FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

***

The nebulous void that my existence became after that was terminated about a month later. By that time, I'd gotten so huge and heavy that I was on the verge of needing assistance myself in getting up. Fat Gut across from me had gotten quiet. He spent most of the time sleeping now when he wasn't eating. I didn't know if Fat Gut was a special case or not. Lopside's kennel remained empty and the only other dog that I saw had no problems rising or walking. But walking was proving especially difficult for Fat Gut now. It was pretty obvious at this point that he couldn't support his own weight any longer, even if he was planted squarely on all four paws. When this happened, he could take a couple steps forward, but invariably, one of the legs would buckle and down he would go, powerlessly drawn down into a lumpy heap. His saving grace in that regard was that it was only the distance of a few inches from the ground to the bottom of his belly which would help arrest his fall.

The lab techs were obviously not well equipped to deal with him. Their solution was to get a towel under Fat Gut's girth. Then one human would stand over the shepherd lab, Fat Gut between his knees and hold up the bulk of his weight with the towel. Fat Gut widened like a toffee slowly melting in wide heat as the bottom was braced up. Then he was led forward, step by grueling step. All grace was gone. When Fat Gut came back, he did not pretend to be proud of the resolution to his mobility problem. However, that hardly stopped him from eating belly breaking quantities at meals and he continued to track his growth. Though his girth was now so vast that it was difficult for him to line up the horizon of his flesh with the lines on the cement. "What are you going to do when your paws don't reach anymore?" I would ask him mildly.

"Well they can't expect me to walk after that can they?" he'd reply. "They'll have to carry me."

I wanted to ask him what he'd do if they didn't. If they just left him to poop and piss all over himself instead. But I never did. But I did ask one time. "Aren't you concerned about not being able to walk? What if there's a fire?"

Fat Gut shrugged, "Then someone will come and get me. Hopefully with something better than a towel."

"But what if no one comes? What if it's just you?" I asked, deliberately trying to provoke a response, any response.

Fat Gut swallowed, his neck so fat that it didn't show the bulge anymore. "Then you'd be as screwed as me. We can't get out the gates."

It was a fair point, but my dander was up now. "But if the doors were open and you only had to walk to save yourself. Doesn't it bother you that you can't anymore. All you can do now is lie there and be fed and eventually they are going to have to carry you outside. Doesn't that bother you a little?" My voice was cracking now, but Fat Gut was a stone wall.

"Topsy." Fat Gut said to me after a minute of heavy breathing. This was a tone I'd heard before but not for a while. Some sort of wall had broken between us. He wasn't speaking to me as Alpha. In fact, nobody had spoken to me as Alpha in a long time and in a really real way, I really wasn't Alpha anymore. There was nothing to be Alpha of now anymore. "I've never liked walking or running. I've never had much use for it. What I have had a use for is this." Somewhere in the meaty sag of his body, a paw wiggled a mass of flesh, but I couldn't see where. "I like this, I like it a lot and really, it's the only thing I like besides food. If you're trying to tell me it's too much, then I'm going to tell you that until I split open, it'll never be too much. I love every inch and I love every once of me there is and as long as I live I'm going to want another inch and another ounce." He'd worked himself up and took a few heavy breaths now. His tongue was beet red though it'd been hours since he'd been forced to walk. "You're trying to scare me with talk of running for my life, but let me tell you something Topsy. I don't care if you can run to the moon and back before I finish a bowl of kibble, you're just as stuck behind that gate as I am. It doesn't matter if I can't walk more than a couple steps at a time and it doesn't matter if you do back flips all day. We're the same. So, no Topsy, I'm not worried. If anything, you should be worried because I'm what they want."

Fat Gut was panting now, really overexerting himself. With a sigh and a tremendous heave of effort, he rolled himself onto his back, the dome of his belly wobbling high, high over his head. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I was floored. How could I ever had thought he was oblivious to his peril? He was perfectly aware of the consequences. He simply placed no value in what he lost. I respected him for that. After that, I never insinuated anything about his weight again. Not that it was particularly hard to do. My time came less than a week after Fat Gut schooled me.

It was as without ceremony as always. They came, loop in hand, but they at last came to stop in front of my kennel. The door opened and without needing a command, I rose laboriously to my feet, my gut settling just below my knees. I took a deep breath and felt my flanks expanding to either side of me like a cow's. Then the loop was around my thickened neck and pulled tight so that it disappeared from sight. They led me away, through a colored door and out of the kennels into the building. I glimpsed as we past down the rows for the last time that they had already claimed the other heavy dogs from the pack. Fatty was missing, Pink Nose, Slim and the rest. No dog was left that had been brought before summer. The cycle would continue and I wondered which among these young ones would be the new Alpha in the Spring and if any would be a match for Fat Gut, the true Alpha.