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Thursday, November 04, 2004 

If you like animals, don't read this. I wish I hadn't seen it.

I got off the bus today and made my way toward the crosswalk. Everybody was frozen, looking away from the school in one direction. Thirty people? Forty? More?

Being a half-trained journalist, I figured something interesting must be happening. So I looked too.

In time to see a bus driver raise a red cylindrical object over his head and bring it down hard. He was one of three people clustered together. A white dog was being held by one of the people. A pit-bull was being held by another.

The bus driver brought the object down on the pit-bull's head at least twice.

A young woman with black and blonde hair started toward them, swearing. Then she saw the white dog and said, "Oh."

She drew the same conclusion I had. That the pit-bull had attacked the white dog and the driver was hitting it to get it to release the other dog.

The white dog was carried away. The man holding the pitbull continued holding it. The man carried the red cylinder, which I then saw was a small fire extinguisher, to his bus (and presumably the radio in the bus) which was parked on the other side of the street. As he crossed the street he asked if anybody had a cell phone and told them to call 911.

The man was still holding the dog tightly and it wasn't moving very much. Its eyes were open.

I stood staring with three people from my class.

"Do we want to get the story?" one of them asked.

We continued to stand staring. A highpitched wailing started. The man, who wore a burgundy jacket that looked like the kind TTC drivers wear, leaned over the dog. The wailing continued.

Was it the dog wailing in pain, or was the man I thought was a TTC driver actually the owner and screaming over a dead dog? I couldn't figure that out.

What was going through my classmates' minds, I don't know. I know what was going through mine.

I was remembering three years ago when my dog was killed by a truck. When I knelt mumbling in shock in a ditch over her body in the dark.

I was remembering nine years ago when I'd stalked a deer for half an hour, shot it from a bad angle and then had to shoot it again to make it stop screaming.

A lot of people were standing about ten feet back from the woman and the dog.

"I don't think we want to see this," said the classmate who had spoken before.

I thought about pulling out my notebook. I thought about getting quotes. I thought about puking.

We left.

Numb, I walked through the school. Stopped into the newsroom to tell them, but nobody was there. Went into news reporting and sat beside Shannon. Tried to tell her what I'd seen, but couldn't process it. Couldn't find the words. Rebecca, who had also seen it, did a better job.

Our instructor walked into the room.

"Who wants to cover a story?" he asked. "Right now!"

He sent us all out. All twenty of us.

The two buses were stilled stopped on either side of the road. An ambulance sat with lights flashing. Two police cars were pulled in. People in uniforms were all over. The man still covered the dog. There was no wailing.

Some of us were faster than others. They started talking to people. I got there with the second wave.

"I don't feel right about this," I said to Scott.

He agreed. There were too many of us standing around with notebooks. Caroline and a few others straggled up. We all expressed the same discomfort and kept looking over at the commotion. Shannon was in the first wave. We caught each other's eyes for a moment.

We second wavers continued griping, but nobody did anything. There were about ten of us.

"Look, let's go," I said. "There are enough of us here to get the story. We shouldn't be here."

We left.

I came back to class and sat down. Starred into space for a bit. Thought about dead and dying animals. Logged into Blogger and tried to sort out what the hell was going on my head by writing this entry.

Everybody's coming back now.

That's horrible. And yet, now I need to know what actually happened.

That's why I don't want to be a journalist and will settle for being an editor. The notion of being there in tough times and asking questions and bugging people and ruining reputations and lives is just too much for me most days.

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