Arf!

On our walk the other a week or so ago, about 6:20, still dark, we were four streets away when  I heard some kind of metallic heap pull into the street from the corner behind me...  the light behind me was not as bright as you would expect headlights to be so I turned around.  It was a truck with only one headlight.   The truck chugged slowly behind me making a skipping sound, I think it was not running on all cylinders.  It pulled up beside me and slowed down.  A man stuck his head out of the window and politely asked me the name of the street down at the corner that he pointed to.  I said, "Vandiver Drive."

"That is what I am looking for!  Thank you sir!"  I got a better look at him.  He looked like a freewheeling kind of person, sort of like Jeff Bridges in THE BIG LEBOWSKI or CRAZY HEART.

Then he said, "That is a pretty dog, what kind is it?"

"Thank you.  Heinz."

"Where did you get it?"

"Humane Society."

"God Bless you!"  Let me show you a picture of my dog".  He told me to come closer, and he began to unbutton his shirt.

"Oh shit, what now?"  I asked myself. 

As he was unbuttoning his shirt  he said this dog had saved his life four times.

"Four times?"  I said.

About then he showed me a picture of his dog.  It was something like German Sheppard tattooed on his chest, above his heart.

Then he went on to say he was in a bomb rescue squad in the Army in someplace like Pakistan and he and that dog was a team.  I don't remember the exact country, I was still in shock of a man pulling up and showing me his chest.

He bided me a good morning and drove his groaning sputtering bashed up white truck away.  As he turned on Vandiver Drive the truck made a loud painful shrill noise.

For a brief moment just a few minutes before I was wondering if I would be the one letting out a loud painful shrill noise.   

I looked up Dog Tattoos on Google and his tattoo looked something like the above.