Is there anything more shameful than being barked at by a dog apropos of nothing? This is what Sutton had to wonder as she encountered not one, but three dogs in the woods that day who all barked at her as if she were hiding some nefarious secret. Like being a serial killer. Or the type of person who didn’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Sutton was neither. In fact, she was objectively what one might refer to as a “good” person. Someone who volunteered when she could for organizations like Habitat for Humanity and The Salvation Army. Though she never did try to volunteer at the ASPCA—perhaps that would have better conditioned her to being around dogs. Or perhaps the dogs barking at her in the woods this evening would have sensed she was a friend to their kind. 

Not that she wasn’t. It just so happened that, for most of her life, Sutton had been exposed to the kind of animals that were mostly of the feline or reptilian variety. That’s what her family had when she was a child (specifically, two cats and a turtle) and what her roommates had when she was in college (specifically, a chameleon). For whatever reason, a dog as a pet had never entered her life thus far. Though she was fond of them, and always enjoyed showing them affection when offered the opportunity. Indeed, in her estimation, you had to be a very particular kind of monster to be unmoved by dogs, let alone go so far as to “hate” them. But apparently, on this strange late afternoon, they seemed to hate her…or at least be extremely unnerved by her. 

Was she giving off a strange scent? Walking in a manner that somehow suggested she was some sort of threat? These were possible reasons a dog might go off on someone, yet it had never happened to her before. In fact, she had always heard the well-touted myth (or was it?) that dogs reacted like that toward a person if they could sense, somehow, that the person was bad. Evil. Is that what these “creatures” had sensed in her? Something that even she herself wasn’t aware of—or wouldn’t be until it was too late? 

This sense of paranoia hadn’t necessarily gripped her the first time it happened while out on this “constitutional.” That was when she laughed it off, looking “with heartfelt intent” into the eyes of the multiple owners (a family of four) when they walked by—as if to say, “Ha ha, you’ve got a real live wire there.” They didn’t seem to grasp the “tone” of her laugh or body language though, and kind of just gawked at her as if she were a garden-variety freak. Because she must be if their dog was acting so belligerently toward her. That’s what their faces gave away as they sort of nodded and smiled at her. Not in a manner that suggested they were apologizing for how “cuckoo” their dog was acting, but rather, in a manner that suggested they were merely placating her and trusted the dog’s assessment of Sutton more than they ever would her assessment of their dog.

Fine, she said to herself. Maybe the dog was just being overly protective. After all, he had four people to defend. I won’t take offense. But the second time it happened, she was starting to feel a pattern develop. While the first dog had been a yippy terrier, this one was a medium-size breed that looked like a mix of Bernese Mountain Dog and a Canadian Eskimo Dog. And even though Sutton was still yards away from coming anywhere near this dog’s owner, he (or she) still started emitting a panicked and urgent bark. A bark that said, “You better not get one step closer, you potential psycho.”

In response, Sutton was doing the best she could to look “at ease,” trying to walk in a manner that was neither too stiff, nor too “boisterous.” Because each of these extremes could set off a dog’s alarm bells, since they were just as reliant on the visual cues of body language as they were scents to tell them what they needed to know about a “threat” (a.k.a. human). But it was no use trying to hide anything from a dog. They had, for all intents and purposes, superpowers. The kind that could, in essence, see through to your soul. And if a dog didn’t like what it saw with those superpowers, so help you God, you would be outed. As a “bad” person. Or at least a person who wasn’t quite to be trusted. For dogs could sus out “ill intentions” better than any prophet or witch or other assorted “being” with the gift of foresight. To be branded with a bark by a dog was to be branded as a villain. And it was clear to Sutton by the second barking that something about her must be very villainous indeed. 

The owner of this hybrid-looking breed was at least a bit more polite about it, doing a better job of faux chastising her dog rather than regarding Sutton as if she were the entirety of the problem. She could at least concede that Sutton was only part of it. Or pretend to concede anyway. That was more than Sutton could say of the previous owners, who had basically gone along with their dog’s verdict, no questions asked. Then again, could she blame them? Because, honestly, whose reputation was more unbesmirchable and trustworthy between a dog’s and a human’s? 

As Sutton rounded another bend in the woods that would lead out to the road and the end of her walking route, she automatically tensed up when she saw a third dog in the distance, this one a Border Collie. Perhaps it was that tensing the dog could smell a mile away (so to speak), leading it, too, to bark wildly at Sutton like she was the biggest menace in the world. The dog’s owner, in this case, was a man on his own, wearing navy shorts, a salmon-colored t-shirt with a right breast pocket, a plain white baseball cap and Birkenstock knockoffs. The outfit was highly offensive and, truly, the dog should have been barking at him for it rather than whatever he (or she) was barking at Sutton for. But no, a dog never questions their loyalty to their “master” once it’s been established who that is. 

Salmon Man yanked on the Border Collie’s leash to try to get him to hesh up. And it was a yank so severe that the dog actually yelped in surprise. And probably pain. Sutton automatically felt guilty, as if she had been the one to cause it. All because she had dared to show up in the same place at the same time as this dog. But no, she had to remind herself that it was the typical gut reaction of most women to blame themselves for things they had no control over. If anything, this was all Salmon Man’s fault for being such an obviously violent person. Treating his own dog like Cujo when all the Border Collie was doing was trying to protect a person who didn’t really seem to deserve it. 

As their paths got closer and closer to one another, the dog went wilder and wilder, prompting Salmon Man to take more extreme action by actually bopping him (or her) on the head so forcefully that the dog let out a series of whimpers that indicated its pain, both physical and emotional. When Salmon Man raised his hand again as a threat to let his dog know he wouldn’t tolerate another bark, Sutton was close enough to weigh in on the matter by “daring” to say, “Hi there, sir, I appreciate you controlling your dog, but is hitting him really necessary?” 

Salmon Man regarded her like she was the biggest waste of space he had ever seen and that it was an extreme effort for him to even engage with her as he answered, “I’m not doing it for you, ma’am, this is how he learns to keep himself in check. And, by the way, you reek of citrus. That’s probably what’s setting him off in the first place.” 

Before she could say anything else, he was stalking off and dragging the abused Border Collie with him. As she remained stopped in her tracks, she twirled a thick strand of hair around her index finger, holding it up to her nose to sniff it. Yes, the fact was, she had drenched her entire head in lemon juice before she went out on this walk so that the sun would work its magic and make it a bit lighter. It was something that Sutton did every now and again during the summer months in some mostly useless attempt to save money on hair dye. She had done it about thirty minutes before heading out of the house, not thinking in the least that it could somehow be a trigger to every dog she encountered in the woods. Or that she would be schooled by a presumable incel wearing a salmon-colored shirt on what scents irritated dogs. A fact she confirmed when she looked it up on her phone as she started walking again back toward her house. 

When she arrived home, the first thing she did was go into the bathroom to look in the mirror and see if there had been any results from the sun exposure on her lemon-soaked hair (this being the third or fourth “session” of her doing it before going out). But as far as she could tell, there was no change—not even in the brightest light. All she had gotten for her trouble was being a pest to dogs everywhere and giving some asshole the satisfaction of making her feel stupid and small. But, on the bright side (even if her hair wasn’t looking that way), at least she could believe once again in the saying, “You learn something new every day.”