🐾 Introduction
Nature vs. Nurture
Nature gives us the spark.
Nurture shapes the flame.
What’s born is only half the story —
the rest is written by the hands that hold us,
the voices that raise or ruin us,
and the silences in between.
Humans prefer to believe monsters are born.
I’ve seen too many chewed-up toys to believe that.
Every dangerous dog was once a puppy —
all softness and trust, a blur of happy wags.
Then came the shout that should have been a stroke.
The chain that never had enough slack.
The hand that fed, then vanished.
And the light behind the eyes dimmed.
The trusting grew wary.
The wary grew cold.
The cold learned a simple truth:
a growl is safer than a whimper.
You call it psychopathy.
We call it survival.
Because the line between a good dog and a bad one
isn’t a fence — it’s a scar.
Push any creature far enough,
and even the gentlest mouth will learn to bare teeth.
That’s why I never growl at the broken ones.
I just see the ghost of the puppy they were —
still chasing butterflies in the field,
before the world taught them
to see a threat in every flight.
