Evolution Part I: Chapter Thirty-two
As I watched the behemoth canine toil ahead of me under the weight of his own body, I had to admit to myself that there was not a lack of some pleasure to be had in seeing that flesh wobble about when it was usually so inert. It was the grey twilight...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Thirty-one
\*\*\* I put my plan into motion immediately. I saw no reason for delay. Again, the road between decision and action was short for a dog. I closed the gate behind Dizzy and re-latched the lock, making sure to snap it into place. The other group had...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Thirty
Summer was definitely over now and the sky remained permanently overcast with light rain coming on and off without warning. It was sometimes miserable sitting on the other side of the fence outside the other pack, but I stuck with my self-assigned...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-nine
I spent the better part of a week assisting Lopside in great leaps of verbal cognizance and vocalization, although to my doggish sense of time, the long daily efforts felt more like months. As I mentioned before, Lopside seemed suddenly possessed by a...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-eight
I spent most of the day worrying about possible discovery by humans of our transgressions; minor though they might have been. To me the signs were obvious, naturally, and after receiving my brief physical, I felt for sure that it was only a matter of...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-seven
I got a few hours of sleep as dawn swiftly came and began to sweep into morning. I slept under the pavilion along with Pink Nose and Fatty while the rest retired either to the concrete house or else simply lied down in the damp grass. Although I did...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-six
Lopside stared down at the scribbles on the slip of paper on the ground. We were all amazed at the unmistakable similarity between the symbol on the paper and one of three that Lopside has scribed in front of us, but he was looking at the scrap as if...
Evolution Part I: Chapter Twenty-five
There was, naturally, a lot to talk about and all of us speaking dogs gathered together for a big Talkie, including Dizzy and Spinner who were relieved to see me calmer after our return to the yard. The five of us who'd gone out all had ourselves a...
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...