Dang! Don’t know where this one came from. It just did.

Dog Days

He was born in a kennel in the country, although he never smelled the outdoors. Outdoors was for people. His family’s cage came unlatched once, and he wandered over to where the man came in, but it was a wall. When it opened, the man pushed him back with the toe of his boot and made him tumble.

The man picked him up and laughed. Another man came in and the man holding the pup said, “Watch out for this one. This one is gonna be trouble.”

Once they were weaned, the puppies learned quickly that the one who got to the toy or the food first, the one who growled the most and snapped at the other puppies and took their toys or food got praised. The ones who stood back or shared got smacked. Or disappeared.

The man took him out of the cage once and wrapped him up so he couldn’t move. He tried to bite the man, but man was big and strong and praised him for struggling, although the struggling didn’t help. The man pulled one of the pup’s legs out of the wrapping and burned him on the inside of his leg, up near his belly.

Oh, how he hated that man!

Although the pup didn’t know it, the humans have a saying:

Every dog has its day.

The day came when the latch on the puppy cage came unlatched. The now aggressive little animals wandered the floor, snarling at each other and fighting just for the fun of it.

Except him. He stood beside the wall that opened, holding the position against all challenges with the fury of the damned.

The wall opened.

The pup never knew what the man said or did, because he was out and away while the man’s attention was on the others.

What was all this, all around him? It smelled a little like the man, but only a little.

Green stuff, everywhere! Smells of other animals! Smells of … everything except hard, dead surfaces and unhappy dogs.

He ran until he couldn’t run any more.

When he stopped, he couldn’t smell home or the man anymore, except on himself. He smelled another person, though, and hard surfaces.

It was dark. Nobody would see him. He would rest on that thing that looked and smelled like home, then he would run away some more. He had to rest. All the fizz had gone out of him, and he barely dragged himself onto the concrete before he curled into a deep, exhausted sleep.

He didn’t hear the wall open. He didn’t feel himself being picked up and carried into a house and put on a cushion inside a cage. He didn’t hear the woman make a phone call, or feel her spread his legs, or sense her excitement when she saw where he had been burned.

He didn’t know law enforcement had been looking for the man who had bred him and his brothers and sisters and their siblings before them, had branded them so people would know where to come for savage fighting dogs. He didn’t know the woman who had brought him in had just seen a national crime-fighter episode featuring his breed and his brand.

He didn’t know his old home was raided and the man who had branded him arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.

All he knew was that he now lived with a person with soft hands and a soft voice, that he got praised for being gentle, and that nobody ever hurt him on purpose again.

Oh, and that his name was Jasper, and he was a good boy.

THE END

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s weekly blog hop, One-Liner Wednesday. If you have a one-liner or just like them, follow the link.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about an escape.

MA