Artwork of Grey Dog and Mocha. Gave Grey Dog his ears &tail because he looked so much cuter w them in my reference!:)
~
It was after The Man left for work that mid-morning that Flare's prediction came true. She was laying in the grass near the dog houses when a human stepped outside the back door.
It was the woman- though the dogs had no formal name for her, they knew she was a female by her scent. Unlike The Man, her scent did not constantly flow out of the back door when it opened. This human did not live with The Man, rather she must have had enough of a bond with him to come over and visit, and take care of his dogs. And all the while, Flare was more comfortable around her than The Man himself.
As the young she-dog turned her head towards the dog-houses, she recalled the times she had heard this human's voice alongside The Man's, raised in anger at one time or another. To Flare, it made no sense why the female still came around of her own free will if all he did was snarl at her. And as far as Flare knew, they were not mates nor very kind to each other.
Maybe she comes because of us! She let herself hope. And The Man doesn't like her here, but she likes us so much that she comes anyways. Flare remembered the bones that had given her such a favorable taste last time. Those scraps had come from the woman.
But unfortunately she didn't have anything in her hands today, besides one leash. Flare froze when she saw it, then reminded herself that only The Man took dogs into the shed.
"What's she doing?" Shadow asked openly as she bent down to stroke in-between his ears.
"Your ear looks horrible. Ain't it obvious?" White Dog called from across the yard as he strode up, Jax on his heels.
"In the house?" Shadow asked questioningly.
"Yes." Grey Dog sat up as the girl leaned towards him, but she didn't stoke his head. Instead, she removed Grey Dog's chain. He immediately padded across to his water bucket and market it's side.
Shadow seemed just a bit unsure as he was leashed, then gently tugged towards the back door. Flare kept pace with him, though she had no leash of her own.
"She's going to clean your wounds," she told Shadow as she climbed up the stone slab with them. He nodded reverently.
"Don't be nervous, Brown Dog. She'll take you into the white room and fix your ear," White Dog called. It was the only helpful piece of advice ever offered to Shadow by the other dogs.
Just as Flare was certain that the back door would be closed, the human swooped lower and into her field of view. Flare could see the white tile floors and hardened walls of the den's inside before she tore her gaze away.
The human stoked Flare's ears with smooth furless paws. She gave her tail a small wag but was still the slightest bit timid.
"What's she want with Tan Dog?" Grey Dog called out somewhat aggressively. The human gazed imploringly at Flare for a heartbeat longer, before straightening with a side-step. The tan she-dog found herself missing the soft strokes on her ears.
"Tan dog shouldn't get any extra attention, I should." Jax stated matter-of-factly.
"And why's that?" White Dog huffed with the effort of keeping his baying laughter inside.
"Because she doesn't benefit The Yard in any way- yet." He caught himself, and licked his lips nervously with a glance at White Dog.
"And I do," he added on quietly.
White Dog's laughter seemingly forgotten, he shot a look at Flare.
"Well, you don't deserve attention from nobody. You hardly live up to the standards of The Yard, pup." Grey Dog commented from his perch atop the tire.
"And Tan Dog does?" Jax shot back. Though Flare knew he only wanted the negative clout off of himself, she found herself wishing he'd never spoken about her.
"No, she doesn't either. And if I were ya'll, I'd pick it up with the breeding. She-dogs don't stay in season for long."
"He's got a point," White Dog agreed and raised his head. The two males stared at each other unwaveringly for a moment, before White Dog broke his gaze and peered over at the female dog instead.
"Tonight we'll get it on with. Brown Dog's arrival and last night's fight just distracted us."
"Plus she's been talking to Brown Dog a lot." It was Grey Dog's turn to talk about her now, apparantly.
"He hardly stops running his mouth around her," Jax put in.
"Who cares?" Mocha put in. She must have been tired of hearing the male dogs bicker. The brindle-and-white Pitbull was half-concealed by the grass at the edge of the fence.
"And Jax, you run your mouth all day!" Scolded the tall, ghostly male.
"At least I'm not doing it to impress a she-dog."
Is Shadow really trying to impress me?
She immediately had the thought. But why would he do that?
~
Though the dogs kept arguing for a good long time, they eventually dispersed. Flare thankfully wasn't subjected to very much more of the active bullying.
But Shadow was. The other dogs chittered on about him like squirrels in the trees. He was not very popular here, which made Flare nervous. Shadow's wounds may come out worse in the next fight.
They dont like him because he isn't the same.
"But not us," she recalled him saying in regards to how the other dogs acted similar to each other. He certainly wasn't wrong. We're the only two who don't accept this way of life.
Thinking this way left Flare bored and lonely. She retreated back to her usual spot near the porch. It was a nice day today, and many other dogs in the neighborhood were outside barking. She could hear them from afar. Yet there she lounged, watching bugs fly around the whole time. The other dogs padded around, sniffed the air, scent-marked or barked- but Flare wasn't feeling very independent without her new friend here.
Her belly growled and flies kept landing on her ears. After a while, it started to get hot and Flare could feel her fur shedding. She turned to lick at a particularly tufty spot when she heard the back door open.
Shadow came out close to the woman's leg, not leashed this time. He bounded out into the yard and shook out his fur, ears flapping.
Flare noticed right away that his ear was bound with thin white cloth. It didn't fly off even as he shook himself.
"Well, I'll give her this: She certainly has a knack for cleaning blood off," he said as he approached.
"It seems like it hurts less now," Flare commented.
This time Shadow seemed a bit more willing to admit that he could, in fact, feel it. "Stings a bit, is all. She put something clear and creamy on the split, and it stopped stinging like a swarm of bees."
"That's good," Flare muttered as Shadow came to sit beside her. The other dogs stayed where they were, preoccupied. White Dog and Grey Dog were bickering near the tires, and Jax was scratching himself in the middle of The Yard.
"So where did all these dogs come from?"
Flare didn't have an answer; since she'd hardly spoken a word to the other dogs since she'd been here. She shrugged her shoulders.
"I was given to new humans from a bucket, alongside my litter-mates in the back of a rolling-den. Before that I remember being with my mother-dog.
"In another human's den," Shadow assumed. She nodded, and he looked at her.
"Just before I came here a few days ago, I was picked up at night from my old human's den by your 'The Man'. We were in the rolling den for a long time before we got here." This made Flare wonder if Shadow was from somewhere far away.
"Why don't you just ask the other dogs how they got here? Maybe that would explain why some of them are the way they are."
Impulsively, she shot him a look.
"I know they're bullies. But they don't seem to hurt she-dogs here," he stated calmly. His gaze still rested on her.
"They do," Flare said quickly. Her voice grew bitter as she carried on. "They've bitten my ears and hind legs more times than I can count. Every dog here besides Mocha is a menace that'll bite anything to benefit themselves." She let malicious disgust creep into her voice.
"I like your attitude."
Taken aback, Flare tilted her head to the side. Shadow'd voice had sounded infatuated.
He started to correct himself quickly.
"I-I mean, keep that attitude. It'll help you defend yourself in the long run."
Now it was his turn to sound bitter. Shadow switched topics faster than a rabbit could switch directions while fleeing. The brown dog dropped his tone seriously.
"I hate how they do that to you. Dogs like these deserve to be isolated," he growled. "They not only accept this way of life, they enforce it and create hiearchy."
"At it again with your right and wrong?" Flare said in a teasing tone. She let her tongue loll out in a playful gesture. Right now, she didn't very much care about the other dogs.
"Yes, and I won't give it up. You shouldn't either." He tapped his tail against the ground in a friendly wag. Flare nibbled at an itch on her foreleg, then stretched out her spine.
"What will we do today?" She asked, looking at Shadow for the first time today. He caught her gaze and held it.
"I say we ask Jax where he came from. I won't let him boss you around," Shadow said reassuringly. Flare nibbled in-between her toes, wondering why Shadow was so curious about the other dogs.
"We may as well get to know them, even if they are insufferable," he stated matter-of-factly. Flare was inclined to agree, at least to the insufferable part.
"Jax!"
He shouted the young male's name and Jax came trotting over with a stick in his mouth. His short but thick weight shifted from side to side as he moved, and he huffed through a flattened nose.
As Jax came over, he struggled to bring the stick as well. When he spat it onto the ground he was short of breath. "Sorry, my muzzle's almost too short to hold this. What's up?" The black-and-white bully peered up at them, squinting from the sunlight.
"Gosh dang, I wish every dog wasn't so much taller than I am," he muttered to himself as Shadow opened his mouth to speak. Even so, Jax looked excited that someone had called him over, and his little stump of a tail was wagging.
"How did you end up in The Yard, Jax?"
Jax drew out his reply as he talked. He sat down, thinking.
"I was picked by The Man out of my litter-mates. He grabbed my scruff between his fingers and then brought me here with the rolling-den."
"But where were you before that? In a human's den, or outside?" Shadow pried.
"Well, before that I lived in a cage with my litter-mates and mother. And the cage was outside." He took a breath.
"Mother-dog was all white but had a flatter face than even me. And she didn't like us puppies too much. Most of the time, she'd ignore us. Other times she would bite us. But she seemed to not like me even extra, because I always tried to talk to her..." Jax glanced at them defensively, to which Shadow didn't reply. Flare didn't speak either.
"Well, I tried to ask her a lot of questions about the dogs in the other cages next to us. But she just bit at my muzzle.
There was a lot more dogs and puppies there than there ever was here. We all barked at the wind, the trees, each other... wanting the humans to come back, to let us out. We only saw them for a few minutes a day." Jax looked up at the few clouds stretched across the sky with a thoughtful expression.
"And I heard them barking all night, wanting out of their cages just like I did."
Flare felt her nerves rising. It sounded like a sort of prison for dogs. She remembered being in a cage as a puppy, though it was a vague and fuzzy memory. Mostly, she just remembered being confined in a small space with her siblings and realizing that the wire of the cage was hard, sniff and unmoving. Even your own teeth can't break you out. It was very confining, if she was remembering it right. But I wasn't stuck in the cage for days.
"Whenever the humans came to feed and water us, usually twice a day, it was an uproar. We all wanted out of the cage so bad." You've said that three times already, she thought impatiently.
"Twice a day the cage doors were opened to give us food and water, but we couldn't jump out, you see- 'cause our cage was one that was stacked on top of another one. And the den's were made out of tight, thin wire."
So Jax's cage had been something like the one she had experienced. Just then, Shadow snuck her a look. Jax had a way of letting himself go when it came to chatting.
"Meanwhile, my mother-dog completely refused to give any pup milk at some point. Around the time my siblings and I started biting and scratching each other for play." Jax paused to watch them, as if he wanted to make sure they were still listening.
"So we were crazy by the time the humans came around with the food. It was soft and meaty like churned-up, moist-y kibble." He shook himself, eyes shining as he thought about his early life.
"And then, I remember us puppies getting bigger, and the cage getting smaller. We could hardly fit in there with mother-dog anymore. She got even more grouchy because we stepped on her paws and ears," he reminiscenced.
"So when did The Man come and get you?" Shadow interrupted. Somehow, he hadn't sounded rude or impatient, so Jax answered without strife.
"Soon after my litter-mates and mother-dog could hardly fit in the cage anymore," he finished.
"And the only place you've lived, besides here, was there?" Flare commented quietly. She had enough confidence to glance at Jax, who at first looked mildly surprised but answered soon after.
"Yeah."
"You both grew up here from an adolescent pup," Shadow cut in.
"Yeah." Jax licked his paws clean thoughtfully with strokes of his wide tongue. Then he got up and sniffed in the general vicinity around Flare and Shadow, who sat only a few inches apart.
"But so what? Me and Flare still aren't anything alike. She's a weak she-dog, and I'm a strong male-dog."
Shadow looked offended, but Jax took no notice. Flare felt her lip twitch involuntarily at the insult, but she felt only annoyance- not rage.
After the black-and-white bully-breed was done sniffing, he started jogging away distractedly, towards White Dog.
When the male's figure recessed into no more than a white-ish smudge against the yard, Shadow sighed.
"He's only like that because the other male dogs here have been the only role models for him." The brown dog had a sour expression that matched his tone.
"And he only talks so much because his mother suppressed him from birth," Flare put in more quietly. Though it went against her will, she felt sorry for Jax. Her mother-dog had at least licked her, and looked at her. And when Flare became old enough to understand words, she recalled listening to her mother-dog's scolding.
Jax's mother just bit and ignored him.
"Well, that was pointless. Jax is a lost cause." After Shadow spoke, his eyes flicked back onto Flare. She felt a bit self-conscious as Shadow stared at her, then began grooming her tail.
They chatted on for a long while. Shadow told the tan dog what it had been like inside the house. He told her that there'd been a heavily furred, prey-animal scent inside too. Shadow described to her what a cat was, and confirmed that there was indeed one living inside The Man's house too. When the male pretended to be offended about the dogs being kept outside rather than the cat, she acted the same. Flare felt herself sucked into the conversation, intrigued, but the staring soon became too much for her.
"What?" She said when her tail couldn't possibly be any neater. Her fur felt hot underneath her pelt.
Shadow immediately returned his gaze to The Yard. It was his turn to look embarrassed now.
"Nothing," he finally said.
~
White Dog