulldog dodged at us horizontally as we walked vertically. We synchronically reached each other at the same time, when the bulldog quickly snapped at Cosmo, gripping Cosmo’s head in his mouth. Imagine a 4 year old, 132-pound American bulldog taking ahold of a 9 month old, 45-pound golden doodle.  It was like watching Philippe Petit wobble across a French high-wire placed between the Twin Towers in New York City, anxious knowing that each step may be his last. With that anxiety, we exerted our efforts in helping break the two up.

The ongoing commotion surrounded and loud, attracted people from opposite ends of the store. They reached for whatever they could off the shelves of the aisle, throwing them near the bulldog in efforts to frighten him to let go, but nothing helped. His grip seemed as tight as a surgeon’s grip on an organ while performing surgery. We saw pieces of food break open from the bags that were launched across the floor, toys broken in half from the pressure of the fall and strips of treats spread around used to manipulate the bulldog. Running as fast as his body would let him, the manager traveled toward us with a chair. Climbing up on a ladder near by the occurring incident, he dropped the chair from above, making a screeching noise. The noise seemed just as obnoxious as someone draping his or her nails through the chalkboard, but seemed to help. It all happened so quickly, the bulldog suddenly pulled away and the family pulled their dog away from the area. With tears at the corners of our eyes, the vision seemed blurry all around as we grabbed our dog and headed to the vet located in Pet Smart.

With a couple of stitches, he was ready to go home. Therefore, we took him home and ever since then, we thought twice about taking Cosmo to the dog park. Although he doesn’t have that fear, we will always carry that tragedy along with us whenever we encounter a dog near ours. When we first walked into the Store that, we forced ourselves through the classes, barely acknowledging Cosmo as we participated in walking him up and down the aisles. As soon as the incident happened and ever after, out gratitude and outlook towards what we once saw as a poor, helpless creature changed forever.