The Dog Whistle

I dreamed that a big tan dog was sitting at the foot of a giant oak tree and had a whistle around its neck, which it aggressively blew whenever its owner approached. The owner was a middle-aged man in a dull red sweater, brown corduroy slacks, and brown loafers. A stricken look took over his finely lined face every time he kneeled next to his dog and it blew the whistle. The dog’s face was as expressionless as a dog’s face can be. The man became distraught and then agitated. He couldn’t stay away from the dog — his dog — so it blew the whistle at him continuously. That the dog could blow so hard for so long was surprising. It never seemed to take a breath or run out of oxygen. The man threw his arms around the dog’s neck in a gesture that he believed passersby would see as loving and worried. What he was really doing was trying to cut off the dog’s air supply. It didn’t work. The dog shook its slender body like it was trying to dry off from a bath, but it managed to keep its head still enough to blast the whistle directly into the man’s right ear. The man stumbled backward and blood trickled down his cheek. As he cleaned it off with an immaculately white handkerchief, the dog ran away. But the owner had a pretty good idea where the dog would be hiding.