Animal Testing
They were given a dog by the team of psychiatrists to gauge their levels of paternal instinct. If it lived, that was a good sign. If one of the boys bonded with it, even better.
But it died soon after, and nobody bonds with a dead dog.
Three progressively hardier canines later and one lived. Bryan named it Kostya and fed it raw meat. Trained it to be an attack dog; it only listened to him – then eventually, after some persuasion, to Tala. It lived outside on a very thick chain. The chain was Tala's idea.
Kostya tried to kill anybody (besides Bryan or Tala) walking by. It nearly disemboweled Ian in one instance because he'd misjudged the chain's length. It usually sat in the snow, silent, something psychotic glistening in its cool gray eyes.
When the psychiatrists saw and almost had their throats torn out, they looked at Bryan with new respect. They spoke of cycles of abuse, agreeing to each other for a while until Tala said they had to go because the dog got hungry at dinner time.
They glanced at Bryan's, then at Kostya's cool gray eyes, turned, left without another word, and never came back.