Shitty Handshake
For many of my formative years my family had a dog called Boomer.
He was a happy little mongrel; Medium sized, black, with a good temperement. He loved to eat things. Everything. Food, shit, plastic bags. He once jumped into a tree to catch a bird. He ate it whole and regurgitated some of the corpse onto my father's shoe.
The plastic bag incident was a particularly dark tale. Boomer must have swallowed a whole plastic bag, which passed through his system and was having trouble coming out the other end. My mother had to ease the brown, sticky bag slowly and carefully from his anus. It took a while and it was very painful for the poor dog, but perhaps he'd learnt a lesson. Not so.
One of the most disturbing things I ever saw was this...
At the age of 10 I woke to the loud and terrifying yelps of a dog in pain. Recognising the sound of Boomer's cries I threw off the blankets and rushed to the window to see what was wrong.
I was confronted with an image of my dog, standing, but doubled up in pain. My mother was slowly walking towards the dog trying to calm him down. From the dogs arse there appeared a human hand. One finger at a time, until the whole hand was dangling from the dogs bottom. My mother's arms were outstretched as if she were about to engage in some sort of shitty handshake with the ludicrous body part. The dog was still shrieking. My mother finally took hold of the dogs fifth hand and it fell from the dogs bum at it's wrist. My mother was left holding a rubber glove, filled with shit, which slowly emptied it's contents onto the grass. My mother looked up to see me, waved the extra hand and went back into the kitchen to dispose of it. The dog was fine. I felt ill.