My brother named her Bellatrix (he’s a space fan, not a Potter fan). She’s a Dobermann, very healthy, well taken care of. She never bit anyone, never bothered neighbors, never ran off, never refused to take her medicine. We never even had to grind up the pills and mix it into the food, she would not give us any hassle, at any point. She’s very protective too. I’m the youngest (just finished high school) and she seems to be extra protective of me, but she kind of takes care of everybody in the house (parents and brother; we’re both adopted). Bella has been with us for six years now, we got her when she could barely open her eyes and I still remember how thrilled I was. I’m not sure how to feel about that now though.
I should give some context or this might seem completely ridiculous (and maybe it still is). Bella isn’t just a “good dog”, she’s unnaturally good. When we take her for walks, she has never needed to be leashed. We realized it when my dad had mistakenly let go of her leash at the park while talking to someone he ran into, and there were plenty of other dogs around, but Bella just sat there the whole time. When my dad was done (and this is how he described it) Bella looked up at him and used her paw to push the leash towards his foot. She then tapped the leash with her toes three times.
What kind of dog does that? It’s bizarre. I didn’t believe him when he said it but she’s done similar stuff a lot over the years. Bella can nod/shake her head to convey yes/no. It’s so fucking strange. She will shake her head or nod her head when we’re choosing what music to listen to on road trips. Nods come with tail wags (she likes the song) and shakes come with small *boof* growls and moody looks. We’ve come to learn that Bella loves Queen, Boney M, Janis Joplin and Greta Van Fleet, but she doesn’t like virtually anything else. We don’t tell anyone about this because we know nobody would buy it, but the whole family knows. Other examples: once I was in my room with the door closed and listening to music on headphones, Bella was napping on the bed behind me. But she came up to me, tapped me on the knee with her foot to get my attention, and then motioned with her head toward my bedroom door. I took my headphones off, my mom was knocking to tell me dinner was ready.
It seems harmless but I’ve never seen ANY other dog be so… “human” in their mannerisms. Bella NEVER hops around, rolls around, scrambles, plays with her toys, bounces about when strangers arrive, or any of the other things you’ll see dogs doing that are normal for dog behavior. She literally never does it. She runs a lot when we take her to the park (in perfect circles along the track, she never goes on the grass and never deviates from her circuit), and she’ll move around the house to check on everyone or use the toilet (she does that, we never trained her to), but otherwise she sits still, quiet and observant, watching everyone in the house. I legit think she also watches TV and understands what’s going on, like she knows it’s a TV, it’s images on a screen and not reality. I can’t explain how I feel like she knows but I can just tell. I’ve legit seen her crack a doggo smile once while we were watching The Hangover. She never barks unnecessarily, never gets hostile, always understands what we’re saying and never does ANYTHING remotely dog-like. It’s freaky. But we mostly found it fascinating.
Here’s where it wasn’t fascinating. Some red flags that none of us caught onto because we were so amazed by her.
Bella NEVER displays any of her human-like skills in front of outsiders. Whenever people come over, she always goes into her “napping” mode where she lies down and looks tired. So when we try to get her to do anything uncanny, she never does. Not once has she ever showed off her ability to use the toilet, turn off the lights when leaving a room (how the fuck does she understand energy bills). She can play those games that they give chimpanzees to, with the little blocks and rings or whatever, to test their intelligence. She can do it, but she almost seems… bored by them. I swear to god I saw her eyeing the chess set on my upper shelf in my room a few times. I refuse to believe she can play chess and I refuse to find out.
So she never shows off in front of others, and she NEVER shows off in front of a camera. This is EXTRA freaky. Whenever I pull out my phone to record her, she becomes stiff, like she’s caught off guard, and then she just does generic dog stuff like tongue out, barking, tail wagging, scratching, sniffing, rolling around, groaning, etc. When the camera is off her, she’s back to “normal” - her version of normal, but completely abnormal for dogs. I don’t know how she knows what a camera is (phone or handheld camcorder) but she knows. We never gave her any training.
Right now as I type this she’s outside my bedroom door. I’ve locked it from the inside but I can see her shadow from the crack under the door. She’s just… standing there. I know why. I can’t come out. I can’t even call the police because I adore her and I don’t wanna get her in trouble or euthanized but - I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I’ve been trying to calm down for almost an hour before I even started typing this.
I was seeing this guy from school for a few weeks. We weren’t official, just testing the waters. Guess I’m a bad judge of character because it turns out every time we’ve hooked up at his house he recorded it. He had a discreet camera in his bedroom and he had four or five videos (basically every time we did it so far). My parents are gone for the weekend and my brother is out just for tonight for a work thing, he figured I’d be safe on my own since Bella was there. I decided to invite my ex fuck buddy over since he’s always hosting me so I should do it for once. He comes over, and we’re talking in the kitchen about random stuff right. And Bella - she’s right there, literally right across the floor from us, sitting, not looking directly at us but also not doing anything else. The guy (I’ll call him Jeff) even commented a few times on how freakishly well behaved my dog is, and I was kinda freaked out too because she never displays her uncanny valley bullshit when other people are around. But she was doing it when he came over. And while we’re talking, he decides to show me that he’s been secretly recording me having sex with him, he has videos on his phone. He thought it was so cool and I’d be flattered. What the fuck? I told him to delete those immediately and get the fuck out of my house, but he’s outright REFUSING to delete them. He tells me it’s his “property” and he can do what he wants with it. And he started threatening me. He said if I “broke up” with him (we weren’t even officially together) he would blur out his own face and post the videos on porn sites.
To be honest I don’t think he would have actually done it, but the threat alone is disgusting enough. I didn’t even have a chance to respond though. Bella ripped off his fingers.
She jumped across the room, no growling, no barking, totally unprovoked, and bit down on the hand he was holding his phone with, and RIPPED two of his fingers clean off. I fucking screamed and he was losing it too. Blood everywhere. Still is, I haven’t been able to go out and clean up. He starts to run for the door screaming that he’s gonna call the cops over my dog and have her put down. I have no idea how to react. I’m looking at Bella who seems so completely calm and collected. Jeff’s phone is on the floor, covered in blood, and this dog - fucking Bella - she uses her paw to push the phone towards me. She looks at me and NODS. And then she fucking runs after Jeff out the door. I try to call her back but I couldn’t even speak at that moment. She ran out, ran after him, and I heard some scuffles, him yelling some more, and then - his voice sort of choked, like he was choking. He stopped yelling. I could only hear the choking because it was such a quiet night. We live in the suburbs and not much goes down here. I manage to pick up the phone and walk over to the open door of the house and peek out.
It’s pretty dark out, around 10 pm. I can see Bella standing in the middle of the road. I can see Jeff, he’s curled up on the road, he’s not moving. And there’s a pool of blood around him getting bigger and bigger, rolling off the street and toward the drain. I saw this and almost passed out, I was terrified, and then Bella - standing perfectly still - turns her head and looks right AT me.
I fucking lost it. I sprinted to my room and shut the door. Locked it. I didn’t shut the main door so Bella ran back inside. But I heard her close the main door. I heard the lock turn too. And now she’s standing right outside my bedroom.
My brother is coming home tomorrow afternoon and my parents are coming the day after. There’s blood all over my kitchen and Jeff is dead on the street outside. Bella’s knocking on my door with her paw, I can hear her toenails. Literal three knocks with intervals, just like how a human knocks. She’s doing the low *boof* growl too, getting louder every time. She wants me to come out and clean up the mess so I don’t get in trouble.
But - I have Jeff’s phone. I deleted his videos, but his location is on. They’re gonna know he was here. What the fuck has this dog done? How do I get out of this?
EDIT: I went out and cleaned up the blood in the kitchen. Bella had already pulled out all the sanitation stuff we had from the bathroom sink cupboard while I was having the meltdown in my room. She probably would’ve done it herself but she physically can’t use a mop? I don’t see what else could’ve stopped her. My beloved dog and best friend just committed murder and I’m covering it up. Not how I wanted my home alone night to go. I tossed Jeff’s phone in my front yard and wiped all my prints off it, when the police ask me why it’s there I’ll just say I don’t know. I’m not gonna walk out to his corpse and plant the phone on him now because the neighbors would see me. I just hope they didn’t see her. I’m gonna pretend I had no idea that there’s a man dead on the street in front of my house. Let someone else call the cops.
I tried to hug Bella but she wouldn’t let me, she kept ushering me to finish the cleanup. I also saw her smearing some of Jeff’s blood with her paw and then… looking at it. At her paw. I’ll need to wash that off before she walks all over the house with it.