"I Shoot Your Dog"

Nice title right?  I shoot your dog. Yes that is what he told me with a smile. "I shoot your dog." How did I end up in that situation?  

I woke up around 1 pm after a short but powerful nap. The kind where you wake up still tired. The stench of smoke filled the room. All the windows were shut but the wind was blowing so hard it pushed the smoke all around the air, forcing some of it through the cracks. What a stink!

It was time to take the dogs out for their walk so I figured I would try to find the source of this overwhelming smell as we walked. Outside the air was gray and hazy. It was obviously a large fire but looking in the direction of the usual suspect's houses I saw nothing. So I leashed up three of the dogs and went out searching.

These are the dogs. When they go out they like to run and jump and sniff wherever their nose leads them. They are not hard to reign in but they can be rambunctious. We walked one street up and there was the fire. Quite large. I got close enough to take a few pictures when the big black dog wandered over to the guy overseeing the fire to take a sniff. I immediately yanked the chain and pulled her toward me. That's when he said it. The first time.

"Hey what you doing? I shoot your dog."  

You could hear the calm smile in his voice. He wasn't angry. He was being factual. 

"You going to report me?", he kept asking. "Why you taking picture?"

"It's so beautiful", I said sarcastically motioning toward the flames.

After that the dogs and I left the street and continued on our walk. But the confrontation really began to bug me. This person just threatened to shoot my dog and asked if I was going to report him as if to say, "Go ahead and report me. I shoot you too!"

The more I thought about it the more I realised I should do something about this guy. It would be no use reporting him. The cops simply do not care. I settled on taking a video and uploading it to the internet. Not that it would do anything but two still photos was really nothing.

I returned the dogs to the house and walked back to the fire to shoot a few seconds of video. My reappearance was most unwelcome but I stayed my ground and took a short video of the fire which was in the process of being doused.

If you listen very closely towards the end this guy, whose name I am told is Joemarie, says, "But don't bring your dog." If I had kept the camera rolling he would have finished that thought with, "Or I shoot your dog!" I really regret having turned off the camera so soon before he could say those fatal words.

But at least I got his picture.