My Person

My person is here. Sometimes, when the light outside is like this, he is gone, and I am here alone. The times he is here are the best times.

He is moving around and doing things to his body. He walks past me to the front of the house.

I get up and walk to him quickly. He’s sitting down putting those things on his feet. I whine and spin in a circle.

He makes some sounds, and I hear “go”. I bark loudly, and he holds the rope close to me. I hear the familiar sound that means we are going outside.

We took a walk to a building where he told me to sit and stay. Nothing seemed familiar to me here. The sounds, the smells, and the feel of the place all confused me. I had a hard time staying still, and I was drooling a lot and panting hard. It was a cool day, and there wasn’t much light from above us.

A few people walked by going in and out of the building. I ignored most of them. A couple of them made me stand up and flatten my ears. I watched them very closely. One of them tried to touch my head, but I moved away. He growled at me and kept walking.

It seemed like it was forever, but eventually my person came back out. I wiggled my butt and licked his hands. He gave me a greasy snack that smelled really strong and strange. It tasted good, though, and I gulped it down quickly. He patted my head, and we started walking again.

Soo,n I began to recognize the smells and sounds, and I relaxed a little bit. He seemed calm, too, and that helped me. He talked to me most of the time we walked, and every once in a while, he’d scratch behind my ear. That was my favorite thing — besides treats, of course.

We approached a building with some people standing in front of it, and he got really tense. I smelled fear on him, and that scared me. I also stood up straighter and held my ears tall and my tail stiff. I smelled the people the whole time we approached them.

When we were finally in front of the building, someone in front of the building said something. My person stopped and turned halfway around to face them. He kept his head down. They all walked toward us, and I planted my front paws and growled at them.

Their pack leader used a disturbing voice – like growling – and my person looked away and made his body look small. Their pack all made loud noises, and we finally walked away – slowly and calmly. My person’s smell changed, and I grew anxious and whined. He growled at me, and I dropped my tail, walking quietly behind him a step.

When we got home, he put out food for me, and then he went to lie down on what he called “couch”. While I was eating, I heard him whining softly, and I went to check on him. His face was warm, and water ran down from his eyes. I licked him and tasted salt and something else that made me feel tired.

We must have slept for a long time because when I woke up, no light was coming in from outside. Right away, I felt scared. My person was in the same spot he was in when I fell asleep. I stood and went to him, and he was staring at me but didn't seem to see me.

He has a smell now that is new to me but also very familiar. It makes me want to hide and not be near him. It's so hard, something is wrong, and he needs me. I'm confused.

All the food he left out for me was gone. The smell of food came from a strange hole. I was able to bite and scratch my way into it and get to the food.

Once that was gone, I found some of his food in another, different, strange hole, but it was old and smelled off. I was hungry, though, and I finally ate that too.

Water was always in that rock in the small room with interesting smells. I drank whenever I wanted to.

When I needed to go outside, I tried really hard not to let anything out. After a while, though, I just couldn't help myself. I went to the room farthest from him and did it there.

When I slept, I saw him behind my eyes. We were outside running, or he was throwing my ball, or we just sat on the porch together watching people go by. Sometimes cats or squirrels.

One day, I woke up feeling so hungry. I had been hungry for a long time. On that day, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I searched every place I could get to. I found some nice-smelling things and tried to eat them, but they burned my tongue and bothered my snout. I had to drink a lot of water to make the hurt go away.

I tried to stay away from him, but he was always right there.

Finally, I went to him, standing close and watching.

I saw him in my head again. I saw both of us. From when I was small and scared, and he held me tight and talked softly to me. To when I was a little bigger and went for the first time in the big loud thing that carried us around. I saw us walking under big trees, smelling good smells, him scratching behind my ear.

I decided to smell him one more time. Slowly, I lowered my head and just held it there. I lifted my paw and rested it softly on his arm. He didn’t move. I dropped my head lower and pushed my tongue out – confusion made my head hurt.

I took a long, slow lick.