In the old days, it was called bull-baiting, a so-called “sport” where a bull was—well, it’s too gross to go into but suffice it to say, bullfights are humane by comparison because at least the animal is free to strike back, there’s some kind of contest, it’s not just common cruelty, and—anyway, so it was ironic that now he was in this position, tied to the ground, vulnerable to attack, since he had been bred in those old days to torment a bull that was similarly restrained. (The shoe was on the other foot, in other words; though he had never worn shoes, not even those little booties people force on their pets, either because they’re “cute” or to keep them from electrocuting themselves by stepping on power lines at the bottoms of poles hidden by snow.) Not that he was aware of irony, he had no capacity for complex thought and now knew only panic and fear because he had never been tied up like this, alone, outside a store: Casey was a bulldog used to spending most of his time indoors and out with his owner, the one who had left him there.

Even if they sympathized, most people passing found him adorable, for he couldn’t express unhappiness facially, could not form expressions as humans do, looked to them, of course, either comically grumpy or like Winston Churchill or like he was forever smiling like Heath Ledger as the Joker or Lon Chaney in (not Chaney, Emil Jannings) in the silent movie, where the star was also made permanently to smile—“The Last Laugh,” that was the name. (In fact, his face was full of floppy folds so that enemies could bite into it without causing him discomfort and his jaw so strong it was said you could cut off his head without loosening his grip.) At the moment, actually, the man he really looked like, movie-wise, was Charles Laughton in “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” his ugly mug contorted in agony when he was manacled and whipped in the public square, and the crowd laughed. Unlike Quasimodo, though, the hunchback, whom Laughton played, Casey probably had no idea what was even happening: no one really knows how a dog’s brain works, no matter what they claim, but it’s conceivable that Casey was more horribly confused than anything else.

He was confused because, like the rest of his kind—breed, yes, but, also kind—he had been happy to—maybe that’s too much—content to stay where the rules had been long established and his place in the pack (behind the leader) was set in stone. Until today, he had eaten, slept, and shat at times convenient for his owner (and these times hadn’t varied, as the man had been, until now, predictable), told when, where, and how to live, which suited him, or to be more exact, kept him functioning, a fact which he expressed by sleeping, drooling, and farting as much as bulldogs do when they’re healthy, which is to say, a lot. And for being allowed this life, he often licked his owner’s face, which the man (who lived in his apartment alone) felt was love but which was possibly just a way of encouraging his leader to keep letting him live, making no decisions of his own.

Living according to a rigid order imposed by a superior was something of which Casey was only vaguely aware, in a non-verbal, not even internally-visualized way. He felt it through a sort of stimulus in his blood and nervous system that he had inherited and that had evolved over time, changing from when he’d been bred to bite to death a bear chained to a stake in the guise of playing a game (and that’s the truth of what it was, it can’t be helped), the event to which he’d been returned today in reverse, his leash looped to the foot of an iron bench outside a health food store in New York City. In other words, he knew only that his life had changed, that there was suddenly not the external certainty he needed and, as a result, he was out of control.

When Casey was untied and brought back to the apartment, he immediately forgot his ordeal, which had probably taken time off his life, another concept of which he would never be aware. He returned to his routine—taking orders—and happily dozed, dripped saliva, and was flatulent. Not knowing time (this is what they say about dogs, if you leave them for two minutes or two days, they don’t know the difference, but can it be true? It doesn’t seem plausible from how they act), he had no idea that it was about a week before he was once again, while on a walk, after defecating, left unattended and tied up, outside the same store: Nature’s Way, on Twenty-Fourth and Third.

This time, Casey had a sense memory of it having happened before—not as an actor remembers his mother’s death to do a sad scene—he felt shooting shards of the previous experience and knew that he was without assurance again, deprived of the dictates of another, alone. He also knew that he was helpless against the smaller dog who yapped at him and then was pulled away, the child who pointed too close to his face and then was pulled away, the fleas and flies that landed on him, glancing, biting, the first drops of rain that fell into his eyes and crept into his panting mouth, past the funny-looking, fang-like, upside-down-type teeth that were its ineffective guards (he didn’t know his owner’s umbrella was inches away, in a jaunty red container, near the store’s front door). He howled now (he hadn’t previously), for a second time in this place and condition had started to erode his—you couldn’t call it rationality, it wasn’t rational—his sense of self?—whatever was the opportunity to follow that tethered him to the earth. He howled so loudly that his owner, coming out, carrying humus and bran cereal (which he really didn’t want and wouldn’t ever eat) said, “What’s the matter, boy? Come on, it’s okay! Come on, Casey!” before he ran the waddling animal home, not to give either one of them exercise but only to escape the (exaggerated in his mind) looks of condemnation from others. When they got inside, he believed his dog’s dismay had ended with the shutting of the door.

Rattled by the experience, his owner now changed his ways. He left Casey alone in the apartment instead, for hours on end, which further confused the dog (as his leader was a free-lance movie critic and usually worked at home). Even more discombobulated, without cues and commands in familiar surroundings, Casey responded: he tore apart pillows (on which he had formerly only slept and snored), pushed papers off desks onto floors and nosed them into further disarray, and peed in places where he himself had lain. When his owner returned and saw the catastrophe, he assumed, ruefully—and even said aloud, pointlessly—that the dog was punishing him, “retaliating” for his being gone so much these days. But the animal didn’t know from resentment or bitchy paybacks; he had just been thrust farther onto a world which made no sense and so was increasingly behaving with less and less sense upon it.

Not without comic compassion, his owner also said, to Casey’s sloppy face, that he should get the dog a “shrink” (though he would do this as much as he would eat the bran and humus: not at all). Casey licked his face after the word “shrink,” which made the human laugh and see it as agreement, although the animal was probably only performing a remembered action out of order, another sign of stress.

Soon, in the apartment, the solitary dog became more focused in his destructive flailing. Somewhere in Casey (his brain? balls?) the notion of blame or at least an enemy or more likely a target began to emerge or re-emerge. As he upended the bathroom trash and yanked down rolls of toilet paper, it was as if he was somehow being directed to destroy them or something else opaquely in opposition. This sense of having a vengeful mission, even one mysterious, relaxed him, so that he seemed now at times placid to Arnie, as if the storm had passed.

The truth was: the man, Arnie Meehan, 38, wasn’t thinking too much about Casey these days. He still loved the dog, whom he believed had “seen me through” much loneliness, if only by being a breathing, drooling, licking (and he thought, loving) presence in his home. Yet the recent death of Arnie’s mother now meant that both his parents were gone, and consequently so was Arnie’s obligation to them, a debt of devotion he had paid much longer than most men, spending his life in service to it, really, acting not just as son but plumber, therapist, clown, driver, and, in the end, hospice nurse to them both. He had had no other close relationships and had never known sexual love, unless you count Casey’s licking, which you really shouldn’t. With his parents’ deaths, Arnie had now been thrown from the nest, as it were, far enough to notice the cute and twenty-ish clerk at Nature’s Way, with whom he had in recent weeks taken every opportunity to flirt—in his own quiet, hesitant, pushing forty way—and from whom he had been buying things (bran, humus) just to get another glimpse and say another shyly interested word. (The gender of the clerk doesn’t matter. Pick the one that makes it most identifiable.)

Arnie hadn’t had the courage to extend an invitation to the clerk yet—not even for a coffee—but the time to do so was rushing inside him, he could feel it, as his blood was rushing for the first time. Answering to no one, on his own steam, Arnie was thrilled to finally be free—and one’s freedom often comes inadvertently at the expense of another’s security; it’s not fair, but that’s how it’s always been throughout history.

The next time Arnie came home, he intended to take Casey for a long walk, maybe to the park, and even bring a ball. Arnie felt like celebrating, for he had at last today popped the question, asked out the clerk (for lunch, during the day, keeping it light). Wearing his first-ever pats of cologne, he entered, whistling with excitement, carrying garbanzo beans and a yogurt (the last of which he actually intended to eat) in a recyclable bag. He jauntily wrapped the bag on the doorknob, grabbed up a leash lying on the floor, one-handed a rubber ball, and propping the door open with a foot and turning to go, called to his pet,

“Casey! Come here, Casey! Come here, boy!”

Wrapping, grabbing, and turning twisted Arnie around enough that, for an instant, he was caught in place, tied there, you might say. Casey came out from where he had been sleeping, conserving strength, like a fighter before a match. He saw the big, pinned and wriggling creature, picked up a new scent that was odd and alien and so inciting, and, responding to early, internalized instructions that he suddenly recalled, rules he had been taught in another age and which had returned to his blood because they could be trusted when something else no longer could, before Arnie could scream, he sprang, he (feeling no, not happy, but part of the planet again, himself) obeyed.