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By the end of a week, the large bruise on my tummy had mostly cleared up and I was moving more easily. However, my wrenched paw took longer to heal, despite the fact that my lacerations had scabbed over nicely in less than a day; they wouldn't leave any scars that were visible through my yellow fur. Since my shoulder was still hurting too much for horseplay, I laid around and studied music with the black lab. I quickly discovered that his laid back attitude was easy to rub off on you. I stayed with him until my leg was working as fine as it had before, and then I stayed a little longer.

I found a subtle pleasure in observing the doings of others, because that was what the black lab was at heart, an observer, not a doer. His thoughts were his own, but as I laid with him, my mind wandered as well, creeping some of the dark alleyways and thought patterns unlocked by the music. I found that some were more tolerable than others, but I was still flicking everything off as soon as I would rise, and I did frequently because I was still far more restless than the laid back and very obese labrador.

If my brother felt lonely for not spending as much time with him as I had before, he showed no signs of it, at least when I was with him. I didn't pick targets to antagonize with him anymore, however. I was too big now to get away with it, and anyways, because of my size, everyone immediately focused their attention exclusively on me. I still romped with him, however, though it was not even a fair match between us anymore. Our proportions were almost identical; I was even a tad on the skinnier side than him proportionally, but I weighed twice as much as he did. I had to learn gentleness, just as the black lab had been gentle with us a couple long, long months ago.

One day, I noticed my brother hanging around one of the newer puppies when I stepped away from the music toy. They played and chased each other, though it was clear my brother had a strong weight advantage. I looked at him and realized in that moment that the two of us were already very different despite the fact that I had always assumed that we'd be together in everything forever. That might have been when I first hated how big I was.

Of course, the size differential only increased over time for reasons that were unfathomable to me or anyone else, including the insightful black lab. And he did notice. I recall him mentioning to me that I was "growing very fast for my age." His advice for me turned out to be really good, even if it ultimately went unheeded. He told me to stop eating so much. He also told me that unusual dogs ended up being "gone dogs" faster; just like the collie. It was clear from his message that the black lab thought I was big because I ate a lot. For all I knew that was true, but I never thought that explanation had the right feel to it. After all, I'd started out eating no more than my brother, if I was eating a lot more now, I thought it had more to do with my overall size than excessive hunger.

...That is, until I actually did try to curb my intake a little. My quest not to become a "gone dog" would be short lived. I started in the morning because I still didn't know how to get to sleep on an "empty" belly; that is, not filled to the painful brim. Naturally, I was doomed from the start because I had no conception of what a "normal" allotment of food might be. Goodness knew that the black lab was taking in just over four bowls of food a day and was fattening visibly over the course of weeks for it. I was nearly finishing my second bowl at each feeding myself before the lab's warning startled me so. I decided only to eat a "little bit" of the second bowl. The first time I tried this, I ended up eating more than half the bowl anyways, wolfing down the kibble whole as nearly every dog in the yard did. But I did stop myself short before I normally would have, but it was so much harder than I had anticipated to walk away from that still partially full food dish, not actually having eaten as much as I could have.

If I'd had the words for it, I'd have said that I was addicted to food, and I was, but I didn't so I only knew a private pain that almost certainly none of the other dogs there knew. Certainly my role model the black lab didn't hold back at meal times, whatever advice he had spouted for me. Initially walking away from the bowl was the hardest part. It was ingrained in me already to eat however much I could and walk away only when the ape on my back was quieted or obliterated through pain. I could almost imagine a hand on the back of my neck, keeping me head down as I was feeding, pushing me to go deeper, all the way to the bottom if I could. And the scent of greasy dog food excited my blood in a way that nothing else did and nothing else would until I'd eventually come across the fine scent of a bitch for practically the first time. Also, I didn't know it, but nearly every other physical factor and drive was working against me. I had nothing to help my but willpower itself. I wonder that I even did as well as I did back then.

I walked away from my bowl that morning sated basically as much as normal, but irritated at myself for not eating as much as Hunger demanded. I would spend the rest of the day looking over myself at odd times. Sometimes while I rested with my back propped up against the black lab's massive tummy when he was sleeping off breakfast as he usually did; he alway ate to a gut busting full, I suspected, just like the other dogs who wound up near the center of the grooming circles earlier than average. And also when I paused to catch my breath chasing after my brother and his new protege'. I'd look at my own shaggy golden fur covering my body, the round belly, and stubby legs, like my brother's but so much larger, almost as if I were a photo on a computer and someone had dragged the corner, amplifying my size evenly in all directions. I certainly couldn't run as fast as the other nine month old puppies, though I matched their height at the withers. I still napped during the day and woke at night like a younger puppy as well, but as I'd mentioned I was ever treated as a dog beyond my months and with the same lack of leniency. I formed the thought that I didn't want to get any larger than my brother. And if giving up some food would get me closer to that goal, I was willing to do it. And so it was that as music had opened my mind up to the possibilities of the past, so my "diet" forced me to think about the future now as well.

That evening, as feeding time got closer and closer, I preoccupied myself with a single thought. That was the intention of not touching my second bowl of kibble. Using my new found thought process, I recalled the routine that had happened every single evening since I'd first come to live in the yard. I could see it in my head if I tried. I'd finish my first bowl, then it'd be taken and I'd have to wait for the last dogs in the round to finish eating before I could get a second. But what if I wasn't there for my second? I wondered heartily. What if I just walked away after finishing my first! The plan seemed ingenious and foolproof to my small, yet growing puppy mind.

I repeated the scene over and over in my head. I had to keep it fresh, had to memorize every moment because I was desperately afraid of losing myself to the ground-in routine should the present swallow up my abstract thoughts and plans without warning. I probably needn't have tried so hard, but I look back with cute affection at the simple trials of my younger self. The food dish was set before me and I half finished it before I thought about altering my eating process. I swallowed a hard lump of kibble and lifted my head for just about the first time during a meal. I looked down at the little shiny brown lumps. "Maybe I should savor it." I thought. And for the first time, I think - tonight was a night for firsts - I tried slowing down enough to actually chew my food.

I ate with painful slowness and tediousness that felt forced and not at all natural. The only thing that was able to keep me going was the explosion of flavor on my tongue. Who knew that each hard kernel of food contained so much hidden flavor! They popped under the grinding molars at the back of my mouth and dusted my tongue with greasy, meaty goodness. Savoring food was new, and the experience was almost worth slowing down to enjoy it in the first place. Of course, my reaction to this discovery was predictable. I just wanted to get more food in my mouth than before! The bowl seemed to empty in the span of a heartbeat and I looked up longingly at the female lab tech who took it away.

I was in real danger of forgetting my original objective. I really wanted that second bowl and the force of that desire almost literally caused me to forget what I'd been wanting to do. Seeing a large ten-month old who happened to be seated near me receive his second bowl reminded me what I wanted to do just as another wave of food was being handed out. I broke formation, perhaps a little stiffly, though at the time, I remembered trying my utmost to be inconspicuous. I remember catching the eye of the female lab tech, but that was all. I was the first one to break the feeding line, even before those dogs whose appetites were on the light side. I had feverish visions of the humans coming to drag me back, to put food I wouldn't be able to resist in front of my nose and wait until I was done. But it didn't happen. I watched the rest of the feasting from afar with envious eyes while my stomach and the ape on my back slowly realized that I wasn't going to be stuffing myself that day.

Despite the lack of pain in my midsection, I had a difficult time getting to sleep. It seemed like my stomach would not stop churning, like a restless hand groping a ball that was too small for it. The ape was there, too and in full force, filling me with the drive to eat. I should mention now the difference between real hunger pangs and the inescapable motive to consume that I felt. Despite my stomach not being used to being only partially full, I was not really uncomfortable and I was not in any way racked by painful hunger pangs; indeed, at this time, I had little idea of what it meant to be truly hungry. But the motive force was there in my brain all the same. It was a powerful, yet nebulous drive that seemed to exist solely in my mind. I wanted and I craved without signals from my body telling me to do so. It was, perhaps, easier to resist than the normal hunger pangs most of you are familiar with, but it was still far worse than not having the cravings at all.

Of course I dreamed of food. Heaps of food, mountains of food. The wonderful dream seemed to last forever and I was so happy that at long last I was able to sate my compulsion. When I awoke, I found myself suckling on my brother's ear. He didn't mind, but I did, because awakening had brought to life a real hollowness in my midsection. My dinner had moved down and my belly was grumbling for breakfast much louder than usual.

The sun was barely up when I left my brother to go eliminate in the corner of the yard opposite the gate and the concrete house reserved for this function. It would be a long time still before the lab techs came with out food. I felt tired and on edge and the aching need in my stomach annoyed me to no end. I simply didn't know how to deal with being hungry. Chewing a rubber toy into tiny shreds helped occupy my mouth, but didn't quell the lust inside of me. "One bowl, one bowl..." I kept the image alive in my head, but it was so hard with the continuous presence of my condition constantly alive beside me. Only my strong desire to stop being so abnormal and the fact that the second bowl was not presented immediately after the first ultimately enabled me to succeed at breakfast and then the coming evening.

The second night was worse than the first. By then, it was as if my body could sense the serious change in the routine I was forcing on it. I seriously felt ill, like I was running a fever or something and my stomach began to torment me with real hunger pangs several hours before dawn. It didn't matter much though. I only got about an hour of actual sleep that night anyways. By that morning, I was already beginning to doubt myself and my mission, but I managed to force my feet to carry me away after a single delicious, heavenly bowl of kibble. This time, however, I would not be alone.

One of the male lab techs followed me away from the group meeting and I was afraid. I was afraid that I would soon become a "gone dog" or if bizarrely he sensed what I was up to and wanted to thwart it for some inscrutable reason. It turned out that my more paranoid thought was closer to the mark. The lab techs monitored how much I ate after all. He came and picked me up in both arms cause I was too big now to fit into the crook of one arm. He petted me softly and then it seemed it had been too long since I'd last been held and petted like that. I relaxed into his embrace. One by one, he lifted my jowls and looked at my gums, my tongue and then the insides of my ears. He felt the glands at my armpits and inside my thighs and near my crotch. He felt my small and as yet empty pouch behind my sheathe as well. Then he shined a bright light into my eyes and took my temperature the only way the humans apparently knew how. By that time, I was getting uncomfortable and began to squirm. He let me go without a struggle and I raced to the opposite end of the yard, feeling suddenly trapped should he want to pursue me. But he didn't and neither did the other two lab techs for that matter. They just scratched on their clipboards and talked in their indecipherable tongue as they usually did and then left. I was left to ponder the meaning of the examination, at least until the hunger began to resurface again shortly after noon.

To my credit, I held out for two more days before my will was finally and firmly broken. By that time, it seemed as if a grey pallor had crept over my vision. Sometimes when the pangs were at their worst, I felt brittle, like I was an empty glass shell and might shatter with a wrong movement. I lost interest in music and in toys and in playing with my brother. The black lab seemed to sense my stupor, but I didn't feel too inclined to welcome his company. His tubby ass got to eat all the food he wanted didn't he? But what really broke me was the fact that my plan wasn't even working the way I'd expected.

After nearly four days of half food, the only thing I had to show for my silent suffering was a slight hollowness at my flanks. I'd always been pretty cylindrical, a sausage dog if ever there was one, but even after such a brief span, I could see the ever so slight change from parallel to concave, there not at my back, but closer to the ground between my ribs and my hips. The skin pulled in about half an inch. At first, I was excited. I filled with mirth with this apparent confirmation of my goal. I went straight to the black lab to tell him of my victory.

At first, he was happy to celebrate with me and he suggested that we go and make music for a while to honor my achievement. But when he stood up, I could see right away that my eye level against his shoulder was a little different. I'd gotten taller, and at about the same rate as I had been growing before. The black lab stopped and mentioned this fact to me as well. If I'd gotten observably less fat, my diet had not at all halted my pace of growth. This defeat was too much for me and that evening, I ate until I was fit to burst. I felt self inflicted shame for breaking my pact, but it didn't last. It was clear that the black lab was wrong about the cause of my abnormal growth.

Letting things fall back into their normal course, I found that I was eating even more than I had been before my diet. I didn't worry about it. The humans had an endless supply of food and obviously how much I ate was not related to how big I got. Oh how I would learn!

Even though I left my diet and thoughts of becoming normal behind like so many droppings, something was different after my food restriction. I didn't realize it quite at first, but I was spending slightly more time sleeping and I had a slight tendency to walk rather than run. It took more of an effort on my brother's part to get me up to play and I'd quit a little sooner than I might have in the past. It was as if someone had made away with a small portion of the juice in my batteries. To be honest, I hardly even noticed, but the black lab did. But he was more happy to share more of his interests and time with me now that my fires seemed to be burning a little lower. That slight convexity to my flanks I had earned disappeared as fast as it'd come and I paid it hardly a second thought.