One Good Dog Read Online Free Page A

expect something from us. Their sweat tells us that they are challenging one another; their voices are sharp, encouraging, cajoling, berating, fierce. In a few moments, we know what to do. We know what they want. We pick up on their agitation; we get into the trash talking. We engage. And, like those old-time gladiators, we know that defeat is not an option. This is what our men want. This is our job.
    From the first time my boys put me in the ring, I understood what was expected of me. I fought out of fear. I’m not ashamed to say that. If you didn’t fear getting your nose bittenoff, you were as crazy as those boys. Be the aggressor and you might not get hurt, or hurt as much. I’ll say something else: I didn’t always hate it. When you’re a little hungry, isolated, when you never get to meet your fellows in any sort of comradely way, your noses never touching the communicating part, only recognizing one another through the scents left on the fence posts, well, you get a little testy. It was my only outlet. I was pretty good at it.
    I am and always will be a beast, a man-designed bag of sinew, bone, muscle, and teeth. My ancestors thought it was a good alliance between our kind and man, never dreaming that their physical shapes and proclivities would be so determined by another creature. I am made bestial by the job I was trained to do. Many of my species have lost that bestiality, replacing a heritage of scavenging around the firepit with an attachment to some human who will dote on them.
    I never knew about that until the day my boys brought in a mutt from off the street, clean, toenails well clipped, uncollared, but a clearly attached
Canis domesticus.
This happened every now and then. When they’d run out of runts, the boys would bring in involuntary recruits for us to spar with. These draftees were not meant to be real challengers; they were generally short on muscle and low in stamina, often soft from good living. These naïve fellows arrive shamelessly tail-wagging, thinking they’ve found a new friend, and the next minute some tough-skinned, pale-eyed contender bites into their cheerfully upraised necks.
    This one told me his story during the hours we had caged in the cellar of the house, his cage placed close enough to mine that we could talk so quietly that our voices didn’t provokeeither of the boys to shout down “Shaddup.” His scent, even without my being able to sniff around his communicating area, was replete with good food and human touching. He told me that he had a person who took care of his every need, gently, even offering him treats for every silly thing he did. His job was not to roll around in a pit, but to walk without pulling on the leash. No, he didn’t wear a collar like mine. His, which the boys removed, was of soft leather, two metal disks declaring who he was and to whom he belonged tinkling merrily from it. He missed the sound; he wasn’t sure he could sleep well, not hearing the gentle ding of his tags as they touched while he circled for sleep. They and the collar were the badge of his service. And of them, he was quite proud. I was appalled. The idea of such submission sent an involuntary shiver along my back and I shook hard to rid myself of it. But I was curious, maybe even a little jealous.
    I made short work of him in the practice pit, but he stuck in my mind as someone whose story was not singular, but indicative of a whole world beyond my cellar. The idea began to take hold. I spoke to others as we waited our turn, and, yes, they knew of these fellows who lived in houses, who didn’t bite for a living. Fellows who owed everything they had to packs of humans. Fellows who were expected to submit at all times like puppies to a grown male, even up into their mature years. They’d seen them, and not just in the arena. They’d seen them as my competitors were walked down the streets of the city, being brought to me on their own chains, they’d seen these others attached