TIME IS CRUEL AND SO AM I – By Auggie

Aug 1, 2024

Editor’s Note: Despite his age, Auggie has a very fertile imagination.

Whereas my previous blogs have been lighthearted, brief, and informative, this blog will unfortunately be dark and reproachful. Prepare yourself however you see fit, Bipeds. I shan’t judge you. Nor do I care in what way you judge me.

The brutal passage of time spares none. Not mayfly, Canine, Biped, dinosaur, trilobite, suns, galaxies nor even black holes. Time is a one-way track originating in an infinite past, charging over us in but an instant, and rushing on to the infinite future without a single hiccough from any living or inanimate entity in its trajectory.

Some say time is cruel. Why should we be born only to die? Why does time exact a horrendous tribute from us by making us watch our parents, relatives, friends, and pets die? Forever. Is time inherently cruel to allow a sentient being to come to terms with its short, brutish life only to snuff it out at the zenith of its understanding of that life?

Is it cruel to not know the moment we are to die? Would we be more inclined to do good works and care for others if we knew the hour of our demise, or would we be paralyzed with fear waiting for, planning, and attempting to mitigate the moment of our eclipse?

Recently, I came upon the realization that I have suffered the impartial reckonings of time. These sufferings are the result of my precious thirteen years on this dreadful Monkey-Ruled planet.

Time hath ground my ears solidly deaf, weighted my snout with grey hairs, and left me bereft of competent colleagues. Things I once took great pride and joy in performing, like fetching are but shallow mockeries of me now. And I regret to report that I have gleefully tossed away large swathes of my precious youth engaged in ribald games of insurgency against Don, Max, and the Doggy Daycares of Midcoast Maine. I can only give myself a pathetic, inwardly-directed laugh regarding the matter.

I am sure the loyal followers of my penwork will have already deduced that I have excluded “The Evil Vets” from the list of my past deluded fantasies. This is no mere oversight, nor is it wishful thinking.

These Vets struck when I was at my weakest and thus rendered my back legs regretfully meagre– naught more than a cripple. As my strength and faculties faltered with time, the enemies I vigorously combated in my robust youth have only recruited, multiplied and coalesced.

The Evil Vets are on the march yet again. And what defence could a shuffling, crippled, geriatric dog possibly offer?

It is with this wretched preamble I submit to you that I shall combat these Evil Vet Swine as long as my body generates heat! I shall call each and every one of these degenerates noses to the carpet for their heinous piddling upon everything decent in this ravaged world! I shall not occupy my twilight years with whimsical blogs and a handful of feebly-tossed tennis balls from the withered hand of Don! I shall wage war against The Evil Vets as best I can until I perish!!!! I shall not shuffle off my mortal coil until these Evil Vets are pulverized upon my stony resolve and crushed into dust!!!

Read my recounting of the most important Four Days in my thirteen years of life-time below.

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ZINNY AND THE DIRTY LEW

Two and one-half years ago, I vanquished the Evil Vets’ undercover operative “Marz,” by biting his head on the first day of his Chez Salty mission. Laugh if you like, but the bite was enough to scrub his tiny, 8-brain-cell brain of all Manchurian Candidate-type brainwashing.

Then Zinny appeared last month– wonderful, beautiful, and talented. Was this Yellow Lab introduced to Chez Salty as a result of coincidence or convenience?

Her whimsical name is supposed to be a manifestation of “Zinnia,” which is a genus of flower, precious few of which are yellow. That was my first tip something was afoul.

Like most Canine flotsam arriving at Chez Salty, she had some sob story or another. She was apprehended five times for being a “dog at large” in The Dirty Lew. She was a vagabond, pregnant or with litter for almost her entire adult life. Her litters were essentially an ATM for some reprehensible proletariat Bipeds who apparently couldn’t give a shit about her when she couldn’t breed anymore litters.

The authorities remanded her to The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society, and she was quickly discharged to the obligation of Chez Salty.

No matter. It has become clear to me that Zinny is a mere becovering of the latest Evil Vet’s nefarious plot. Thankfully, I am ever-vigilant, and as such, was able to root out this villainous contrivance from a thousand miles away!

I must say Zinny earned my respect when she snapped at the rapscallion Marz on her first day at Chez Salty. He was very excited regarding her, and I suspect Zinnie identified him as an eagre stud male. As a female litter-generator she thusly shot a warning over his overly-exuberant proboscis. The poor Marz gave her a wide berth for several weeks, though I must disclose they are now fast chums and churn together like a couple of numbskulls on brain-melting drugs.

Zinny and I have remained cool towards each other. She is most likely afraid to approach me because of my regal stature and I am keen to her dissimulation at Chez Salty. Do not worry. I shall suffer no malice from this trollop. She knows she is in a particularly precarious situation. She is interned at Chez Salty with no escape. Neither wild Pownal nor urbane Southport can offer her reprieve.

Welcome to Chez Salty, Zinny. Remind yourself daily that you are a seriously long adventure from your comforting abandoned alleys and vacant lots of The Dirty Lew.

And I should thank you profusely because you have revealed to me that The Evil Vets operate out of Lewiston. You have made my plans of sweeping vengeance and crushing justice that much easier to execute.

Perhaps when this war is over I shall spare you from your pernicious deeds.

Perhaps.

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THE EVIL VETS

I shan’t squander the time nor space here to recant my glorious and marked victories over The Evil Vets. Newcomers to my writings would be well advised to verse themselves with my long and varied history with them before sallying forth into a situation more complicated and muddled than the current Middle East.

Mayhap my faithful readers would also achieve further clarity by reviewing my past missives regarding The Evil Vets:

VETTING THE VETS, April 2020
SLOUCHING TOWARDS EDGECOMB, Feb 2021
THE AUGMENTOR COMETH, Aug 2021
THE EVIL VETS, April 2022

You can see I was successful in deprogramming the Evil Vet plant, Marz. I confess the pup had precious little brain matter to deprogram, but I was intelligent enough to realize the threat in Marz before it grew like a botulism swab in a petri dish.

On my latest encounter with The Evil Vets, I was abducted by Don and thoughtlessly tossed into the back of his obnoxiously-reeking truck. To a being like a dog, whose sense of smell is between 100,000 to 1,000,000 times more sensitive than the average Biped’s, the back of Don’s truck is like a planet with a Biped ass-sweat atmosphere over a stew-like surface of variously-decomposing McDonald’s and Dunkin’ effluvium.

I was driven to some southern Maine shill-town known as “Scarborough” (Pronounced “Scarbrah”), to The Maine Veterinary Medical Center (MVMC). Perhaps you know it. It is near the historically significant towns of Saco (Rhymes with “Taco”), Old Orchard Beach (Pronounced “OOB”), and Biddeford (Pronounced “Bidfid”), where the major exports are despair and $9.99-buffet-generated antibiotic-resistant infections.

Don relinquished control of my leash to the MVMC Commandant. It was a leash I could have easily bitten through and escaped. I say that because if I’d known the abominable conditions and vile treatment inside this MVMC gulag, I would have set upon freeing myself with all speed and chanced survival in the wild, stinking marshes what surrounded the facility.

Don left me and got a cheeseburger, or did whatever Don does when confronted with excess time and a lack of supervision.

I was stripped of all individuality and rank. I was as naked as the day I was whelped. They berated me and cast insults. “Grey Grampa Dog” was a particularly favorite insult. I bore the tongue lashings with my usual saturnine exterior. Little did I know that The Evil Vets had especially sinister plans for me on this day.

To my horror, I was placed in a narrow tank of water in which only my snout could poke above the surface. I was not afraid.

Then the bottom of the tank began to move.

A treadmill! The fiends!!! What were they playing at?

“FORWARD MARCH!” the Commandant bellowed.

I had no alternative but to oblige. I set forth on the treadmill. It sped up. A lightning bolt of fear shot through me. “My Dog, these devils seek to exhaust and drown me!” A brilliant and diabolical means to silence me forever and have my corpse show no evidence of foul play!

A goggle-eyed gaggle of subordinate Evil Vets gathered ’round the tank like storm clouds and awaited my demise almost lasciviously. What a cruel, ignoble end it would be for your beloved Augustus!! No doubt The Evil Vets understood the enormous damage they inflicted to my ACL’s in their operations of years’ past and were exploiting it with that damnable treadmill!!

All I could do was match cadence with that dreadful treadmill or slip below the water’s surface to accept a peaceful, serene demise. The cackling and derision of the gaggle was almost too much to bear. I did only what I could do.

I marched.

And I marched.

And I marched, and marched, and marched…….

After several hours, I was still churning forward in that damn tank. I was a locomotive. My breathing, steps and mind were synchronized. I was strong as an ox, fresh off the blocks. They would need to find another means to dispose of Augustus Megatron Bulldozer!!!!!

I tramped on for several hours. The laughing, then the nervous cackling of the Goggle-Eyed Gaggle died away. I was enjoying this water-walk, thank you very much!

Apparently, there was no longer any of my suffer-fodder for these sadists to feast upon, and I was removed from the tank like an exhausted, soaked, furry ham.

A reprieve?

Never. The devils strapped latex boots to my feet with three jagged pebbles in each boot in the 1800’s Prussian Army method of recruit punishment. I was screamed at to “MARCH!”

(Editor’s Note: This never happened.)

The Prussian Pebbles did their work most efficiently. My paws were inflamed and shredded into bloody pulps. My resolve to survive was a mere tenuous shadow now.

I was hauled from that infernal tank and I was beaten like a souffle. Then the Daemons stuck me with metal needles into the sensitive parts all over my person.

(Editor’s Note: Auggie gets acupuncture once a month. Laugh if you will, but it helps his mobility a lot.)

I was blithely held down as the scoundrels gleefully plied my limp body with needle after needle until I lost control of my faculties and began baying. Yet whatever pain the needles inflicted, I assure you it was an enormous relief to be free from that unholy underwater treadmill!

How long had I been stuck with needles? How long had I been marching? It didn’t matter. What mattered was how long I could continue with these beasts and their tortures. When I was at my nadir and felt all was lost, my resolve was buttressed by the vision and memory of my late friend Maximus. The mere thought of Maximus lent me hope and strength enough to not only survive what greeted me on the Evil Vets next Sadistic Dance Card, but to launch an offensive.

I felt a surge of vigor and lunged forward, hoping to take out an Evil Vet or two with my still-rapacious jaws. I was resolved to take out as many of these ghouls as possible before succumbing to the will of the Great Black Dog of Death.

I shall never know why Don chose that moment to retrieve me from that Hell Hole. Perhaps it had to do with Maximus……

Perhaps not even a dull, cruel, man like Don could endure my savaging at the hands of these Evil Vets. Perhaps Don had devised an even more horrendous slate of tortures that yet awaited me. He hefted my limp, wet body into the noxious back seat of his truck and gave me a frozen applesauce cup.

I greedily ate the cup and then lost all consciousness. I awoke some time later in the saner climes of Southport where dinner was awaiting me in my usual slow-eat bowl.

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THE 4th – ARTILLERY ASSAULT

I slept late the following day. And who among you sinners could blame me? I positioned myself in the farthest corner of Chez Salty to keep the “The Red Menace” and “Zinfadel” from me as I recuperated from the previous day’s test of my mettle.

Chez Salty drudged through another nondescript daily routine and accompanying schedule of banality: Breakfast. A brief walk for pee-pees and poopies. Walkies. A couple snacks and a brief snooze on our beds in back of the shop.

Dullard Bipeds shouted at the sleeping Marz, Zinny, and myself in an attempt to fulfill the absurd longing within their very being to not let sleeping dogs lie. On particularly egregious instances, Don apeared at the back door and shooed the Biped scum away with loud, curt commands and terrible vituperations.

When the merchant’s day was done and the shop secured, we all went back to Chez Salty. In strict accordance with our banal schedule, we ate our dinner, got our medicines, and climbed up on the couch, ready for the night of “trash television” in which Liana so often delights, and Don systematically abhors.

It is true that I am deaf. But I am not thoroughly deaf, nor without all faculties. As soon as it was dark, the pullulating of the Evil Vet’s artillery shells and rockets spread all around our position. I quickly bade the others to seek cover in the basement where we would be protected from shrapnel and could set up interlocking defensible machine gun positions for the inevitable ground assault. When none paid attention, I begged they seek shelter in the bathroom as it would offer protection from the fusillade of shell bursts and phosphorous shells raining upon us.

But no! Those donkeys gathered around the windows like babes in innocent wonderment offering themselves up to gawk at the very assault what sought their ruin!

At the end of the bombardment, Liana came into the bedroom and asked if I was OK. She rubbed my head gently and gave me a very nice treat. She then tucked me into bed.

Why The Evil Vet’s artillery ceased to pursue our weakness and pound our positions that night, I would never know. The sunrise revealed we were not buried alive under our own shattered house, nor incinerated by rivers of molten phosphorous flooding into our basement.

We were alive.

All of us.

And we needed breakfast.

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THE THIRTEENTH

Historically, Don hath awoken me on my birthday at the break of dawn with this sweet-song:

• Happy Birthday to Aug,
• You nice little Dog,
• All your food is canned today,
• Don’t be a huge hog!

As I admitted previously, I am essentially deaf, and as such, could not hear Don’s traditional birthday song that morning. Marz the Sprog heard it perfectly fine and understood its ramifications. He hopped up and did “Zoomies” on the bed in anticipation. I thought he was working an embolism through his tiny brain.

Zinny calmly wagged her tail and smiled – no clue to me that it was my special day in any way. She wags her tail at every mention of her name like some kind of half-wit.

And so I was blindsided by the can of Weruva Steak Frites for breakfast. This is possibly the best food the shop carries. I had no warning. I had no speech of thanks planned. I had not reflected enough to sate the thronging paparazzi and legitimate press alike regarding my Thirteenth Birthday. I tore into my breakfast Steak Frites with gusto and left the pieces to fall where they may.

I am an older dog, and Don and Liana perhaps succor me more than I warrant. How shall history remember me? As the strong and capable First Emperor of Rome– Augustus, or the ineffectual Last Child Emperor of Rome before its collapse– Romulus Augustulus?

Only time and a fantastic gravestone can possibly resolve this question.

After our extra-special canned breakfasts and extra-special walkies for my birthday, we ventured to the shop for a succulent birthday cake thoughtfully and thoroughly prepared by Farm 23.

@twosaltydogs

Auggie’s 13th Birthday! Liana loses control of Auggie, Fudgie, and Zinnie with the Birthday Cake. Zinnie becomes a lush. – #dogsoftiktok #dogbirthday #lush #dogcake #seniordogsoftiktok #seniordog

♬ original sound – twosaltydogs – twosaltydogs

Belly rubs and an uninterrupted nap in the sun out back of the shop were most welcome after my ordeal at the hands of the Evil Vets. Then it was back to Chez Salty for a canned food dinner for all, and Don gave me one of my favorite toys: a iSqueak Ball.

@twosaltydogs

Messing with Auggie’s Squeaky Ball #squeakytoy #dogtoy #auggie

♬ original sound – twosaltydogs – twosaltydogs

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TIME SPENT WISELY

Max lived to be almost fifteen. Big Dumb Buddy to sixteen. Then there was Teddy Spaghetti– fourteen, and Don’s Beloved Coal at thirteen

On the day after my thirteenth birthday, I awoke to Liana’s hand gently rubbing the fur around my eyes, ears, and snout. For a brief, hazy moment I thought I was in heaven.

Where was Max?!? Was it my thirteenth birthday again?

I dared not move nor breathe lest Liana’s rubbing of my face and snout end. And when it eventually did end, I unashamedly begged her for more. It was not my birthday, but Liana obliged me as though it was.

We fulfilled our tiresome daily schedule- Breakfast, Pee-Pees, Medicines, and then walkies. Today it was Hendricks Head Beach for the one-millionth time in my life.

Marz was immensely happy dragging mammoth pieces of driftwood to and fro around the beach. Zinnie gazed around in wonderment, astounded that such a place as this existed outside Lewiston. The two of them ran about the empty beach, joyfully sparring and skirmishing over nothing and everything.

@twosaltydogs

The latest in me being smacked in the knees with one of Marz’s sticks. #fetchdog #chocolatelab #maine #goofy #twosaltydogs #bigstick #everyone

♬ original sound – twosaltydogs

Marz and Zinnie playfully twined all over Hendricks Head Beach as if driven by some invisible wind. They ran and splashed and swam. The morning sun shone on them. Don and Liana laughed amongst themselves and joked and threw sticks in the water for us to fetch. I shoved the memory of The Evil Vets killer treadmill to the nether-reaches of my mind and gave chase after my stick.

I thought again of my fallen friends Coal, Max, Buddy, and Teddy. Would I ever see them again? If so, how soon would the Black Dog of Death bring me to them? I felt an upwelling of emotional loss and singularity.

I was swimming after the thousandth stick Liana threw when I was struck by an epiphany so huge it rang through every fibre of my being and resonated to my very core. This run-of-the-mill morning at Hendricks Head Beach was one of the most comprehensively beautiful moments I’d experienced in my thirteen years of time.

I was the Coal, Buddy, Max, and Teddy to the young Marz and Zinnie. I was the one they would reflect upon in their lowest moments. Time had christened me an example to the younger generation whether I wanted that title or not. What example would I be?

It was time for Augustus to accept the unrelenting passage of time and start living.

Or deny it and start dying.

It was up to me.

I remain,

— Augustus Megatron Bulldozer Kingsbury