Ain't Nothing but a Pound Dog

by Jeannie Wycherley

Around them, the other pound dogs were barking at the disturbance. Ee-ex-ten-eight-two paced the floor, angry at Pippin for stirring up his emotions. Troot had taken shelter in his own plastic basket, hiding his head underneath his paws, frightened of the sound of big angry dogs. Even Miss Phoebe had woken up and had started to yap in annoyance.

  “If you pair don’t shut up down there, I’m going to get free and rip your heads off!” The German Shepherd had started throwing his weight around again. The dogs surrounding Ee-ex-ten-eight-two quietened once more. Miss Phoebe yawned widely and curled back up on her bed.

  Casting one concerned glance at Troot to ensure the pup had settled too, Ee-ex-ten-eight-two slunk along the floor of his pen and over to where Pippin lay. Having caused the furore in the first place, she hadn’t even bothered to sit up properly.

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two started to spit a barbed response her way, but stopped when thoughts of Old Joe floated like shining bubbles in the forefront of his memory. What a lovely human the old man had been. How they had adored and cared for each other.

  Now Pippin pushed herself to her feet. The dogs were a similar size and she pressed her nose into the chicken wire and snuffled, until Ee-ex-ten-eight-two met her nose with his own. Her eyes told him she understood his pain, his sense of loss. Why wouldn’t that be the case? She didn’t have anyone either.

  “We owe it to all the dogs that came before us to live the longest lives we can. We owe it to them to set ourselves free,” Pippin told him, keeping her voice low, mindful of disturbing the others again.

  “But without Old Joe—”

  “No buts,” Pippin repeated firmly. “I don’t know much of what happened to your human but I’m guessing it wasn’t nice.”

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two snorted gently. Not nice was the understatement of the century.

  Pippin tried again. “Remember all the walks you went on with him? Don’t you want to smell the grass and see the sky again? Not just the concrete of the exercise yard and a load of rusty old barbed wire?”

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two’s heart ripped along the seams. Of course he wanted those things. But without Old Joe, what could his life ever amount to? They’d been a team.

  “You are more than a tattoo on the ear,” Pippin insisted.

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two disagreed. “I was a bad dog. I couldn’t save Old Joe.”

  “You can keep him alive in your memory, but only if you yourself are alive to do so.” Pippin licked Ee-ex-ten-eight-two’s nose and elevated her tail, standing proud. “My name is not Ee-ex-eleven-four-three. My name is Pippin and one day I will be a free dog.”

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two dipped his head. For nearly six months he had tried not to think of Old Joe. At least not outside of his dreams at any rate. To remember the lovely old man caused him pain. But now it felt as though his memories, good and bad, had been forced out into the open. The human Old Joe had been. The way he had died.

  Pippin had opened a Pandora’s Box.

  But she was right.

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two did owe it to the dogs who had been in this place with him. Six long months. Hard months. Many a dog had walked down the kennel run with Selma or one of the other kennel hands, and they had never come back.

  More than anything, he owed it to Old Joe to survive. And to seek some sort of justice for his human’s death.

  Ee-ex-ten-eight-two lifted his head up and pricked his ears. He aligned his shoulders and centred his body.

  “My name is Toby,” he said. “And I am a good boy.”

  Afternoons between two and four were the times the manager of The Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary allocated for visits. Potential adopters turned up at reception and asked to take a look around, and one of the kennel hands would give them the grand tour. This really only amounted to showing them the four kennel blocks and demonstrating how to enter and exit the kennels carefully and safely without setting any of the dogs free. There wasn’t much in the way of security, although there were a few cameras that fed to a screen in reception and were recorded on an old computer in the front office. The Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary had been an independent rescue kennel for many years, and there had never been a huge amount of money available. Most available funds were spent on the vet’s bills.

  “Let me see you,” Pippin was saying to Toby.

  Today, with her assistance, he had carefully groomed himself. Now he looked cleaner than he had in months. She had helped to tease out a few tangles and he had licked himself all over, even managing to clean between his toes.

  “What do you think?” Toby wagged his tail.

  “Passable,” Pippin pronounced. “A bath and a good comb-through wouldn’t go amiss though. You know how humans like that sleek look? Well, I’m sorry to say, you don’t have it. But yes, you’re alright.” She sniffed him. “Given this is your first day back on the road to adoption, you’re looking good.”

  Toby trotted in place, a bag of nerves. Having done nothing to engage visitors since he’d arrived at the kennel months before, he wondered if he’d forgotten how to act around humans. Selma allayed his fears, however.

  “Hey now darling. Look at you!” She wolf-whistled and slipped her fingers through the door wire to pet him. “Looking good, like a Schnauzer-cross-thingie should.” She laughed merrily, always good-natured. “Ready to meet your audience?”

  She straightened up and moved along to the pen next to his. “And how’s my gorgeous lil’ pupster? Someone is going to fall in love with your skinny backside, this much I know for sure.”

  From reception came the sound of a bell ringing. The noise alerted those working in the kennels that the visitors were on their way through. It also acted as a cue for every dog to start barking and yelping as though part of some kind of canine welcoming choir.

  Selma’s ears should have been bleeding with the racket, but she merely laughed a little louder and moved on down the kennel run, checking on Miss Phoebe and the dogs beyond before reaching the door at the end and pulling it open to let in the first visitors.

  A man and a woman, dressed in smart casuals, accompanied a small boy aged about four or five. The child raced along the kennel run, screaming excitedly. “Oh hush now, Jayden,” Mum called after him, but without much conviction.

  Jayden ran helter-skelter down the entire kennel run, slamming into the pen door at the end. A partially blind elderly Staffordshire Bull Terrier resided there and the child’s rampaging frightened him half to death. Toby’s head swivelled to watch the boy as he bounced off the door before running back towards his parents.

  Selma followed the family down. “Are you excited to see the dogs?” she asked the little boy. “It’s not a good idea to scare them though.”

  “Don’t scare the doggies, Jayden,” repeated Mum.

  “Woof! Woof! Woof!” yelled Jayden in response, slapping his hands against the wire of Pippin’s pen and trying to force it open without first undoing the latches. “Pretty doggy!”

  Pippin backed away. “Ooh no,” she said. “He’s not the one for me.” She wrinkled her nose at the boy. “Shoo. Horrid thing. Get away.”

  Toby glanced across at her. “Should I try? What do you think?”

  “For you?” Pippin shuddered. “Could you actually bear to go with this kid? I mean if you could… this might be your way out. You don’t have to stay with them, like, forever.”

  “It’s better than the alternative,” Toby agreed, although his stomach squeezed with anxiety to think of what life with the hyperactive Jayden might be like.

  Pippin lay down on her bed, with her back to the family. They gathered together, peering through the gate. “He’s not very interested in us,” sniffed the father.

  “I’m not a he,” Pippin sniffed back.

  “Some people think all dogs are hes,” Toby told her, and moved to the front of the pen, sitting at the gate, smiling up at the family. When Mum shifted her attention towards him, he sat up even straighter and wagged his tail hard, brushing the floor of his pen, scattering dust
and hair left and right.

  “What about this one, darling?” the woman asked Jayden. “He’s cute too.”

  “I’m incredibly handsome, bright as a button and I can do a roly-poly,” Toby told the father as he joined his wife at the fence and studied Toby with interest.

  “Aww listen, Jayden. He’s trying to talk to us,” Mum laughed. “Roo roo roo,” she repeated back at Toby. He decided to play along. Anything to keep her happy.

  “Roo roo,” he repeated. Just how dumb were some humans? He opened his mouth and let his tongue loll out the side.

  Jayden tore himself away from Pippin to inspect Toby. He listened to the dog talking, and batted the wire of Toby’s door with the palms of both hands in excitement. The door rattled noisily in its frame. Toby flinched. Why did the child have to be so violent? Quickly he remembered his game plan. He pulled his lips back in what humans recognised as a smile and cocked his ears a little wonkily.

  “So adorable,” cooed Mum. “And such an unusual colour.”

  “He’s a bit big though.” Dad obviously had doubts.

  “My fur is soft and strokable,” Toby dropped into the conversation, in case they hadn’t noticed. “And to the best of my knowledge I’ve finished growing.”

  “See how he’s talking to us, Jayden. You can talk back to him. Rooo oo oo.”

  “Woof! Woof!” barked Jayden.

  In the pen next to Toby, Pippin had lain down on the floor and covered her ears. On the other side, the puppy had backed into his corner and knocked over his water bowl.

  “Oh no,” Troot cried. “I made a mess!”

  Toby, split between wanting to make a good impression, and the puppy’s obvious fear, turned slightly. “It’s alright Troot. Selma will clean it up for you.”

  “Don’t tell the baby off!” shrieked Jayden, taking umbrage at what he perceived Toby’s intentions to be. He pressed his face against the bars of the pen, glaring at Toby.

  In consternation, Toby scuttled backwards.

  “He upset the baby!” Jayden shouted.

  Selma, who had been up at the entrance talking to King, began to walk down the kennel run. “Everything alright?” she called.

  “Bad doggie! Bad doggie!” Jayden screamed at Toby, who retreated to his basket. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? He cowered down on his haunches. That little boy surely didn’t deserve a canine friend if he could misread every situation so badly. Jayden raced to the door of the puppy’s pen.

  “I want this one,” he hollered.

  “He’s scaring me,” poor Troot cried. Around them, the dogs reacted to the puppy’s tears by setting up a cacophony of howling and wailing, their natural instinct to protect him.

  “Calm down everyone,” Selma tried to restore some semblance of order, but no-one—neither the dogs nor the humans—appeared to be listening.

  “I want this one!” Jayden’s soaring and high-pitched vocals had the capacity to drown out everyone else. Troot dived behind his basket and tried to burrow beneath it.

  “Well quite clearly he doesn’t want you.” Pippin had come to the front of her pen and now craned her neck to see what the little boy was up to. “Leave him alone.”

  “Open the gate!” Jayden shouted at Selma, his face bright red.

  Selma frowned. “I think we all need to calm—”

  “Could we have a look at the puppy?” Mum asked.

  Selma hesitated and for one awful moment, Toby feared she would enter Troot’s pen and scoop the little fellow up. If she handed him over to this awful child, the poor mutt would have the worst kind of life imaginable, with never a moment’s peace.

  Without really thinking, Toby threw himself against the partition, snapping and snarling.

  It was all too close for comfort. Jayden shot backwards in alarm, colliding with a pillar and banging his head. Mum screamed. Jayden wet himself. The father’s eyes widened in bemusement, perhaps wondering what all the fuss was about, but not overly bothered.

  Selma rushed to pick the child up as the mother shouted at her about dangerous dogs.

  “I’m so very sorry,” Selma tried to say. She righted Jayden, who had now started shrieking hysterically.

  “So you should be,” snapped Mum. “Surely you people have a duty of care to the people who enter this business?”

  The manager, alerted by the riot of noise, burst in through the kennel’s main entrance. “What’s going on?”

  Selma made an attempt to appraise her boss of the situation, but between the dogs’ barking and crying, Jayden’s screaming and the mother’s hostility, she had a hard time of it. Only the father stood quietly. The manager apologised profusely and, although at first she could hardly make herself heard above Jayden’s wails and his mother’s shrill whining, eventually she seemed to be having an effect. She led the family in the direction of the reception.

  “You stay here,” she called back to Selma. “Calm the dogs down. Then you’d better come and tell me what happened.”

  The father hung back as his wife and son exited the building. Most of the dogs had begun to quieten down, including Toby and Pippin. The puppy continued to cry loudly.

  “I don’t want to go,” Troot sobbed. “Don’t make me.”

  “You’re alright,” Miss Phoebe told him from her side of their partition. “I don’t think they’ll be adopting anyone anytime soon.”

  “Shhh,” Selma scolded Miss Phoebe. “Quiet now.” She turned back to Dad, still loitering outside Toby’s pen. “I’m—”

  “Please don’t apologise again.” He turned dark eyes on her and wagged his finger at Toby. “There’s something wrong with that dog.”

  Selma cringed, and almost apologised again. “Oh, no. I’m sure… really, he’s lovely. He’s only young himself—”

  “He should be put out of his misery.”

  Selma’s eyes widened. “No! He just needs—”

  “I’ll certainly make sure I speak to the manager about how dangerous he is.”

  “Please,” Selma tried. “Don’t do that. You don’t understand what they do…”

  “Good day to you.” Jayden’s Dad spun on his heel, almost colliding with the pillar himself. He put out a hand to ward it off, tutting loudly, before stalking down the kennel run to the main exit.

  Selma watched him go, holding her breath. As the door slammed closed behind his retreating figure, she released a quivering sigh and turned back to Toby’s kennel. Toby half expected her to berate him, but she pushed her fingers through the gap in the chicken wire as the dogs around them finally fell silent.

  “Oh Toby,” Selma sighed. “What did you do?”

  Really he hadn’t done anything, except defend poor Troot.

  Long after visiting hours were over, Selma sat in the kennel, nursing Troot on her knee, soothing his ruffled hackles, singing quietly to him. The rest of the dogs lay against their doors, or snuggled in their meagre baskets, ears twitching, listening to her deep voice as she sang songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Holly and Dusty Springfield. She threw in a couple of Duran Duran songs too, her favourite as a child, randomly plucking verses from the air and crooning along to a tune in her head. She had a good voice, so even if she sometimes sang the wrong words, her audience didn’t particularly mind.

  Until she suddenly stopped and glanced over at Toby.

  “What were you thinking?” she asked him, not for the first time. Her eyes shone with tears. “It’s the worst part of my job. I make friends with you all and then I have to let you go.”

  Toby pricked his ears up. “Go?” he asked. “Where am I going?” But he knew.

  “I get that you didn’t mean to scare the little boy,” Selma continued as though he hadn’t actually said anything, although of course she couldn’t understand him anyway. She grasped the fact that he wanted to communicate with her, but the noises he emitted were whines and groans and growls. Nothing intelligible.

  Toby had often wondered how The Pointy Woman had understood him. How she had
made him hear the words he had spoken in human language. But maybe that had been a figment of his imagination. The whole experience had been terrifyingly traumatic. Could he have misremembered what actually happened?

  He tried again, hopeful. “Are they sending me away?” Please not the walk of doom to Ravi’s surgery.

  Selma responded quietly. “I know, darling. I’ll miss you too.”

  She vacated her stool and deposited Troot gently inside his basket, wrapping him in a blanket. “There you go, little boy. Sleep well.”

  She turned back to Toby. “Our final goodnight, my darling. After all this time of me looking after you. I feel I failed you somehow.” She fished a few treats out of her pocket and dropped them inside Toby’s pen. “I hope your last night is filled with sweet dreams.” Her voice broke and she turned away quickly, storming up the kennel run towards the main exit. She didn’t dare to look back.

  Toby watched her go, his mouth open, the treats lying on the floor of his pen, forgotten.

  “Did she mean what I thought she meant?” Pippin asked loudly.

  “I think so,” Miss Phoebe called back.

  Troot’s head swivelled comically. Only he had failed to grasp Selma’s intended meaning.

  “This is bad news indeed.” King’s voice echoed down from his place at the top end of the kennel.

  Toby whined. “No. This isn’t what I want. Not anymore.”

  “It’s not fair. Your time can’t be up.” Pippin came close to his bars. “It’s that nasty child’s father. He’s made a fuss.”

  “They’ve brought The Big Sleep forward.” Toby’s knees shook. He began to pace in alarm, ears pushed back on his head, his mouth open. He panted hard.

  “Calm down,” Pippin told him. “There has to be something we can do.”

  “But what? What? No-one ever escapes from the Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary. Never!”

  Pippin shook her head, followed by her whole body, as though his words had somehow drenched her coat. “You know what I’ve learned? Never say never.”

  Toby sat back in the centre of his pen and howled. Right then and there he’d have given the wretched Jayden a run for his money in the ‘cacophony-creation’ and ‘pity-me’ departments.