Today started just like every other the past week or so. I awoke when other dogs in the big, cold room started barking and howling. The slow rumble began with one or two of them, probably the pure-bred weirdos, and slowly crescendoed to the sound of a large, horrible choir howling songs of abandoned love.

The big dogs were hungry. I think they needed to poop, too.

I’d been stuck in the place ever since the nice man in the white truck picked me up. He smelled like pickles. I’m not sure what his deal was, why he plucked me out of that alley, but he was calm and cool about the whole thing. Human rules are still a mystery to me, and apparently I’d broken one.

So there I was this morning, a week or so after meeting Mr. Pickles, locked in a small, square cage.

It wasn’t all that bad. A few times a day a nice person, usually a lady with grey hair, would come to my cell and take me outside for a short walk. They gave me food twice a day and lots of water to drink. It sure beat the scraps I was finding in the alley, and almost any tap water beats a mud puddle. So, yeah, it wasn’t The Ritz, but it also wasn’t a sketchy park in the dark corners of Vancouver.

I was trying to nap before my afternoon walk when I heard the door open down the hall. I heard the voice of my favorite grey-haired woman and couldn’t wait to see her. It seemed a bit early for my walk, but I didn’t care, I love being outside, so I’d go whenever she came to see me.

When the round-faced woman arrived at my cage she was talking with someone behind her. I was trying to make out their strange language when suddenly a large, bearded man kneeled down at my cage door. He had a big smile on his face and said, “yep, he’s the one we came to see.”

Behind the bearded stranger stood a beautiful woman with sweet, gentle blue eyes. She seemed so nice. She was crying. That woman was the most beautiful human I had ever seen. She smiled at me as our eyes met and a final tear rolled down her cheek.

I didn’t know what to do. My eyes darted between the man and the woman, wondering why they were both staring at me, and why she had been crying while he was smiling? Good gravy, the humans make no sense sometimes.

“Hi little guy. How are you?”, the big man said as he stuck his hand out to reach for me.

“Now or never”, I thought.

I went for it. I licked his smelly, hairy face. The once-crying woman smiled. The hairy man looked back at her and smiled, too. Thank goodness neither of them had witnessed the cleaning of my balls and ass just moments prior to their arrival. Note: I use my tongue for those tasks.

I was guided into a strange, new room with the grey-haired woman, the once-crying woman, and the smiling man. They talked a lot, looked at me with great curiosity, and pretty soon everyone was smiling and laughing. I hoped that was a good thing. The strangers asked the grey-haired woman lots of questions about me, stuff even I didn’t know. Soon the nice people left and the grey-haired woman took me out for a walk. She seemed happy as we walked down the familiar path toward the grass. It had stopped raining and I was finally able to drop a load on the over-used turf near the back door.

When we went back inside the nice woman seemed to forget where our door was. She walked right past the door nearest my cell and turned down a long, dark hallway I’d never seen. I started to feel scared. Really scared. Was I going to be like the nice Border Collie I met on my first day, led away down “the other hallway”, never to return?

I started to bow down as the woman walked. I tried to make her stop, tried to make her take me back to my cage, back to what I had recently called home. I could handle it in there, I knew the rules, and at that point a bad morning choir sounded pretty good. My legs started to shake as we got near the door that other dogs only exited.

We reached the door. Here it was, I’d pissed off one too many human in my day. I knew I should have tried harder when I was a pup. I should have listened when my first master told me to stop chewing his shoes. Pooping on his bed, in retrospect, was a bad idea. That single dump may have sealed my doom.

I was about to pee everywhere…

…when the door opened and I saw the man with the beard. He smiled at me. He hugged me.

“Are you ready to go home, Miles?”