I recoil into the solitude of the empty kennel, waiting to hear the barks of my cage mates coming home. Today was a day of heights, but now as I slowly come down, I notice that the mechanics of change are in the wind.
I knew the look in my sister's eyes. She, in the end, turned out stronger than me.
It seemed it was time for the change to finally come. The police dogs have started to get restless. Change, you will find, is refreshing while dangerous…it's like cocaine.
"Kelso challenged Oscar," Little Jean told me when they got back, later than usual, from their training. I sat up from my bed.
"They alright?" I asked in concern, causing Little Jean's jaw to drop.
"No! Last time something like this happened it set the pack into turmoil for weeks!" She barked, concerned and twisted up in worry.
"I hope everyone just keeps low," cut in the stoic Dizzy from behind
"I don't know what it is Annette, but for some reason it starts off a chain reaction and everyone suddenly needs to rearrange their rankings and prove themselves all over again."
Over the next few days, there were many threats howled at the moon and many dogs returning to the kennels wrapped in bandages. I was not included; I was some funny presence that wasn't encompassed in this tight migration of aggression.
I realised the cause. Suppression. All day, every day, these dogs are trained to do everything for their trainer and to do it to perfection, yet those things they do, are vicious. They are expected to be vicious dogs that disregard all voices on the field and attack with hell force, yet at the same time, are crumpling to the strange vocal flexes of a specific human. Are you a sheep in wolves clothing, or a wolf encased in wool?
It lasts, because now, in the back of their minds, they are hearing their trainer yell -maul, hold, search, chase- and they have started to order themselves around, permanently caught in an attack mode they can't shake out of their ears.
With the mystery of the police dogs settled, I yawned wide and felt satisfied. I waited for my bread and wine trainer to come and take me out to some new human place.
But it seems, the change is still in effect.
Suddenly, they start to see me for the first time; suddenly I have to protect myself from all these desperate dogs trying to dominate. The scungy low class who are frantic for someone of their own to lord over, the high class paranoid at the possibility of an unchecked subject.
I am not one to be pushed around; I am from the rich backyards, the ice cream soil gardens and uncountable bones. I do not take well to these dogs attempts at pushing me down, me, me who was born so high that I did not even realise I was soaring until I tumbled down. Me, me who has a strong sister who looks well and sleek, who has continued to hover amongst the clouds while I have failed.
No, I am not made of the right material to grovel, I am strong. I came out of that vet cage.
I watch them from the corner of my eyeballs, and they start to realise. She is no dog to threaten, no matter how alone and out casted she once was. It is all in the attitude, dear human. Dogs have different systems of social order. We are much more vicious, we have the King and his Queen, than the knights and business men until finally, the slaves.
It is stupid, we are intelligent enough and we should be. But the Kings don't want to have all their power taken away, and so the cycle continues. I glare at Oscar, it is his fault, he is the King to this police pack and he is the driving force. With a shake of his tail he can shatter the ranks and with a soft word, with the power he holds, he could demolish the system. But no, he doesn't, he likes his high perch which he never got a taste of in puppyhood, he likes the power to demand and order, he likes this squirming of the pack. These days are not delightful and these hours are no light anymore.
And still, the time of change drags on.
It is dawn, paler than paper, ivory or bone. There was a crow on the roof, cawing and mocking those below him. Her, ridiculed by the humans for being the bird of dark graveyards and death, is the only one in the morning gathering who can reach up into the air and take solitary flight for the mountains that shine. My wine and bread man is nervous and bubbling underneath, but frustratingly cool and cold on the surface.
I have, for a long time, just waited. Soon the kennels will spew me out and that time smells near.
I help the man in the wheel chair open the door; I get his medication and brace myself when he needs me to get up from where he has collapsed. I open drawers and when he needs his medication, I bark.
I know I have done well, because the man keeps twitching a small, brief smile onto his face and his brain keeps receiving slight jabs of pride chemicals. I heard them talking, I see the papers being signed and the stamps being pressed down. I also meet a new man, one who did not smell of being a trainer or kennel official. He was a real man who I was to help for real, he will not pretend to fall like the one in my test had, when this real man falls, it will be because he is truly suffering.
He stretches his hand out to me and I take the chance to know his scent. He smells of grandchildren and cotton. He is very old and very sick, he will not last long. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, the man shuffles away with what looks like a butler following behind him.
I was taken the next day from my kennel and I knew that this was forever. I had to howl goodbyes to my crying friends, I had to leave them to bid their time and bait their traps, if only to keep their heads above water and not drown.
My new master had not gotten from his carriage; instead it was the butler who collected me from the front desk. His white gloves wrapping about my lead with elegance. My trainer bent to my level for his own last goodbye, patting me one last time.
I take in the gorgeous site of his nicotine streaked face, we enjoyed the taste of quiet daylight together, we had abided by our own laws, and we had known each other for true.
Again, I passed hands of ownership like a carton of eggs. But this time, precious eggs, gorgeous eggs, a carton that can, will, save a man's life.
I jumped up the step and into the carriage, scared of how lavish and soft the interior was. But my new master just smiled down at me from where he was, half a body growing out from layers and layers of blankets. I heard him call my name Brodie, and pat beside himself, commanding me to jump up next to him.
From up next to this new master, who was fascinating himself with my fur and fiddling with my ears, I could see out the side windows at the streets and land we were passing. I could also see out the front, I watched the two chestnut stallions pull like mighty bulls and clop up and down.
The man continued to fuss and squelch at me like I was a newborn infant, cute and rosy in the crib. I liked his face, I was eager to know what his skin tingled with. He laughed at me and wiped where I had licked him.
From what I could taste, I gave him half a year to live.
We went through town, through neighbourhoods, through farmlands and finally, the great beasts turned down their home road and I realised as I lookout out the window.
If I had been on the ground and my sister soaring through the clouds, well, with one passing of my lead, I have just been catapulted into outer space.
It took some time to reach the mansion; I felt the horses speed up with impatience to get to their stables. We stopped, my master started to lift his blankets off and grab his walking cane when the butler opened the door.
Come, I came, waiting on the gravel for my charge to splutter and lean his own way out, too proud to take the butler's hand. Crunching as he walked, my new master set a straight, slow, aged course to the sweeping front doors of his stone castle. It was left to the butler to unclip my chain. He seemed unsure by my new master had been muttering at him to do so, so he had to, hadn't he?
As soon as I heard the things jaws unclench I took off in pursuit of my master, traversing the steps, I was here to monitor his health, I was here if he fell or forgot. Right now I am Brodie, not Annette.
When we came into the foyer, it was all shine and vast like a saltpan. Our footsteps echoed. I could not believe that such wealth and construction existed. He wheezed his way down a lavish hall and into a room. I could smell that this room was especially for him, a room which stank of his constant presence and no one else's, of his paper and ink and wax seals.
And from the dog bed and water bowl in the corner, this would also become the room that my life will be spent away in. For the next hour, he sat at his proud throne behind his stacked and neat desk, coughing into a hanky and writing scratchily-scratch all over documents and the like. Would this man not rest?
From the amount of awards and trophies that shined down at me from the walls, rest was not in this new master's vocabulary.
So I heaved down into this new, luxurious bed and slept, his scent filling my nose with worry.