‘Obese. Had to stay sprawled out on the floor or the couch for his back half the day. Walking in Wal-Mart got him winded, so you’d see him in those little electric wheelchairs they have, puttering down the grocery aisles. Long story short he was not throwing Frisbees and sticks around in the backyard anymore for the beagle. But it kept him company, and besides, it was no spring chicken itself—probably a nonagenarian or something, in dog years. They fell apart together. The dog was in even sorrier shape, in the end. Stone blind for one thing, with these gaseous white eyeballs. Had to navigate the living room by memory, and was constantly being flabbergasted by the furniture. Staggering into sofas, nightstands, et cetera. Sometimes my dad’d find it trapped under a chair, penned in between the legs, walking back and forth and bumping off the railings. Just the most depressing thing. Incontinent, too. There was a while there it could still smell where outside was—the greenness of grass, sunshine—and it would hobble on its decrepit legs to the doggy door. Stagger out, do its business, stagger back in. But at some point the effort got to be too great and it just started going wherever: living room, bedroom, kitchen, it didn’t care. My dad, with the weight and the back, he was in no shape to follow the dog around all day and watch for when it needed to go and pick it up and carry it outside himself. He took pity on it and let it have the run of the house. Nor were his efforts to sweep up its messes especially Herculean. Which after only say a weekend of neglect they’d need to be: to go find all the blind dog’s crap and piss puddles around the house, and then to mop them, really was an Augean job, for someone in my dad’s condition. So he lay on the carpet, stretching his spine, surrounded by all the droppings that the dog in its blindness had left, and he dreaded the day when it would finally die. For my part, I was ambivalent about the dog’s death. On the one hand, it was my dad’s only companion; on the other, I didn’t exactly relish the thought of him lying around in a sea of its filth. Every now and then I’d ask him whether he’d considered the needle. Just putting it to sleep and giving it the dignified end.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Like it was his wife or something.’

‘In sickness and in health.’

‘“I can’t give up on her!” “So she’s an old dog!” “She wouldn’t put me to sleep!”’

‘Not like this mom here. Look at her. Beating on Cujo with a baseball bat. Cold-blooded.’

‘If the beagle’d gone rabid my dad would have been absolutely defenseless, no question.’

‘Old Cooge. Battered to death by his own neighbor.’

‘I wouldn’t count Cujo out just yet. He may look dead, but I bet he’s got some gas left in the tank.’