I have always had pets of some kind. Mostly dogs but I’ve had cats as well at some point in my life. Alphonso, a black cat, with one good eye and three teeth lived to be 21 years old. They didn’t get much better than Al. Years later my wife Rebecca said there was a pup that wondered to a workmate house and would not leave and wanted to know if anyone was interested in it. I took off to Greenville to see this Golden Retriever mix and took him home with me. Tucker had arrived. Tucker was a bull headed, peanut butter, loving dog who after one week managed to chew through the satellite dish cable that ran to the house. I came home one day and looked outside and Tucker was rolling my gas grill tire in the yard with his nose after he demolished my gas grill. He finally calmed down and we had a normal pet to human existence. A couple of years later at a plant site we were working, I met another future pet. This dog had clearly been abused, teats dagging the ground, very shy but after a week of feeding her I finally gained her trust and gave Tucker a roommate. Tucker meet Belle. If there was ever a angel with paws, it was Belle. We had to put them both down, within 3 months of each other about a year and a half ago after 13 and 15 years respectively and that was truly the hardest thing I had ever been through in my life. They left a paw print in my heart forever. They were family. They were life’s apology to a crappy day. I realized more and more every day that Dogs are your friends and humans are assholes. I have never seen a dog shoot 54 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas so I stand by my statement.

All this changed sometime this past July when a former friend, as he is now called me up and said a dog had wondered up in his yard. He knew that we had talked of getting a dog and said he was really cute and loveable. Rebecca said we should look at him so I took off to Townville a couple of days later to meet who would later become Arlo. Arlo was a scrawny 14 lbs when I took him to the vet to get “things taken care of.” Looking back maybe he never forgave me for taking that trip to the vet. Anyway he definitely had not eaten like he should have. “Poor guy”, I thought. Little did I know that the “Spawn of Satan” had infiltrated my household. Everything was good at first, the vet said he was still a pup, one to two years old. Rebecca was happy. She hadn’t been too crazy about the idea of another dog at first because she was grieving still over Belle and Tucker but especially Tucker who was her favorite but little did I know she was soon to be possessed by Arlo. The love for this mongrel would soon be just a distant memory.

The destruction of my life would soon begin. A little chew here , a little nip there. Here a chew, there a chew, everywhere a chew, chew. Then a small hole would pop up in a sheet, then a comforter, a blanket. We noticed the holes were getting bigger and more of them and then it happened……Arlo had shown us fully his demolition, knocking down, pulling down, tearing down, levelling, razing (to the ground), felling, dismantling, breaking up, wrecking, ruination, smashing, shattering,  power that he possesses. Example of the evil that is Arlo in the above picture.

Well months have passes, hundreds of dollars have been spent. Arlo has pigged out to 33 lbs. I never knew that linen, chew toys, rugs, foam rubber and cardboard were that fattening. He purposely holds his farts in until he gets beside me just to see the horrified look on my face. He has the prostate of a 200 year old. Arlo has found new ways to spread his evil. He now moved on to other things such as my backyard for instance. It now looks like a World War II battlefield in France where mortar shells have bombarded endlessly days on end. How long will this madness go on? Has Arlo come back as a old girlfriend that has died that I am unaware of? Whoever I wronged in the past, I am truly sorry.