The fascinating thing about wrath is how it spreads, through pride and fear, like spilled oil paint across the surface of your soul.

Years ago my dog was attacked on the street, it resulted in his death. It was a quick thing, there was nothing anyone could have done and I don’t particularly hold it against the owner of the other dog. That caliber of dog, the bullishness of it, is unnecessary, and he clearly lacked understanding and control. I wish I could have told him what his dog did, so maybe he would have changed his behavior in the future. I don’t know, I never saw him again. I ran to the hospital instead of talking. We drove, covered in blood, with my white t-shirt hung from my window to indicate an emergency.

Today though, this morning, I was walking Archie, with Roby strapped to my chest. A man about my age with an old golden lab was walking on the same trail. He would put it on a leash and choke up on it, holding it still off to one side of the trail where it would bark and snarl as we passed. We exchanged a word or two on the way down the trail, but when we passed on the way back, the second time, he lost control and the dog attacked Archie.

I should say that Archie is fine. He has a wound in his mouth and on his shoulder, but he’s alright. He’ll be alright.

Immediately I leapt on to the dog and got it in a head lock until it released Archie. Then I pulled out my knife and, covered in blood, told the man that if the dog took another step I would kill it in front of him, further I screamed that if I ever saw him and that dog on this trail again I would stab the dog to death in front of him merely on the principle of it.

I was upset.

He heard this, said nothing, turned, and ran away from me. I told him to come back and give me his contact information, he looked back, and he kept running.

I can’t blame him exactly. I must have been pretty scary.

I was upset.

A key principle of the teaching of Christ is non violence, a teaching of returning love for hate. We aren’t to do violence, we aren’t even to get upset, to call people names, to curse them. That is the purpose of, well, everything. I don’t exactly regret my initial action of choking the dog to save Archie, that was a trauma / flight or fight response that I didn’t have a great deal of control over. I wish I had done something differently because Roby was strapped to my chest, but if she weren’t, I think it would have been the right thing. And it is, after all, just a dog.

I do regret the violence of my response after the dogs were separated. I was angry enough that a man literally fled from me. That is a disturbing thing to know about oneself, that I have the capacity to, with my wrath, make men flee. I was angry, I was not thinking clearly, I have trauma that came swelling back to fill me like boiling water.

I’d like to think that through church and through deeper Christian thinking I might behave differently in the future, rage not welling up in me as it did, because the interiority of my soul might be a gentler place. I can’t imagine a monk would respond thusly, though that might be because they don’t have dogs that they love. New Skate withstanding.

What frightens me about this experience is the temptation of wrath. My response is not to stop walking the trail, to find the man and to apologize, no. My response is to wear boots that stomp on that walk instead of crocks, to put Roby on my back so that I can fight dogs more effectively, and to make myself a hardwood club so that I can stove in the brain pan of wretched old labradors who want to hurt my family.

I feel a perverse pride in the fact that that man saw my rage and fled from it. I brought out the child in him and he ran, I showed him how small he was and he ran. I do not think he will ever come to that trail again, it’s my God Damn trail, you pathetic ****. Just try to come back and see what happens, I’ll be wearing combat boots and carrying a stick designed to kill your dog specifically. F*** around, find out.

That is what I want to do and I know it is wrong. And I convince myself that it isn’t.

It’s just a dog, you can kill a dog if it threatens you, it’s not a person, if it were a person it would be different.

I ought to do those preparations because what if it were a bear, we’ve seen bears on the trail before.

What if the dog attacked Roby? She’ll be walking soon and dogs attack kids, that dog might have attacked her.

If that dog attacked Roby I’d be too busy running to the hospital with my shirt out the window to care much about that dog.

But in an effort to get it away from her I don’t think, even now, that I would hesitate to kill it with a cudgel.

I’ll be making one this week, and I pray I never have to use it.