After that, dogs so filled with gas you’d wish for the fart; they’d wish for it too. One of them wished so hard an eye popped out, laid wetly on his snout, the dog swatting as if it was a fly. After that dogs rotted on the inside, moles big as leeches sucking all the life right up. We watched one of the mommas upchuck into her bowl and eat it so fast you’d think the upchuck was gravy. Back up it came. Like God was saying, Don’t bother, ain’t no use. After that, dogs with bent backs, bowed legs, kneecaps slippery and mean as catfish. Dogs dragging or tucking legs, dogs eating dirt cause that’s all they could reach. Dogs chewing off their deux claws. Dogs with eyelashes that raked their eyes at every blink. Dogs with skin hard and raw as concrete.

Still Uncle Sandy tried. Next up let’s do some of them flat-faced ones, he said. Or them pointy-eared skinnies. One thing all Uncle Sandy’s dogs had in common, aside from being failures, was how much they’d love a pat on the head or a scratch behind the ear. Some would even roach up, offer you bellies the palest pink you ever saw. But see that ain’t a feature Sandy was after. I know cause I asked him, What are you looking for? I don’t know, he said. Sandy had an eye that’d wander on you, and there it went while he thought, the newest litter dead behind him, born with no ears and no teeth and no breath. Finally he told me he was after perfection, that he’d know it when he saw it. Later we buried the litter behind the shed, and I tried to think spiritual things for them, tried to imagine them in a better place, but there wasn’t nothing I could drum up. Perfection. I suppose I can see the honor in that, if I squint real hard.