The tangle of sounds from the next room was unmistakable. Guttural growling. Skittering dog nails on the floor. Barking. Shrieking.

I felt sick. For eight years, I’d known it was coming. I’d dreaded it. I’d denied it. I’d done everything I could to slow its inevitability. But there it was: My dog was attacking my friend.

There was no getting around this one. It was not a nip. It was not provoked. It was scary. I didn’t have to look at the purple welt under my friend’s knee to know there was only one way things could go.

But that’s the end of the story.

It began in Juneau in 2001. I used to joke that our dog was the canine equivalent of that prominent and poorly chosen tattoo you get in your early 20s. A long-term decision with lasting consequences made on kind of a whim. Why not get a dog? Dogs are awesome. So Sara and I went to the pound looking for something close to a beagle.

“We have just what you’re looking for,” the pound ladies told us as a meek, skinny mutt nosed around the corner of the front desk.

“Her name is Stella. She’s part beagle.”

Then came the sell. She was shy. And afraid of loud noises and manhole covers and XtraTuf boots. She’d been abused, they said gravely. Heartbreaking. But love could cure her. She made a light-footed lap around the room and deposited several turds in the corner.

We were in love at first sight.

And so we drove home through the mist with a dog version of a Metallica armband curled between us in the cab of our old Toyota.

At first she was totally silent, kind of like a dog mime. She moved like a dragon in a Chinese New Year parade, her thin body snaking through the tall grass, her big head rocking side to side, pink tongue lolling. We spent hours standing outside in the sleet, toilet training. We taught her to fetch. She came when called. She excelled at snuggling. She gained 30 pounds.

The trouble started with one bark at the door. Soon, every knock meant a cascade of barking and suspicion. My mom came to visit. I went to pick her up at the airport with Stella in the cab of the truck. Mom appeared in the window with her raincoat hood on and Stella came unglued. Mom had to rent a car to get home.

“I don’t think you can keep that dog,” she told me.

With Stella’s sleepy head in my lap, I sobbed all the way to Douglas Island because I knew it was true. But once at the house, mom and Stella worked out a truce. Mom ignored her. Stella hovered and growled, but, we said over and over, she didn’t bite.

And so it went. She liked some people just fine. Others she’d follow around, obsessed. They’d pet her, she’d lean into them. Then out of nowhere, she’d growl and pinch the skin on the top of a foot between her front teeth, leaving a bruise like a penny. We never said the word “bite.”

Privately, we talked about taking her back to the pound. I tearfully leaned toward it but Sara was firm that we’d keep trying.

“You don’t just give up on things you love,” she said.

We read books. We tried obedience classes. She learned to walk by my side without a leash and to stay. Then she growled at the instructor and we were asked to leave. We learned dog massage. We squeezed droppers of flower essences in her water bowl. We exercised her. She’d paddle the Gastineau Channel for an hour and still go nuts at the sound of a doorbell.

We contacted a trainer, who told us to flip her on her back, straddle her and yell in her face every time she got out of control at the door. That kind of worked. But you can’t do it every time a guest arrives at a dinner party. Our vet prescribed pills. They made her slinky, and she’d still lash out without warning. Finally we just started putting her in the car when anyone came over.

Here’s what’s weird: The more we tried and failed, the more my dog-love grew. We moved to Portland. Sara was going to school and I spent my days alone, writing freelance assignments in bed. In the morning, Stella ate my toast crusts. In the afternoon, we watched Oprah. We took her to a dog behavior therapist. We were doing all the right things, she told us. Then she pulled out a plug-in air freshener and handed it to us.

“It’s essence of the teat of the lactating bitch,” she said with a straight face.

We took it home. She sent us a bill for $250. Stella attacked our friend Mary’s Chihuahua.

My aunt was dying of cancer in Anchorage during that time. I’d talk to her every evening while I walked around the block, Stella’s dog tags tinkling ahead of me in the darkness like tiny bells. I felt hollowed out by loss, invisible, looking in the illuminated windows of strangers. Stella’s face in the porch light was my touchstone. Outside of Sara, she was my family, a vital, warm thing that needed me.

Months later, in the dark corner of a grocery store parking lot, a drug-addled woman cornered me against my car and demanded my purse. Right about the time I realized I was getting mugged, Stella threw herself against the open car window, snapping like a crocodile. The woman ran. It was a Lassie moment. I chose not to think she would have done the same thing to anyone who came close to the car.

We moved back to Anchorage with an elaborate dog-management plan. She could only go to the dog park when it was empty. She could never be anywhere near children. She spent a lot of time in the car. House-sitters had to come with a squirt gun, shoot her in the face, throw her a treat, then avoid eye contact for 24 hours.

We settled into peaceful symbiosis. Every morning, she’d jump off the bed and follow me into the kitchen. She’d nuzzle me while I made coffee. As I left for work, I always said, “Be a good dog. Guard the house.” She got arthritis and couldn’t run, so she channeled her boredom into self-mutilation, chewing her paws and rubbing her nose raw on our comforter, leaving gory streaks.

One day my uncle surprised us, coming in the door in his cowboy hat with bottles of wine. Before I could stop her, Stella crunched into his shin. He lifted his pant leg. I saw a trickle of blood.

It was the hat, we said. But we both knew it was just a matter of time. A year passed. My cousin had a baby named Luca. Early this summer, she dropped by. I put Stella out. Luca crawled to the glass door, banged on it with his little hand and called out, “Dog! Dog! Dog!” Stella launched into the glass, snapping.

And inside me, something shifted. Like that moment in a relationship when you realize things have gone wrong for too long, that there’s been too much damage to repair. It was like falling out of love.

Three weeks later, she bit our friend Marc while he was drinking a glass of water in our kitchen. I heard the whole thing happen from the next room.

Days after that, Sara and I found ourselves on the tile floor at the vet, covered with tears and snot and dog hair, rubbing her ears as she slipped out of this world. And the emotion that washed over me as I hugged the vet afterward wasn’t regret. It was pure relief.

There are a million good dogs in the world. She was a bad one. A broken one. She loved us. We loved her. All of us tried our best. But sometimes that isn’t enough.

Do you own, or have you owned, a lovable but damaged dog? A nipper? A piddler? A neurotic foot-biter? Post a photo in the Bad Dog Gallery. In the caption, please include the dog's name, a short reason why they are a bad dog, and, if deceased, their dates (Like this: Fido, couch-eater, 1999-2008) Good dogs need not apply. Click here.