The vet confirmed Aisha's worst fear: her dog's death was a suicide. The rottweiler, Meg, hurled her hulking mass into a brick wall on the home's exterior, head-first. Meg's food was tested first by test dogs, and then the veterinarian; it was found to be of excellent, contagion-free quality. 'Not the food.' The vet tapped Meg's soft, still head. 'Something in here.'
'I don't understand,' Aisha protested. 'She was always so happy.'
'She absolutely wasn't,' said the vet.
Aisha spent hours going through the footage. The security camera's vantage was tastelessly Dutch, covering a chunk of the patchy lawn, the trunk of a hills hoist, and a brick wall of the home. The whole thing was convex, the brickwork curling beneath the frame like an inevitability. There was no sound.
Meg passed through the shot several times, always in motion. Even facing the camera, her expression was inscrutable to Aisha. Tongue lapping at the air, bounding along: by all appearances, it was the Meg we all knew and loved.
A few minutes before impact, Meg vocalised at something off screen. The vet had helpfully suggested that, without audio, we cannot know if it was a bark or a scream. Aisha did remember Meg barking at cars all the time, but what if it wasn't a car passing by, but the unbearable weight of being falling down on the dog's back?
