Two minutes

You have fifteen minutes to shovel. The driveway isn't bad, just a dusting. But it will give you a chance to get the dogs outside and keep the snow from piling up. You don't have to look pretty... Just slap on a hat and some big boots. Grab the shovel. What do the dogs have? Oh, it's a milk jug from the recycling container. Shovel. The dogs are in front of the house, someone must be walking by. Oh, it's a Shepard. Call the dogs back to you. The Shepard is chasing them into the yard. The owner is yelling a name that doesn't belong to my dogs. He looks worried. Must tell him my dogs are friendly, run around to the back yard just in time to see...

     The German Shepard nails Charlie to the ground. 

      He's biting him. 

      He picks Charlie up off the ground. 

      Charlie is in his mouth? This isn't play...oh. My. God. 

      Find a stick!!!! Find something!!!! He's shaking Charlie oh my God what is that noise Charlie is making?!

       He's killing Charlie. 

        Don't go near this. That dog could turn on you... This is nature...

       But I was just shoveling...

       Nick is outside. No. He's running at the dogs. He's trying to get them apart...he's going to get hurt...

       Charlie is going to die. Get ready. This is going to be ugly. Pick how much of this you can forget you saw and stop looking when you've reached that point. Prepare yourself to hold him while he dies. Be there for his last breath if this dog doesn't just carry him off somewhere. There's going to be guts and blood. I can smell the blood from here. Don't think about how much of your dog is gone focus on his spirit and making him as comfortable as you can...

       This needs to happen faster. If you're going to kill my dog, do it already. I can't handle his screams... I've got to do something. There's nothing I can do. I. I. I can't move...

        What?

         They got him free?

        Get him to the house!!! He runs inside and you're calling him frantically. Looking for a blood trail through your house but you can't see one. Did he fall apart somewhere and you didn't notice? He's got to be under the bed but he's not. I've never heard my voice sound like this, shouting his name. Doesn't he know how important it is?

         He's downstairs under the table. 

         You can't see him because your eyes are pouring tears. Nick is telling you to calm down. You're terrified to look at the wounds, you can't see the insides of your pet...

        It's not as bad as youd imagined. 

        It's still not good. 

        You drive to the vet crying harder than you thought physically possible. It's hard to tell which one of you is producing more primal sounds, you or the dog in the back seat. 

       Charlie will survive this. 

        You're grateful for Nick helping stop the a attack. For the vet assistant that tells you you're parked just fine even though your car is in the middle of the parking lot. For the tissues. For the kindness. For human cures on animal bodies. That the kids weren't home or outside. 

       You spend time flashing back and sobbing, and every time it happens, you make it your business to forget some detail, some one thing that you saw. 

        There's no shower hot enough for you to wash the smells off. You throw away the clothes-they're ripped and torn and blood stained, but most of all, they smell like that smell...

        ...When your mother was butchering a deer on the table... And you were young but it didn't smell like anything you'd ever experienced... A mix of the iron and adrenaline in the blood... Now with the smell of dog spit... And that is in your head, in your nose. You wreak of it. Your car is permeated in it....

       And you just keep falling apart....