A dogs perspective.

    Bruce heard the jingle of his lead. He cocked an ear to see if it had been an accidental brush by one of the people causing it to jiggle or if it was the promise of a walk. Nobody came through the door to the living room and he didn’t hear the lead again. Assuming it had been an accident; Bruce laid his head back down on his paws and resumed watching the baby crawling around the carpeted floor.

He was bored. The black box in the corner with a silvery screen that showed sometimes, other animals, sometimes other dogs, but never with any smell other than of heated electrical wires, was flickering to its self with the volume turned down. Bruce kept an eye on the child. It had recently developed a liking for his fur; pulling it painfully any time he was careless enough to get too close. For a small puppy sized infant, its grip was amazingly strong. He had lost a fair amount of the precious coat to the sticky fingers of the human puppy. The child seemed to be content at the moment, stuffing a plastic toy into its mouth and gurgling in the back of its throat.

Bruce’s ears pricked up again. He had heard the lead again and also his master’s voice calling to him to come. Bruce didn’t understand the noises that these human partners made. They have an infinite number of unintelligible sounds, but occasionally, some were directed at him. Usually, Bruce could get an idea of what was required from the inflections. Popular ones involved him sitting at the edge of a blacktopped trail that had mechanical metal projectiles hurtling along them. He knew that these forms of transportation were dangerous and should be avoided at all costs unless you were in one. At those times, smells swished past his nose almost too fast for him to recognize them. But, the exhilaration of the wind being forced up his nose and over his sinuses was a thrill that he loved to have.

BRUCE, HERE!
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