man hits dog

Driving over to Randwick last night, stopped at a set of lights, idling, I saw a couple of guys passing round the back of a small flatbed ute parked off the road and crammed with tradesman's gear: a generator, tool boxes, other stuff. There was a dog chained up with the gear, a blue-heeler cross by the look of it, and the guys must have done something because it was going off, yammering, snarling, straining at the leash. The guys stopped, came back and then one of them shaped up, in jest I thought: but no, he took a swing at the dog, clouting it on the side of the head. It was an ugly, hard blow and he did it again and then again, somehow eluding the snarling teeth and the dog's frantic attempts to bite. His mate, who was carrying a long necked bottle of beer, tried to drag him away but he was enjoying himself too much and wanted to do it some more. Just then a big bloke in crisp blue denims and cowboy boots came onto the scene, yelling: Fuck off, you fucking cockheads ... The boxing guy all of a sudden didn't seem so brave but I couldn't see the next bit properly because the lights changed then. Last image, in the rearview, was of the two drunk guys scattering back the way they'd come with the big bloke in denims in pursuit. That's life in Waterloo I guess. Returned the same way some hours later, the ute was still parked in the same place but I couldn't see if the dog was still there or not. Probably was. Poor dog, just doing its job.