The snow should be gone by now and other than a few depressing flurries the past few weeks, it is.
With it's annual absence, it has revealed something interesting, which before recently, I had not seen very often.
Now I don't know if they were covered in snow all winter and as the white stuff receded, they were uncovered and slowly thawed out, but the homeless are out in full force along St. Catherine, outside Berri-UQAM, in parks, bus stops, Metro entrances and on any street corner with any sort of foot traffic right now.
Coming from Yellowknife, seeing a disheveled-looking drunk guy yelling at someone on the street isn't something I would call abnormal. Actually, it's probably a bad sign if you don't see something depressing on a few downtown streets, because that means everyone has converged somewhere else and feces is likely to be hitting a fan.
But what I have noticed here is that most anyone who spends any time on the street does so with Man's best friend. (Apparently a dog will be your best friend even if you don't have a home.) Other than YK's Charlie -- who often had two dogs with him -- I hadn't really experienced this before.
And it's a little jarring. Here is some guy with his teeth falling out, walking with a limp, in tattered clothes and maybe nursing a black eye, leading a frisky dog that looks like it could do a backflip through a hoolahoop.
How can these dogs possibly be healthier than their masters?
Who's wearing the pants in this relationship?
At first, I thought it was just a cheap ploy the bums were using. Of course, they have these lean, gleaning dogs hanging around them to guilt us into coughing up money to satisfy their own coffee-drinking or jean jacket-collecting habits. (That's what homeless people spend their money on, right?) As a society, we like pretty things and they are using that against us.
But then I started to think that was a ridiculous thought and not at all reasonable.
For one, how did these dogs stay so fit? No matter how much money these shelter-challenged folks collected, they couldn't possibly feed themselves and the dogs well enough that the dogs looked like they did. I wondered whether these dogs were adopted from animal shelters or saved from puppy mills, used until they died from worms or the cold or from eating a bad turd and then the homeless person moved on and found a new dog to guilt us with.
But that couldn't be it, could it? No one at an animal shelter would hand a dog over to a homeless person, would they? And wouldn't a homeless person eat a dog from a puppy mill instead of feeding it?
Maybe that's what they did. The bum was harvesting the dog. They fattened it up and then, when the time was right, they whipped up some Chicken Poodle Soup. I mean, they eat dogs in Asia. Is that so far-fetched?
Again, though, I realized that could not be true. We were raised on Lassie and Old Yeller and Santa's Little Helper and there was no way any North American, no matter how down and out, could fathom putting a piece of a virtuous canines into their mouth.
Then it hit me. I had been totally wrong. It wasn't the dogs that were being used by the homeless people. It was the other way around.
How could I be so ignorant?
It didn't happen until I walked past a couple with a beautiful black lab today that it dawned on me.
These dogs weren't used as tools to drum up change by greedy, shameless homeless people. No, these compassionate people were just not able to cut the leash with their dogs and because of that, they found themselves without even a dog house to shelter them.
It was true. The couple today did not look at all like they did just a few years ago. They wore faded black hoodies. The woman's blond hair had splashes of blue, but overall, it was faded white by the elements and age and harrowing experience. The couple's faces were scarred with acne and burned by sun and their teeth were grey. They marinated in hopelessness, while their dog raced around, oblivious to them, like he was on speed.
And that was it. He probably was.
This downtrodden and forlorn couple probably once lived in a nice house in the suburbs with a white-picket fence. They were leasing-to-own a reasonable-sized SUV. They both had jobs in office towers. He was a junior broker. She was a human resources administrator. They hosted dinner parties a few times a year. They were planning on having a child, but not until they had a few more years of the mortgage paid off and they owned the vehicle. They were the picture of the successful, lower-middle-class 20-something couple.
Except, they had a demon. And it was a demon of their own making.
Once in college and before going to a party, the husband-to-be blew some weed smoke into the dog's face as a gag for his friends. The dog coughed. Everyone laughed. They joked the dog would get the munchies and laughed as it laid in front of the TV like they probably did. The husband-to-be and his friends went out and enjoyed the night without a care or a thought for the dog.
But something changed within the dog. He was feeling good. I mean, GOOD! This usually conscientious and order-taking dog was hungry, but there was no food in his dish. He raided the fridge and found a chicken breast and ripped the meat from the bone. He was thirsty now and he found a few beer cans, which he bit into and lapped up. Feeling even better, he then stumbled across a bottle of whiskey, which he smashed and then polished the floor with. Full of piss and vinegar, he fell out through the doggy door and into the night.
He woke up behind a McDonalds, not remembering a thing that he had done. He had an itch on his little red stick and some claw marks on his side.
But he did recall the way he felt. And he remembered he had liked it.
Over the next few months, the dog would leave for days at a time. The husband-to-be thought nothing of it. Maybe he'd made some friends. A few months later, every single dog in the neighbourhood was knocked up. A couple cats walked around with noticeable limps.
The husband-to-be didn't suspect a thing. He moved into a new house with his girlfriend and soon they got married.
Life was busy and the couple didn't pay much attention to the dog. And with more time, they saw less and less of the dog. They started to notice he was acting differently. He would leave for a week sometimes. He slept most of the time he was home. He wasn't as hungry any more. He was more agitated around guests. Lots of shady dogs started visiting the house and hanging out and digging holes on the front lawn. The dog looked at the couple wearily at times and he often did so with a suspicious eye. He didn't enjoy being pet much any more.
The couple never suspected the dog was up to anything serious. He was just a dog being a dog. But one day, they found a raven, a snake and the dog huddled underneath the porch shivering and making a lot of noise. The dog had a band wrapped around his paw and the raven held a syringe in its beak. The couple chased the bird and the snake away without a problem, but chasing away the dog's urges would not prove so easy.
The couple spent long nights with the dog, caressing him and bringing him water and doggy treats. But as soon as the couple went to sleep, assured the dog was on the right track, he would leave and wouldn't be home for days. When he returned, the couple took took him to expensive counseling sessions, but they didn't work. The couple returned the SUV to get the dog into a drug rehab program in California, run by new age dog handlers. But the dog would sneak out at night and often come back so high, his rehab workers couldn't even get him to sit, let alone lay down.
Finally, when all other options were exhausted, the couple caved and started buying the dog the heroine he so keenly lusted after, so he wouldn't have to prowl the neighbhourhood after sundown, doing whatever he did to score the substance. They did it out of love; to try to keep him out of trouble. They would even help him shoot up. And when the dog got his high, he would lay in the couple's arms and coo and the couple would stroke his coat and they would be comforted for that moment.
That was six years ago. That was one SUV, one house, two jobs, one kidney and two lives ago.
I walked past that couple on the street today. They spent everything they had to keep their dog alive. They loved him too much to let him go. They followed him through to the edge and back every day. They slept in dark alleys, got menaced by pushers and hustlers and had to constantly carouse with evil hell-raised pooches with rabies, scabies and fleas. The woman even sold herself to pay for the dog's habit.
So I felt bad today. Not for the dog, but for the people. There was no way I couldn't give them a buck or two.
I looked at them and nodded. There was a tear in the woman's eye. I looked at the dog and shook my head. The dog didn't pay me any mind. He pissed on an old man's foot and snickered. He was gritting his teeth. He was so healthy, despite his habits. I could tell he got the choice cuts of meat when the family sat down around the garbage can.
Feeling sympathy bulging in my pocket, I reached in to help these poor people out. Maybe they could get a clean slice of pizza on me, tonight.
But. I only had a $5 bill and I didn't want to give them that much. It was $5 fucking bucks, man. That's like a beer.
So I put the bill back in my pocket, shrugged my shoulders and bounced.
