Of Murder and Meeko

I tend to be a long suffering man who can keep a firm grip upon his own angers, frustrations, disappointments and negative feelings. Then, of course, there is Meeko.  There is a rumor that Meeko is a dog. You are welcome to believe that if you wish and I admit he looks like a dog but I am personally convinced he is demonic.

First, how we got Meeko. The neighbors had a Lab mix pup they could not keep. He was, essentially, a black tornado with feet. Kyle, Connie’s 2^nd son, age 18 at the time, said the awful words. “Mom, can I have him?” Connie’s great and wonderful soft heart just melted and she approached me, dog beside her.

I am an old soldier and a pragmatist through and through. We needed another dog like a local Democrat needs an Obama endorsement. There was just no way we could possibly keep another animal. I was going to tell her that. I looked into my lady’s soft, brown loving eyes. “Okay,” I mumbled, “but Kyle has to be responsible for him.” I swear the damned dog winked at me.

We live in a house about the size of a saltine cracker box. At the time there were four humans occupying the dwelling with three cats and, during the evenings, Libby, who like to eat golf-ball sized holes in any piece of my clothing she could get her mouth on. Meeko was one dog too far.

I decided to build a fenced-in yard in the back. Fencing is expensive and putting up fencing is hard work but there was a long fence running parallel to the house in just the right place so all I would have to do is patch it, raise it to the five feet height I desired, move the dog house inside the fence line and close the two ends.

By this time Kyle, being a young man, had moved out. We note he did not take Meeko. So the main part of the job was on me. A word about the dog house. This dog house was a hand-me-down from Connie’s mother who had it built at some expense for a large dog. No matter the expense, I do not believe the builder made any profit. Everything went for materials. The dog house weighs, plus or minus, four hundred pounds. It is built to specifications that would shame a bomb shelter. It is about as easy to move as one of the great pyramids.

Having finished all but the point at which I planned to push, pull, drag and curse the dog house through and having used Connie’s good offices to get Kyle (who I nicknamed Bam Bam after the Flintstone character) over, we began the process of moving the dog house the couple hundred feet to its new home. To finish this job we enlisted David and his four-wheeler but finally got the dog house into place.

All right, dog house is in place and I finish putting up the last of the fence. I am standing outside the fence, observing, and Connie lets Meeko and Libby out the back door into their new yard. Within seconds Libby is standing beside me, outside the fence, looking in at Meeko. Being observant, it looked to me like Libby had ran through the fence at a point twenty feet or so up the hill. The fact was she had went under it in a spot that would confound a rabbit.

That was the start, Libby would be the under-dog. What we did not know is that, sometime in the future, Meeko would distinguish himself as the over, around, through, between, atop and multi-dimensional dog. (Sometimes I had no idea how he had gotten out).

After Libby’s one trip out the tiny place, and our closing it off, the dogs seemed content with their new home. Who wouldn’t be? They had shade, running room, a house, food, water and all the weird stuff they could find to chew up. Then Meeko discovered the roof. Since Connie talked about this, I will not dwell on it. Suffice it to say this was my first inkling that the dog was possibly a demonic spirit. Why would a dog climb a house?

 Once David and I cut off easy access to the top of the house things seemed to settle down. Then the Ankle Biters showed up. We got a new neighbor with two dogs.  Well at least one of them was a dog, the other was possibly a very vocal rat. The neighbor was having trouble keeping his two dogs penned up, they had a knack for slipping their collars and escaping.

“Escaping,” thought Meeko, “now there is an idea.” If my memory serves, Meeko’s first attempt was over the old portion of the fence. It was successful beyond his wildest dreams. He was so proud of himself he came to the front door of the house to tell us about it. Connie, having a well developed sense of the absurd, which she needs because she lives with me, laughed.

I was not nearly as impressed.

I patched and re-enforced the section of fence that Meeko had pushed down. His next attempt was a little more direct. He chose a square in this welded wire fencing and pushed his head through it. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did say he pushed his head through a six inch section of welded wire fence popping the welds. Next came his shoulders then his paws and out he was. This time Libby, not to be outdone, followed him. This little jaunt cost our long suffering friend David a chicken, and me more exercise than I wanted, but oh was Meeko proud! No ankle bitter mutt was going to out-do him.

I fixed the break. David suggested electric fencing but I was not to be outdone by a dog. Over the next month or so Meeko went over, yes under, he learned from Libby, and through my fence at a dozen places. The fence began to look like the boundary fence for Area 51.

It has barbed wire around the top, a rocks lined along the bottom, heavy duty fencing up to three feet and various wire patches laced through it. Through the whole production David continued mildly suggesting an electric fence. By now it was the principle of the thing, right?

One morning, having came home the night before and fixed the fence in the dark, I went out to find Meeko playing in the side yard, cavorting as proud of himself as only a Lab who broke fence can be.  I have been a soldier and a cop, and I will tell you never has murder entered my heart until that day.

I took the sixty odd pound dog by his collar, picked him up and the intent of my heart of hearts was to break his ornery, recalcitrant, stubborn, unrelenting, devious neck like a pencil. I would kill him and that would be that. I called down on that dog every curse, insult and disparaging phrase twenty-two years of military service and an active imagination could devise. His life span shrunk to milliseconds. I was going to murder him.

Then he looked up at me with that happy-happy lab look and tried to lick my face.

I flung the hound from me and staggered in the house where I flopped in my chair taking great gasping breaths. Murder, once established in your heart, is not an easy thing to let go of. Connie got up and found me like that, shaking like a hippy in a honky-tonk. She put the dog back, and put me down for a nap. She called Kyle and the two of them fixed the latest break in my fence.

Let me say two words to you about Houdini dogs, those dogs that no barrier seems able to dissuade or contain: electric fence. Thanks David.