Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-four
I'm not sure why I was so hesitant. Perhaps it was all the strange things I'd experienced since stepping out of the yard for the first time. But right then the thought of another pack of dogs being around the corner frightened me more than it enthused...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-three
Not wanting to press Lopside too much at a time, I left him and decided to give myself some time to spend with my brother. He greeted me fondly with a "Hi Topsy!" and a pounce against my chest. He licked my face and I licked his head back. He whipped...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-two
A week after I'd first started hanging around Lopside, I finally felt like we'd started making progress. He now understood that when I was making noises at him, I was trying to communicate and he was picking up some nouns, like "food" and "water." But...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-one
Lopside was going to be a long-term project. That much was clear almost from the start. It was a struggle to cross that gap as he seemed just as intent to teach me the meaning of his drawings as I did trying to get him to understand my alphabet of...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Nineteen
I awoke several hours later in the middle of the night. The storm was still raging outside and the area around the portal to the house was damp and abandoned. It looked like it was going to go on the rest of the night, but I had to whizz so I braved...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Seventeen
A week after the shepherd-lab returned, Pink Nose and I were beginning to share simple conversations. He'd mastered the basics and was steadily gaining vocabulary. Watching him learn was probably the best thing for Terrier-face, Fatty and the...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Sixteen
And so terrier-face and fatty became my betas. A plus side to dog politics was that once everyone knew who was in charge, people readily accepted the roles assigned to them and there was only very infrequently any bad blood between us. Promoting the...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Fifteen
I went to go lie down in the shade under the canopy over the fountain. Several dogs lay nearby, eager to lick the wounds covering my body. They were already trying to worm their way to better positions in the hierarchy by subservience to the new Alpha....
Evolution Part I: Chapter Thirteen
He was right, of course. Just as he'd been right about everything. I just wished that he hadn't been this one time. It took just over a week for the black lab's premonition to come true. It was about half an hour after breakfast and I was lying...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Eleven
I was badly hurt after the fight. When the shepherd-lab finally removed his awesome bulk from my body, he and everyone else ignored me. I didn't dare to move because it hurt so much. My neck and my leg were bleeding freely, but I'd also been crushed...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Ten
I brooded on the thought of my stolen squirrel most of the night. I wasn't hard. I could hear the lab shepherd chewing greedily on the gristle of it like chewing gum on the other side of the yard. The sound of it made my blood boil. So much so that the...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Nine
To this day, I still don't know what possessed that squirrel to land right in the middle of a pen filled with dogs. It might have just been looking for food, or it might have been suicidal. I harbor a secret suspicion that it's even possible a human...