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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 me. I dared to sneak my head around the edge of the stone wall to get a peek.

What I saw could have been a mirror image of the home that I knew and currently longed for. It was another yard. Behind the fence, dogs were lined up, sniffing and touching noses with the two young interlopers who were on the outside. I didn't know how long Spinner and Dizzy had been there, but it didn't look like too long. They were sniffing at the dogs behind the fence, wagging their tails gaily and barking, just as those at the fringes of the tribe behind the chain link were barking. Despite the fact that these dogs were mutts like us, there was one obvious thing that stood out at a glance. Their remarkable thinness.

The dogs were thin! I had an idea in my head already of the amount of space a 'full-grown' dog required and most of these dogs fit into less than half of it. In the places where they crowded, they seemed perfectly jammed together and not a few were openly displaying ribs in a way that to my eyes seemed frail and sickly. But they did not seem to be suffering over much from their apparent starvation. Quite the opposite as all of them appeared enthused and excited to see dogs outside their own yard; many of whom were rearing up against the links. I noticed one thing more about the dogs in my stolen peek. A number of them were quite tall...

I quietly related what I'd seen to Pink Nose and Terrier-face. Pink Nose responded at once. "Well let's go get Spinner and Dizzy! If those other dogs are behind a fence, they won't be any danger."

I was frankly surprised by Pink Nose's enthusiasm and disappointed that Terror-Face shared mostly the same sentiments. But my curiosity was aroused. "But here's another pack of dogs!" I said emphatically. "What are they doing here? What if we could learn something from them?"

Terrier-face looked directly at me, "We can't learn anything from them if we can't talk to them."

"And you said there would be time to talk about this stuff back in the yard." Pink Nose said, and I hated him then for using my words against me.

I spoke while showing my teeth, "This is a huge opportunity! Aren't you two the least bit interested in trying to communicate with them?"

Pink Nose and Terrier-face looked at each other and then back at me in my sudden passion. Pink Nose spoke. "Both of us will go along with you, Topsy." He said and then looked for confirmation from Terrier-face. "Whatever you decide is important. You're our Alpha."

That took the fire out of me. I sort of felt it was unfair for them to put this all back on me. Part of me wanted to bark and deride them for always looking for me for direction. Perhaps it was just the stress, perhaps it was because I was still so young. But anyways, I had to be Alpha and I did respect the fact that both these dogs had absolute faith in me. I just hoped that I wasn't about to be tested too badly. Turning my nose away for a moment, I finally said, "Let's go to them." And we did.

The barking silenced for a moment when we appeared from around the corner. The dogs were surprised and they were pointing. After the couple seconds it took for their minds to decide a new course of action, the barking and the jumping redoubled. Again, I was struck by the sight of lean stomachs, pulling in so far under their ribs so I wondered where there was any room left for their innards. I noticed another thing as well, there beyond the yard and sharing a chain link fence with it was a second yard filled with dogs whose voices were different and yet very familiar. There were females in the second yard! And they too were clustered against the fence and yapping at us.

Spinner and Dizzy were at the intersection of the two yards which is why I didn't see at first that this yard was split. When the barking was renewed, Spinner looked in our direction and fetched Dizzy. Both young dogs came running towards us.

I scolded Dizzy with a nip to his ear and an aggressive posture as soon as he'd joined us. I made it perfectly clear that now was not playtime and that I was very displeased with their behavior without speaking a word. Both of their tails flew between their legs and when Spinner appealed with his eyes to Pink Nose, the labrador was equally cold.

Whining a bit and coming to me to lick the underside of my jaw, Dizzy said, "We were going to come back, honest! We were-"

I cut him off. "I don't care what you were going to do. You two took off and left the pack without my permission. You're both in big trouble."

My brother cringed and rolled helplessly onto his back. I ignored him and walked past. At the fence the dogs had quieted somewhat and most had lowered down onto all fours. I could not get over how skinny they all were! Spinner and Dizzy were quite obese compared to most of them, let alone Pink Nose who maybe weighed as much as three of them put together. Let alone myself as well.

There was a chilling silence as I approached the fence at the middle of the divide, bitches on my right, dogs on my left. I kept looking at the bitches as well. Their collective smell was enticing and interesting in a way that I hadn't known and they were looking at me oddly, almost as though with hidden laughter in their eyes. Not of one of them, males or females matched my height, but some were close. I wondered if I looked as strange to them as they did to me. And then I stopped wondering, of course I did. I was odd even in my own yard.

I touched noses and sniffed with the dogs and the females. Pink Nose and Terrier-face kept their distance and also kept Dizzy and Spinner lying on the ground and submissive. They were both ready to go. Ready to go have our Talkie back in the yard where we felt safe... as if things would make any more sense there. But the mystery called to me and pulled me to the fence and the faces of this tribe of dogs.

"Hello, I'm Topsy. Can any of you talk?" I asked, and naturally got no response. It was as my beta had said. None of them are going to know our language, especially one that had been invented inside of my short lifespan.

One of the taller dogs stepped out from the male side and snuffled at me. We touched noses. He was a big bloke, muscular and wide of shoulder, even if he was lean. From his face, I could see influences of Bernese mountain dog and Great Pyrenees; even if I didn't know the names for those breeds. He was shorter than me at the shoulders by less than two inches. His yap-whine sounded strangely melodic for a canine and disturbingly familiar at the same time. There were influxes at his pitch and the way the syllables flowed that allowed me to recognize what struck me as familiar about it. The sounds he was producing sounded disturbingly akin - in fluidity and structure, if not perfectly matching in tone and pitch - to human speech!

I gaped at that realization, ears turned back and flattened to my head. I whined in confusion. What on earth was going on here?! But other than that, there was no further information to be gleamed. I didn't understand their mutilated dialect of english any better than they understood my own fabricated amalgamation of natural body language and audible yips, growls and whines.

I did, however linger a bit to sniff at the females, I admit. They seemed interested in me, but not particularly more than the males. It was not a sexual thing that I was feeling then, at least not that I would have been able to identify as sexual, but rather an avid curiosity. So many subtle differences from the shape of their faces to the way they moved their hips and tails, and the smell of them! So richly complex and worthy of hours of deciphering, pulling apart the odor into its thousands of individual components. I could study a scent like a human studies a picture and a female's odor just cut right to the heart of my interest. Infinitely curious, infinitely pleasing.

But their eyes... They were teasing. They were laughing at me with their eyes and I saw how they lingered on my wide flanks and low slung belly. I didn't know enough to feel anything like self-conscious, but I did know that they way they were looking at me made me uncomfortable. And Pink Nose and Terrier-face were waiting.

I turned to go, to begin the long walk back to the yard and the place where things made sense. But before I got far, there was a commotion from behind the rows on the male side of the yard. A dog threw himself forward under the legs of his compatriots. He was shorter of leg than I'd seen on most any dog. He was a mutt, but strongly favored basset hound in the general shape of his body, though he benefited in height and the shape of his legs much more than a pure blood basset. The other dogs looked at him curiously as he came to the fore. In his mouth was a scrap of paper. This he pushed through the links and it landed softly in the grass on my side.

I stared at it for a while, unsure what do to with it. I almost left it. But I looked at the hound. Something in the pleading sincerity of his eyes convinced me to take this thing with me, despite the lack of obvious use. That, and the fact that he was on the heavier side for the general conditioning of his pack was what persuaded me. I took the ragged scrap of paper in my mouth and turned back to my dogs, relieved to see their familiar faces though I'd only turned from them for a few moments. "Let's go home." I said simply and led the way.

For Pink Nose's sake, I offered to take a break once we'd crossed the parking lot again, but he refused, saying, "It's only a little further. I need a drink more than a rest anyways."

I agreed with his sentiment and Dizzy spoke up that he was thirsty too, but again I ignored him. I could tell that I was hurting him, but I was still angry at him and my mind was far too occupied with what I'd seen and the fact that there clearly existed another tribe of dogs whose intelligence might match or exceed our own. If there was one thing I seemed to detect, it was a sense of collectiveness that our pack did not share. Was it possible that they all already talked to each other? If so, how long could they have been doing this for? And why is it that the black lab and I had to basically invent language from scratch for our pack? So many questions and more besides, as I felt the weight of my body flowing side to side as I moved and the weight on my legs that made this walk from one end of the facility to the other feel like a hike.

Naturally there was a hubbub at the yard when we returned and dogs piled at the fence and barked despite any attempts of Fatty and Fat Gut to maintain order. And for the first time, their voices sounded more like animalistic rambling compared to the music I was able to detect in the other tribe of dogs. I hated this revelation and how the dogs now appeared in my eyes. Shiftless and purposeless, less a real pack than a group of dogs in a confined space. I felt in my heart that the other tribe I'd seen was smarter than us, maybe far smarter. My chest heaved with the unfairness of the idea, even though it was merely a hypothesis. But equally, I was further resolved to bring language and thought to the dogs that lived here, to consolidate us into something more.

The gate was still shut, of course, but its secret was unveiled with startling ease. Spinner and Dizzy obviously knew it, but they were as yet too timid in my presence to move. Instead, it was Lopside from the other side who reared up, his handsome belly pressing against the poles of the fence and gate, and pushed the latch up with his nose. The gate swung out to let us in and I remembered something that I'd almost forgotten in this night of mysteries; that it was Lopside who'd managed to open the gate in the first place. I herded the others into the yard and then pulled the gate shut behind me with my teeth. It closed with a metallic click and just like that, everything was back to normal... except, of course, it wasn't.