Home Is Where Your Bark Is

Chapter 12

The dog’s belly cramped in anticipation of the tempting new kibble within such easy reach, and his mouth watered at the taste of the few morsels of kibble still on his tongue that the man had tossed his way. The man was on the floor, hand outstretched and heaped with food, beckoning the dog with his words and body language. Most of the words the dog didn’t understand, but when the man wanted his attention, he used one word over and over, and the dog knew the drill. Here he would be Seven. Come, Seven. Sit, Seven. Stay, Seven. No, Seven.

Names were temporary things, and they changed wherever the dog went. The man could call him whatever he wanted, but the dog wouldn’t let it become part of his identity the way he once had when he thought he’d forever be Benny, his first given name. No one had called the dog by that name in so long it carried the dust of cobwebs in his memory.

Here, the dog would be Seven until one day it, too, blended into the dust of memory. The commands the man had been using were simple ones the dog had mastered as a puppy, but it didn’t make him any more eager to perform them for him. Commands led to obedience and obedience—the imperfection of it—led to pain and abandonment, or so the dog had seen time and again.

This wasn’t the first time one of the humans keeping him had attempted to connect with him, had offered him treats from his hand or tempted him with fun things to chew and play with, but the more distance the dog kept, the less likely he was to get a swift kick when he displeased the man. Humans, the dog had learned, doled out praise and pleasure when he pleased them, kicks when he displeased them, and a cage when he really displeased them.

The man hadn’t forced the dog into a cage yet, but he had one here now. It was at the ready, door ajar, deliciously tempting rawhide inside, waiting for the dog to sneak in and grab it—no thank you. He’d choose hunger and pent-up energy that a good chew could relieve him of over confinement. He’d choose scoldings and swift kicks in the hind end over confinement too.

He’d done his best to show the man this, but humans were slower to understand dog communication than dogs were human communication.

The man tossed another piece of kibble his way, and the dog’s stomach cramped again. “More, more, more” his stomach called out.

Getting up, the dog sauntered over to the water bowl just out of reach of the man and drank his fill, though it did little to dull his hunger.

“Hey, Seven, come here, will you? Just a couple pieces. I promise nothing bad will come of it.”

The dog looked up from the water bowl and licked his lips. The man’s tone was as patient and even as any he’d encountered, quite unlike the man who’d nearly driven the dog out of his mind with hour after hour of confinement in a cage so small the dog hadn’t been able to stand tall and lift his head. Of all the times the dog had been in a human’s care before being abandoned at a shelter, that had been the only time the dog had been eager to enter one. In shelters, confinement was a given, but in those cages, there was always room enough for a good stretch of the legs or to lie sideways, and food and water were never scarce.

Earlier today, this man had brought him to the shelter where the dog had been abandoned most recently, and the dog’s whole body had trembled violently at the thought of being dragged inside, but the man hadn’t left him there. This was something that had never happened before.

The dog remembered the hope that had once filled him that if he was good enough, if he listened to the commands of his humans and understood them well enough, he wouldn’t end up back in a shelter.

The man tossed him another piece of kibble, and the dog made quick work of it before stretching out on the floor just beyond the man’s feet. Ears perked, he looked from the man’s outstretched hand to his eyes and back again. There was a gentleness in the man’s gaze that called to the dog to step close and let him dole out a petting, but the dog fought against it.

“Come on, Seven. You can do it. Just a little more.” The man leaned forward so that his hand was even closer. The dog’s mouth watered once again, and a whine slipped from his throat. “Come on, good boy.”

Without getting to his feet, Seven scooted forward a bit, wriggling his body along the cool floor. The man met him halfway, his hand stretched to the full extent of his reach.

The dog flicked out his tongue, nabbing a few pieces off the tips of the man’s fingers. A few went into his mouth; others fell to the floor. The dog licked them up with his tongue, then stared at the man’s outstretched hand still heaped with savory bits of kibble.

“Come on, boy. You’ve got this.”

Scooting forward a bit more, the dog took another tentative lick and nabbed a few pieces, then another one. While he was chomping the bits down, the man reached into the container at his side and filled his hand again. This time, he didn’t stretch out as far, and the dog had to scoot forward for another nibble, but now that he was eating, the food proved impossible to resist. Ready to pounce to his feet at any second, the dog licked and nibbled at the kibble in the man’s hand, his tongue occasionally brushing against flesh.

It had been a long time since the dog had trusted a human enough to lick his skin, but eating from the man’s hand stirred up memories of his puppyhood and his first human family after leaving the safety of his mom and littermates, back when being around humans filled the dog with joy. How easy it had been then, to let his humans—young and adult alike—scoop him into their arms and burrow their hands in his fur. To press up alongside them as he dozed and savor their warmth. He would’ve wished to stay with that family forever—to be Benny forever—but his time with them ended in their tears and their clinging to him even as they left him at his first shelter.

The next time the man reached into the container for another scoop of kibble, he came out with a larger mound that he held in both hands, which he hardly extended forward at all. To reach it, the dog needed to raise up onto his front paws and lean in as far as he was able, so close that the man’s body heat radiated against the tips of the dog’s ears. The dog even grew used to the man’s soft exhale brushing against the tip of his nose. He munched bite after bite, and the man proved trustworthy, neither reaching out to touch him nor offering any form of unexpected rebuke.

The dog ate the full scoop, then a second one, and the nearly insatiable hunger inside him began to dull. When he caught himself licking at the salt still on the man’s otherwise empty hands, the dog startled and backed up out of easy reach. Empty hands were easy to grab him with, and this was just the time when the dog might be shoved into the cage. Wanting to communicate this, the dog glanced toward the cage, then at the man, before retreating to the other side of the room to clean his jowls along the edge of the rug.

“If that kennel makes you uneasy, you aren’t going in it today, but if I’m fostering you, I’ve got to have it in my arsenal, or something tells me this place would never be the same.”

The man got up from the floor, taking the container of kibble with him, and headed into the other room where he ran water and soap over his hands, washing away the delicious smell of kibble with that nonsensical habit humans had. When the man came back in the room, he watched him calmly a moment, rekindling the dog’s unease.

“I don’t know who hurt you, Seven, but they shouldn’t have. It’s going to be different from here on out. You’ll see. You and I are going to have some fun. I promise.”

The dog didn’t know what the man was saying, but the tone was hopeful enough that his tail flicked automatically in response as if, deep down, he wanted to meet the man with the same amount of hope that the man seemed to have.