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 Fourteen
We squared up, the ritual fight evolving fluidly around us, as if it had been staged all along. The dogs saw us and gathered around. There wasn't a puppy who lived in the yard who wanted to miss us fighting again. It was late in the afternoon, about an...
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 Twelve
The black lab's advice was simple enough. "Eat more, run around less." However, there were subtleties to it that took more time for me to develop and then there were my own body's quirks to work with. The first obstacle I faced came at dinner time of...
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...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Eight
I didn't know it yet, but my diet had quite the opposite effect on my life than I'd intended. It, in fact, had set me on course to match with the very largest of dogs who lived in the yard. The humans never came out and said it (well, they might have,...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Seven
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...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Six
I didn't roughhouse for a week after I'd suffered my defeat at the fangs of the brown lab. As for my relationship with my antagonist, it was little different than how it was before. He held no grudge against me nor I him. I showed him deference when...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Five
It happened quickly and with not a lot of warning, but it could have been easily avoided had I been more careful and had a little more sense in my head. Unfortunately, at that time in my life, I was light in both of those areas. The day was warm,...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Four
By the time I was eighteen weeks old, the pen had become as much a home to me as anywhere else I'd been in my life and in many ways it was far superior to the now fuzzy memories of mother and her sweet milk. I was feeling more and more adult, and that...