Early summer 1987

When we were younger both my sisters and me brought around newspapers to earn a little extra money, a weekly paper which came out every Wednesday. I started it a bit later than they did but occasionally I helped either one of my sisters out when they would have too much homework, or when they had a flu or whatever.
At this particular afternoon one of my sisters had other things planned, so she'd asked me if I could do her a favor and do the papers for her.
It wasn't the first time I did her walk, and I'd heard quite some stories about it already. Especially about this one house with a dog. It was supposed to be a really mean dog, a gigantic German shepherd, because it was always waiting somewhere in the hallway, sneaky and hidden, and then when you walked up the path to the mailbox and put the paper in the box it would come running full speed, barking like crazy, towards the door, jump up against the door and rip the newspaper out of the box and you would find yourself scared as hell, because you didn't see it coming. And my sister was a pretty big pain in the butt back in those days and she would like to make everything a bit worse by annoying the dog. She would walk up the path, put the newspaper in the mailbox, knowing that the dog would come running out from somewhere as soon as it heard the newspaper in the box, and when the dog would take a jump at the newspaper my sister would pull it back so that the dog would jump straight with its nose against the door, which made it even more mad.
I've never been afraid of any dog, but whenever I came walking onto this path, I was cautious, because I knew that the dog would be waiting somewhere behind that door.
Also this Wednesday afternoon. I did two thirds of the walk, one third to go still. When I came at the house with the dog I slowly walked up the path. Not too fast, to draw any special attention, but also not too slow to challenge the dog.
I took a paper, folded it and put it in the mailbox.
There was this strange tension in the air and I couldn't really define what it was. Nothing happened when I put the paper in the box, whereas usually the dog would've been at the door, barking and jumping and growling. I was wondering if maybe the owners had decided that they couldn't keep it anymore there.
I had dropped the caution already, because usually the dog would've been there already. But not now...
I turned around, vaguely relieved, and started walking down the path again.
I was almost at the end of the path when I suddenly heard a loud barking and growling. I turned around just in time to see the dog take its jump and jump straight through the glass of the front door. It was armoured glass, you know this double glass with iron wires in between and the dog jumped straight through it. The caution I had before I entered the path was now replaced with fear. I saw the stuffed away anger in the eyes of the dog. I saw its bare teeth, growling up at me, I saw its tail tightly between its legs. But when I looked closer I also saw pain in its eyes, hidden under that stuffed away anger. And it wasn't the pain that was caused by the terribly bleeding wound on its head where it hit the window. No, it was the kind of pain that is caused by neglect. The kind of pain that is caused by being beaten up. The kind of pain that is caused by ignoring.
I was still a bit afraid, but when I had looked into the dog's eyes, most of my fear had been replaced with pity.
The dog didn't jump up against me, it didn't touch me at all. It kept running around me in circles, not coming closer than some half a meter from me. It did bark and growl and showed its teeth, but it never touched me. And all I did was look at it, focus my view on its eyes. I knew already then that you never should stare at a dog, not straight into its eyes, but in this case I did, and I don't know, maybe in this situation it was the best thing I could do.
Then the owner came rushing out the door. He apologised and asked if the dog bit me (he actually said it like that: "Did the dog bite?"). And it sounded so horrible. Like all he cared about was his insurance and if he had to pay me.
And then he walked up to the dog, grabbed it in its neck and hit it over the nose, with pretty much force. That hurt me more than I expected...
Three weeks later, when I did the walk again for my sis, I stepped up the path again, again cautious. And again nothing happened at first. Then when I was at the door and put the news paper in, from the back came this little German shepherd puppy and it jumped up against the door, trying to get to the newspaper.

It leaves little room for suggestion what happened to the other poor dog...