"I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog."
~ The Hound of the Baskervilles by ACD.
The above is a description of the hound by Dr John Watson.
But, he wasn't always a hellish hound….
Stapleton squinted at the litter.
"How big?" He poked the largest, a coal-black pup that nipped his finger but wriggled his tail in apology. Puppy fur fanned around his throat like a lion's.
"Gigantic," the farmer shrugged. "Mother's bloodhound. Father's werewolf." He didn't care what the prickly professor thought. The heritage of the behemoth that roamed the moor was a mystery. "Mastiff?" he corrected when his customer gave a dubious frown.
"I need a large hound," Stapleton scooped up the ebony canine. "He'll do."
The fluffy pup's enormous dark eyes smiled and a pink tongue licked his new master's hand.
Prompt from cjnwriter: Something fluffy