Our golden retriever Moose was a giant, and by “giant,” I of course mean “fat ass.” The mere sight of him brought people to say things like, “Holy shit. That’s a big dog,” or, “Oh my god, your dog is really overweight,” or, “Wow, you guys need to stop feeding him and start walking him.”
“Haha, yeah right,” we’d say while pushing our leftover pancakes and bacon off our plates and into fat Moose’s fat mouth. “We’ll never stop feeding him.”
He was like golden version of Clifford the Big Red Dog with an eating problem, and without that yappy bitch Emily Elizabeth forcing him into trouble.
Moose represented the excess and carelessness of bovine America in dog form – a true testament to the gluttony and laziness in our society. And boy, did he love to eat. Moose wasn’t really passionate about anything else. Sure he liked us and was always happier than pig in shit – especially when he was eating a pig that had been in his or her own shit – but only because we were the gatekeepers of the food.
Moose’s happiest days were when we’d have parties or barbeques over at our house. On such occasions, he would scurry around our backyard like Templeton the Rat from Charlotte’s Web, hunting for food with a giant smile on his giant face. Anytime anyone would set down their plate for even a second, Moose would swoop in and snatch up their burger or hotdog, or both if he had found another fellow fat ass.
“Goddamn, I love hotdogs,” I imagined him saying if he could talk. “Hamburgers too,” he’d add with a mouth full of food, licking ketchup off his face.
If he saw something he wanted to eat, there was little stopping him. His fat ass would somehow muster the strength to allow him to jump onto his hind-legs and thief food off the countertop. He would knock people over to get to a turkey scrap on the floor. He’d eat food straight out of people’s hands, if it were within reach. He would eat food out of the garbage. He was like a raccoon in dog form.
I didn’t mind his eating. I actually liked having a fat dog. I thought it was funny and he’d always make me feel better because I’d think, “Well, at least I’m not eating as much as that fat ass Moose.”
Moose didn’t show much excitement about anything except food until another young, female golden retriever moved in up the street. This bitch lived in the cul-de-sac on Briarcreek Circle, in the home of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Mormon family.
I don’t remember her name, so let’s just call her Lady.
We – being a pack of sinning non-Mormons who liked to say bad words like “shit” and “fuck,” and do things on Sundays – didn’t have much to do with all of our Mormon neighbors. We were always friendly, waving to each other when we’d pass in the car, but I always felt like there was a subtle middle finger hidden behind each cordial wave. They didn’t trust us. So, we had to work extra hard at proving to them that we were decent people, despite not sharing the same set of beliefs they did.
There were a few times when we had run-ins with the Mormon neighbors. The neighbors up the street, the Bess family, and I didn’t get along. They had a younger, slightly tubby daughter, McKinsey, who was the same age as my youngest sister Chelsea. They would play together, but she once told Chelsea that they couldn’t play any more because Chelsea wasn’t Mormon. Chelsea was no older than six at the time, so this was met with great confusion; she couldn’t wrap her head around what she had done wrong. This upset little, sensitive Chelsea.
“Fuck that chucky piece of shit, Chelsea. You don’t need her. She’s a little asshole,” I would tell Chelsea as my mom made us breakfast.
“She’s only six,” my mom would remind me. “Back off her.”
“Age doesn’t matter Mom. If you’re an asshole, then you’re an asshole,” I remarked back, acting like a touch of an asshole myself.
One day, fat fuck McKinsey called the house and asked for Chelsea. I answered. Instead of staying out of their little, six-year-old hissy fit, I said, “Chelsea doesn’t want to play with you any more. She doesn’t like you, so don’t call again.” I hung up, smiling proudly.
There was a call right back from the same number. I answered, with a little more devotion and anger in my voice.
“Listen, McKinsey, Chelsea doesn’t like you. Stop calling,” I yelled into the phone.
Only it wasn’t McKinsey. It was her bitchy mother, Stacey Bess.
Stacey: This is McKinsey’s mom, Stacey Bess.
Me: Oh, shit. Hi. How are you? Weird weather lately, right? Did you see me wave ‘hello’ to you the other day?
Stacey: How old are you?
Wish I Said: [In a super deep, super smart-ass voice] 39. Wanna fuck?
Really Said: I’m 13.
Stacey: Well, I think that’s old enough to know not to pick on a six-year-old child. McKinsey is crying.
Wish I said: Well, your six-year-old happens to be a little judgmental bitch who is picking on someone because she doesn’t believe the same things as her, even though both are too young to even begin to comprehend religion. So I was just giving her a taste of her own, bitchy medicine and teaching her the consequences of being an asshole.
Really Said: Sorry. You’re right. I’m a bad person.
The Bess family and me became enemies. I discovered that Stacey had written a shitty book about working at a school for homeless kids called, “Nobody Don’t Love Nobody.” I know the book was probably about her doing some nice things for people in need and proof that she was actually a good person, but still, fuck her. I hated her.
Once, I walked by their house and noticed that a bunch of boxes of her un-purchased books. I smiled at her and said, “Looks like nobody don’t want to buy nobody’s book.”
McKinsey was banned from coming over to our house. It turned out to be a good thing, in my opinion. Chelsea’s life was hard enough. She didn’t need some Mormon bitch picking on her for fictitious reasons.
We also had an incident where someone in our neighborhood wrote, “Fuck the Marshall’s” on the side of our mailbox. I thought that was funny, and didn’t waste too much time being angry about that. Guess my gay brother Greg and I could have put together a little hetero/homo detective team and tried to figure that one out, but it wasn’t as serious as the fight between the Bess assholes, so we left it alone.
Overall though, we lived a fairly peaceful existence, in a peaceful Mormon neighborhood, in a peaceful Mormon town.
That is until Moose tried to take his interest in Lady to the next level.
Lady was in heat. She hadn’t been spayed yet. Apparently, she was too young or something. Moose had been neutered, but that didn’t keep him from trying to fuck this poor dog. Guess Lady’s pussy scent was just so sweet that he didn’t even need a nut sack to want to tap that shit.
Moose stopped hanging around our house. Instead, he was always up at the neighbors, trying to bang out his crush. He lived up there. If he were a person, he definitely would have been tossed in jail for stalking, and given a restraining order. But he wasn’t a person. He was a horny dog. Nature was telling him to fuck, so that’s what he was trying to do.
And boy did he ever try.
Greg and I would have to go up to retrieve Moose on a nightly basis. It became a chore to do after washing the dishes and cleaning our rooms. We’d get up there and yell at him like he was a drunk dad glued to a bar.
“Moose. Come on home. Your family needs you. We haven’t pet anything all day long. You’re pissing your life away,” we’d say.
“I’m trying to get some puppy pussy from this hot ass bitch. Leave me alone,” drunk on love Moose would say back, if he could talk, that is.
Once, we caught him with his front legs up on their basement windowsill, peering into a room where Lady was playfully and sexily rolling around with one of the family’s kids. He looked like he was about to explode.
If he could talk, he would have said, “Holy Christ, I’m about to cum in my pants,” assuming, in this situation, that he could also wear pants.
Our “Moose, come on,” yells would prove worthless, and we’d have to eventually just grab him by the collar and drag him on home. He’d whimper along the way, sniffing Lady’s pussy scent out of the air, and looking back at the house where his dream girl was hanging out.
We were on strict orders to not let Moose out of the house. The neighbors were starting to worry about him. They weren’t sure what he was capable of, with those crazied golden retriever eyes and his endless persistence. Plus, he was technically a non-Mormon since we were. He was not to be trusted. They were getting Lady spayed very soon, so we needed to just hold him back for a few more days.
As any creep really trying to score, Moose found a way out of our house. We made the mistake of putting him in our backyard. Like a devout prisoner hell-bent on breathing free air, Moose broke out, digging beneath our fence, and crawling to freedom.
His escape occurred on the day Lady was officially fixed. She had just gotten home from the vet, and was inside recovering from the surgery.
Moose shot up the street to go back to his usual hang.
“I’m coming for you, my love,” I bet he was screaming in his head, as he ran as fast as his fat legs would take him. He was a boom box and trench coat away from being John Cusack in Say Anything, or a red convertible away from being Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate – a horny dude hell-bent on getting his girl.
I’m not sure exactly how the whole spayed thing works, but I guess she was still putting out some hints of the heat smell, despite having her ovaries and uterus removed. We didn’t realize that Moose had made his break, so he was up there unsupervised, prowling around like a biologically driven psychopath. Because he was on lockdown, our neighbors weren’t expecting him to be up there either.
But he was.
He was camped out in a patch of bushes in their front yard, like a true creep. Someone came out the front door and was a second too late to close it behind them. Moose saw his opening and barreled in, like a running back breaking through a pack of defenders for a game-winning touchdown.
Once inside, Moose, being larger than most dogs and humans, was unstoppable. He quickly found Lady, who was lying innocently on a doggy bed, nursing her sowed up vagina back to health.
“I made it my love,” I bet he yelled in his head.
Then he fucked her.
Good and hard.
In front of the screaming and horrified Mormon family.
Just like he was supposed to.
Some people, like our neighbors, used the word “rape.” But, I’m going to go with “fucked,” because they’re animals, and nature, and all that.
Turns out, Moose went at her so hard that he tore open her freshly sown stitches.
Any peace and goodwill we had been building over the years was lost with these particular neighbors. Not only were we the non-Mormon, sinning neighbors destined for hell, but we also had a dog that fucked the stitches out of their beautiful, family dog, Lady.
“Those Marshall’s have a rapist for a pet,” I imagined them saying.
“That’s what happens when you don’t believe in the Church. You’re animals turn into pussy robbers,” I also imagined them saying.
“Fuck the Marshalls,” I imagined them writing on the side of our mailbox.
We went and grabbed Moose, scolding him the whole way home, acting like he had just murdered a young family, or thought up the Holocaust, or planned 9/11.
“Moose, that was very, very horrible of you. I’d rub your face in the mess you’ve made like it were shit on a kitchen floor, but that would only make you happier,” I told Moose, who smiled back at me, probably wishing he could light up a post-coital cigarette, and call up all his buddies.
“Remember that bitch I’ve been trying to fuck all summer? Guess what…” is how the phone call would probably start.
In reality, I was sort of proud of him, in a fucked up way. He certainly shouldn’t have done what he did, but he really didn’t have a choice. He was a dog. It was also a good lesson in goal setting: if you really want something, stay the course and go for it. I remember petting Moose that night. He eventually looked guilty, like he knew he messed up, but I consoled him.
“It’s okay Moose. She was a hot dog. You love hot dogs, eating them and doing them. You wanted to fuck her, and by God, you did it,” I said. “Don’t beat yourself up over this.”
Moose’s guilt turned to sadness. He wanted to be with Lady, his love, but that seemed to be impossible in this human world. It was a sort of Romeo and Juliet situation in dog form, but with more rape.
We had to pay for Lady to get re-stitched, and my parents apologized profusely. We promised to keep Moose indoors at all times. We filled the freedom hole he had dug in the backyard and put up protection so he couldn’t escape again.
But that wasn’t enough. They were convinced that Moose needed more of a house-arrest situation. They didn’t want the serial-rapist Marshall dog on the loose again. They demanded that we get an invisible electric fence that would administer a small shock through Moose’s collar every time he tried to run through it. The fence would teach him to stay in his own yard, and not terrorize the neighborhood with his rapist cock.
I felt bad for the big, fat guy. He was losing his freedom, and being forced to become less of the animal that he was built to be. It was very much a One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest situation, or A Clockwork Orange, if you prefer that movie. Moose was captured – an animal encaged in the zoo that was our house.
Moose had a hard time accepting the electric fence. He did everything he could to escape. He was even able to build a tolerance for the shocks. He would brace himself and then sort of sprint through the invisible fence like a runner crossing the finish line of the 100-meter dash. Him being so fat helped with this. He couldn’t feel much through all the layers he had put on over the years, so it didn’t hurt him too badly.
After digging up a fresh set of flowers out of a neighbor’s yard – sort of raping Mother Earth, if you will – we were asked to turn up the voltage so he couldn’t break free again. It soon became too much for even fat, tricky Moose to take. He soon accepted his fate and elected to just hang around the house.
I would occasionally take the collar off and let Moose go dig up some of the neighbor flowers, or go sniff the asshole of another random neighborhood dog.
“You smell that? That’s the smell of freedom,” I pictured him thinking while I watched him inhale another dog’s garbage hole.
But Moose was ultimately a prisoner, trapped by electricity.
Because he couldn’t run around free, enjoying the fuck out of being a dog, Moose resorted back to his original love of eating too much. And he was great at it.
During high school, McDonald’s started selling hamburgers for 29 cents. Kids in high school took this as a challenge to eat as many as they could. One kid ate 15 of them in one sitting, and claimed that his mark couldn’t be beaten. I told him that I knew someone who could. I gathered up 25 hamburgers with my allowance money and put Moose up to the challenge.
He ate 19 of them without stopping, beating the mark by four.
I definitely shouldn’t have giving him that much food. It was like giving an obese kid a bucket of fried chicken and a sack of candy, or giving an arsonist a pack of matches, some gasoline, and a list of people he hates. But Moose took them down best he could. Sure, he stumbled around our backyard, fainted and puked most of them up, but still, it was pretty impressive.
He ballooned to an ungodly weight – somewhere around 170 pounds. Golden Retrievers are supposed to weigh around 60-80 pounds, meaning he was about 100 over. Visitors began saying things like, “Wow, you guys should really walk this dog,” or, “I didn’t think he could get any fatter, but he did,” or, “I feel like I should toss a saddle on him and ride him around. He’s a horse not a dog.”
Eventually, Moose started running into some health problems. Because he had endured so many electric shocks from the fence, he began having seizures. During these uncontrollable fits, he would fall to the ground, foam at the mouth and piss all over the place. They were pretty horrific to witness. Poor guy.
One time, we were coming home from a family vacation, super excited to see our pal Moose. We pulled into the driveway and opened the garage, expecting Moose to burst out of there for a barrage of pets and “Moosey, we missed you” yells. But instead, we opened the garage to Moose mid-seizure, foaming at the mouth and spraying piss straight up into the air. Welcome home!!!
I guess the neighbor’s had won. They had destroyed Moose and turned him into a seizing, obese mess of a dog, incapable of rape.
Moose hung on for a couple more years. His hind legs eventually stopped working, so he was forced to drag himself around with his front paws. He was still happy, so long as we gave him the occasion plate of shit to eat. We probably should have put him under, but he was very special to us, our childhood dog. Plus, us Marshalls like to drag out death as long as we can (see my dad’s battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, or my mom’s battle with cancer). We try not to give in, even when we probably should.
One day, while at college, I got the call.
“I have some bad news,” my dad said.
“I already know. Greg’s gay. Tragic,” I joked.
“No. Moose has passed away,” he said.
“Shit, that sucks. Guess it was probably his time though. Can’t eat like shit and endure electroshocks for too long without it eventually getting to you,” I said, while fighting back tears and flashing back to the time when an elated Moose had just finished fucking his dream girl Lady, arguably his happiest moment but also his downfall.
“Yeah, he was a good dog – probably the best we ever had,” my dad said back.
“I’ll miss the fat fuck,” I said, wiping tears away like a pussy.
They say that all dogs go to heaven, and even though Moose was an over-eater, and arguably a rapist, I’m pretty sure he’s up there, eating other people’s hotdogs and fucking the stitches out of some hot, virgin golden retriever pussy.