My fear of dogs likely came about when I was four, walking in the park with my grandmother. A stray dog of about my size or larger raced up to me and knocked me over. I still remember the feel of its paws on my chest. I still remember the feel of my bottom thudding the stone sidewalk. I wasn’t hurt. I was too surprised to cry. “That doggy was so happy to see you,” my grandmother said. “She was just showing how much she loved you.” By then I’d recovered my composure enough to cry.

All the kids I knew from school either had or wanted dogs. I didn’t even want a hamster. We had a few goldfish from time to time. They never lasted long. It made me sad that they’d leap from their bowl. There was a lazy little turtle in the kindergarten classroom. He had a plastic island, and he rarely went for a swim in his moat, except when the teacher introduced a tadpole. The turtle lurched into the moat and gave chase. The tadpole swam fast, but not fast enough. Seeing the capture was both satisfying and upsetting. There was something almost erotic about the prey being gulped down, not that I knew what erotic was back then. My sympathies were wholly with the tadpole. One of the kids talked about his uncle’s snake and how it swallowed mice. I could imagine it. I did imagine it: sometimes with the poor, helpless mouse swallowed head first, sometime the other way around.

The summer I was in sixth grade I’d often ride my bike a mile down a gravel road to visit my best friend. He had a dog, Sergeant, a black lab, who could not have been more gentle. His fur was so sleek and his breath was so bad. Sometime his penis would come out and he would lick it. “Sergeant, no! Bad dog! Behave!” my friend’s mother would say if she were there. There was something a little disagreeable about Sergeant licking his penis, but I didn’t find it upsetting so much as embarrassing—and for some reason I was embarrassed not on the dog’s behalf but on my own. I didn’t think Sergeant was a bad dog. The bad dogs were the pair of farm dogs who’d rush out to the road to chase me as I pedaled by. I hated and feared those dogs. There was a steep hill just before the farmhouse, so on the way to my friend’s, I’d race down the hill and be going fast enough that the dogs couldn’t catch me, but on the return trip I had to climb the hill with the dogs snapping at my feet. Walking my bike up the hill I provoked the dogs less; the slower I went the less their interest. But the ignominy of being forced from my bike angered me. If I’d had a gun I would not have hesitated to put those farm dogs down.

I turned fourteen on the last day of eighth grade. We got out early and I walked home rather than wait for the school bus. A quarter mile from home I took the shortcut through the alfalfa field. I was almost across when I came upon a dog—one I had never seen before. It was of medium size and the color of yellow mud. I stopped, and the dog and I stared at each other from a distance of less than ten feet. Suddenly it charged. I turned to the side and it sprang at me, biting my thigh. I was carrying an attaché case, which I swung hard against the dog, and it yelped and ran off. I noticed that the dog had what appeared to be an udder, and a number of enlarged nipples. This indicated to me that either it was pregnant or had recently had puppies. I hurried home.