by Aris Austin
****
One hour blended into the next, and by nightfall Shadow’s bones ached from standing for so long. He’d started shifting his weight from paw to paw around late afternoon, which helped, if only temporarily. Later, when volunteers had come around to fill food bowls, he had tried to distract himself by eating. The food was all wrong though, and only made him homesick. While his normal food had a satisfying crunch, the shelter’s food crumbled at the slightest touch. Miserable.
Why hadn’t Brian come back yet? It made no sense. Someone had to come for him. Brian, or Amy, or maybe Bel, if the school bus ever stopped by the shelter. No one ever left him alone for this long, especially not in some strange place. Even when the family took vacations, Shadow went along.
The night dragged by slowly. Shadow waited, listening to the sounds made by strange dogs in neighboring kennels. He couldn’t see any of them, except for the dog in the kennel across from his. She was asleep, just like she had been when he first arrived. She was much smaller than he was, and smelled younger too, although it was hard to tell with so many dogs around. Wiry brown fur stuck out from under the blankets at all angles, but Shadow could never fully tell what the sleeping dog looked like. She stirred once or twice during the night, but never left the blankets, and never noticed Shadow’s presence.
Watching the other dog sleep all night made staying awake very difficult, and by the time the sun came up, Shadow could barely keep his eyes open. He finally decided to lie down, just to give his paws a rest, but not on the bed at the back of the kennel. Brian wouldn’t be able to see him back there. Instead, Shadow settled down on the concrete floor and rested his head on his paws, nose inches from the gate. His eyelids grew heavier by the moment, and eventually fatigue won out over willpower.
It was a fitful sleep. Shadow woke up every time he heard a door open, hoping that Brian had returned. Every person who came through the door was a shelter worker though, or a volunteer, or the occasional family looking to adopt a dog. To make matters worse, some of the dogs in other kennels seemed determined to bark at everyone who came down the hall. Shadow tried his best to ignore them, but the only time the barking really went away was when he dreamed.
Brian wound his arm back and then whipped the ball forward, launching it halfway across the park. Shadow took off like a rocket, flying over the grassy terrain with ease. There was no need to watch the ball’s path through the air; Shadow knew exactly where it was going to land, and looking up would only slow him down. He never slowed down when there was a ball on the loose, not even once it had landed. And he wasn’t about to start. His jaws snapped together in perfect time with his feet, capturing the ball before it could bounce away. It never had a chance.
Shadow slowed to a stop and marched back to Brian, proudly padding through the soft grass. He let Brian’s praises fall on him with an almost pompous air, and then dropped the ball on request. Within seconds, Brian had already thrown the ball again, and Shadow was racing after it.
On another triumphant march back to Brian, something caught Shadow’s eye. A small patch of dandelions had taken root in the park, which was nothing special by itself. However, two of them looked different. Instead of bright and solid, they looked old. And soft. Softer than socks, even.
The ball rolled out of Shadow’s mouth, forgotten. He leaned in to sniff the flowers, suspiciously stepped back, and then leaned in again. Brian called out, saying to leave it, and an older Shadow certainly would have trusted his human’s judgement. The Shadow from the dream was much younger though, and curiosity won out over obedience. He snapped the heads up from both of the strange flowers in a single bite, crushing them between his jaws. Instantly, the dandelions crumbled in his mouth. They coated everything, finding their way to the space between his cheeks and gums, the bottom of his tongue, and the back of his throat. Shadow backpedaled, panicking. He shook his head violently from side to side, but the wet seeds refused to release their grip. Why hadn’t he listened to Brian?
The gate to Shadow’s kennel opened, and he was on his feet faster than an old dog ought to move. Instead of Brian’s stubbly face though, Shadow met the gaze of a startled volunteer. She hastily dumped a scoop of food into his bowl and left, shutting the gate behind her as quickly as possible.
Was that the morning feeding, or the afternoon feeding? Disappointed, Shadow settled back down to the floor and tried to recapture the dream. He hadn’t run that fast in years, and the dandelions seemed more amusing than panic-inducing now. Dreams allowed Shadow to revisit his younger body from time to time, and he missed the days where he wasn’t limited by his arthritis. And he could visit Brian in dreams too, while he waited for the man’s return.
It wasn’t long before Shadow found his way into a dream again, but not of a day in the park with Brian. The new dream went further back, to a time Shadow didn’t even know he remembered. He was only a puppy, and the entire world seemed full of wonder. Bigger. Newer. Shadow followed a long-forgotten woman through the shelter’s parking lot, tripping over a set of paws much too large for his tiny body. The woman ushered him into the shelter’s lobby, where he promptly flopped down to the linoleum and splayed his limbs out in every possible direction. Snippets of a hushed conversation between the woman and a staff member floated around above his head, but most of the words were lost to memory, made hazy by the years.
“…I still don’t know how it happened, but she got pregnant… this little guy was the only one I couldn’t find a home for.”
“…we can take him, but I need to ask you to have your dog spayed so you don’t get another litter of unwanted puppies… don’t know how many dogs end up here because of that…there’s a discount clinic on…
“…No, we don’t consider ourselves a no-kill shelter… very high placement rate though… puppy so he’ll be just fine.”
Shadow was taken into the same examination room and given the same physical exam, although the room looked much newer and Anthony was considerably younger. When he went back out to the lobby, the woman gave him a few treats.
“Bye puppy!” she said. Then she walked through the glass doors, just like Brian had.
And she never came back for Shadow.
Shadow woke with a start and struggled to his feet, blinking in the rays of winter sun streaming through the kennel’s high window. The long-forgotten memory left an anxious feeling in his chest, an itch buried so deep inside that he’d never be able to scratch it. Shadow tried to hang onto hope, but it slipped from his grasp with startling speed. Realization could be cruel sometimes, and no amount of patience could prevent the pieces from falling into place. Brian wasn’t coming back for him. Neither was anyone else. They left him behind, just like that woman had left him behind as a puppy.
The realization hurt. Shadow had barely known the woman from the dream, but Brian had been his best friend his entire life. And now Brian wasn’t coming back. He’d been abandoned. Betrayed.
That was the moment when Shadow’s heart broke.
Chapter 3
Age had weighed on Shadow’s bones for a long time, but it was nothing in comparison to the crushing realization that Brian was never coming back. The unscratchable itch of anxiety in his chest suddenly vanished, replaced by a gaping hole. Shadow slumped down to the floor, certain his ribs would all cave in if he remained standing.
Cold had never bothered Shadow before in his life, but the concrete suddenly seemed to leech every bit of warmth from his body. He tried to whimper; tried to use his voice to find Brian and make him remember, make him once again love the dog he’d left behind. The sound caught in Shadow’s throat though, choking him.
What had he done wrong? What made his family abandon him? None of it made any sense.
Facing reality was too overwhelming, so Shadow closed his eyes and waited for sleep. Sleep was the only way to escape the sense of panic that threatened to crush him at any moment. As soon as unconsciousness reached out for him, Shadow fell into its embrace for as long as he possibly could.
/> By the time he woke up, the hole in his heart had been replaced by a cool, dull ache. The sun had gone down, and all of the shelter workers had gone home. That was fine with Shadow. He didn’t want any company.
The dog in the kennel across the hall was finally awake, and she greeted Shadow with a playful stretch. Even stretched out, she looked small—only half of Shadow’s size, with pointed ears and fur that refused to arrange itself in any sort of organized manner.
On another day, Shadow might have returned the dog’s greeting. If they had been at the park, they might have circled one another, sniffed back and forth, and gone off to play together. They were locked behind gates though. The people who took Shadow to the park were gone forever, and he didn’t feel like making friends.
Shadow scooped a few bites of the crumbly food into his mouth, hoping it would make him feel better. In the past, he’d seen humans refuse food when they smelled of stress or worry, which had never made much sense to him. Being upset only made him hungrier. This time though, food did nothing to fill the pit in his stomach. It crumbled in his mouth like a dandelion, dry and tasteless.
Shadow tried one last bite, paused, and spat it out. Suddenly, food didn’t seem all that interesting. He turned, walked the few short steps to the back of his kennel, and collapsed onto the bed. He didn’t bother facing the hallway. If no one was going to come for him anyway, what was the point? Instead, he stuck his nose into the corner and put his back to the world. The whimper he had been trying to let out finally escaped his lips, but it wasn’t anywhere near loud enough to bring Brian back. The sound came out weak and broken, which suited Shadow just fine. A broken voice for a broken dog.
Sleep didn’t come to Shadow, despite the fact that he had absolutely no desire to be awake. What point could there possibly be in staying awake? The family he’d loved for so long had left him to die.
Shadow inched his body forward, pushing his face deeper into the corner. Perhaps dying in the kennel was exactly what he would do. He wanted nothing more than to lie on the bed, drifting in and out of consciousness until sleep finally won for good.
Lying there in the dark with his nose pressed against the wall, Shadow vowed two things. The first thing was not to move from the bed until the world finally slipped away.
The second was to never love a human again.
Chapter 4
“We don’t know what to do with him. He won’t leave that corner. I don’t think he’s eating or drinking. I don’t think he’s even pooping.”
“You’re sure he’s not drinking?”
“His water has been full the whole time he’s been here. I think evaporation can account for the little bit that’s missing.”
“Well… he was just fine when I checked him a few days ago. Might be he’s just upset about being left here. Give him until this afternoon to see if he gets hungry or thirsty enough to get up. If not, I’ll look him over and start an IV for the dehydration.”
The owners of the voices stood just outside the door to Shadow’s kennel, but he pretended not to notice them. He recognized one of the voices as Anthony, the vet from the day Brian left. The other voice had coaxed him to eat several times over the last few days, but he had simply ignored the human. He’d been making good on his promise to never leave the corner. He hadn’t gotten up even once, at least not by his own free will. Someone had finally carried him to a common room the day before, in a desperate attempt to make him move. There were other dogs in the common room, and Shadow supposed they were meant to socialize, but he didn’t care. As soon as he was let back down to the floor, he took exactly four steps to the corner of the common room and planted himself there. He kept his back to the other dogs until someone finally carried him back to the kennel.
Shadow knew they would probably try to move him again today. They could carry him to different rooms, but they couldn’t make him eat or drink, and they couldn’t make him play. Without food or water, his strength was already fading. That was alright with him. It wasn’t that he necessarily wanted to die—he had seen death before, and it always confused and frightened him—but leaving the bed required an energy Shadow just didn’t have.
As it turned out, no one carried him to the common room that day. Instead, someone entered his kennel around mid-afternoon and clipped a leash onto his collar.
“Come on, baby,” said a woman. “It’s beautiful out today. The snow finally stopped. Let’s get you out for a walk and see if the sun helps you feel any better.”
Normally, the word “walk” would have had Shadow on his feet in seconds. With Brian gone though, he ignored it as easily as he ignored the dust motes lazily drifting overhead. He also ignored the woman’s tugs on the leash, which became more and more aggressive the longer he resisted. For a moment, Shadow wondered if the woman would drag him outside. That might be amusing.
Instead, he found himself lifted into the air by the same strong arms that had carried him to the common room. He hung limp from the human’s arms in protest, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. The floor floated by below, spinning on occasion as the human turned to maneuver Shadow through one doorway or another. The last doorway led outside, where Shadow was gently deposited on the ground.
“Maybe just being outside again will make him want a walk,” said some unseen human.
Shadow still didn’t want to walk, but being outside was certainly better than the kennel. The sun felt so good that he even decided not to get up and find a corner to face, so he simply stayed where he was. He barely even noticed the woman’s series of attempts to get him up. Sadness had a special way of making the rest of the world seem far off, and the farther Shadow sank, the easier it got to ignore everything else.
The visit outside was short-lived. Once it was determined that Shadow had no intention of taking a walk, that strong set of arms lifted him into the air again. Instead of being returned to his kennel though, Shadow found himself deposited on Anthony’s exam table. He did his best to ignore Anthony too, staring blankly ahead while the vet poked and prodded him. A vet tech Shadow hadn’t met before tried to cheer him up, stroking his side and whispering things like, “you have such a soft coat” and “don’t worry, we’re going to make sure you feel better soon.”
Blood was drawn, but Shadow didn’t even feel the needles. Every inch of his mouth was checked, but even that didn’t bother him. Anthony eventually declared that Shadow was in good health, and aside from severe dehydration, there was no medical explanation for his behavior. The vet’s face came into view as he knelt down by the table, eyes full of concern. “What’s wrong, big guy?”
Shadow turned away. Anthony used the same brand of shaving cream Brian did, and the traces of scent leftover from the morning made Shadow feel sick. He had eaten an entire tube of Brian’s shaving cream as a puppy, and then vomited most of that same tube into Brian’s open sock drawer. Even after all of that though, Brian had forgiven him. He’d certainly scolded Shadow, but there was never any talk of going back to the shelter. Shadow couldn’t make sense of it. What could he possibly have done this time? What made Brian mad enough to leave him behind?
Anthony turned to someone out of Shadow’s line of sight—probably whoever had carried him there. “My only guess is that he’s devastated about being left here. Some dogs who get returned after only a few days take it pretty hard, and it sounds like he was with the guy that left him for most of his life. I haven’t ever seen a dog react quite this badly before, though.”
The vet shaved Shadow’s forelimb and fitted him with an IV, carefully securing the catheter with tape. Shadow would have told Anthony that the tape wasn’t necessary, that pulling it out would be too much effort, but humans were difficult to communicate with. There was no way he had the energy to get a point like that across. Instead, he watched the floor float by while Anthony carried him back to the kennel. Another human followed with a drip bag for the IV, which Anthony promised would help Shadow feel better. They left him on the bed with soft words
and warm wishes, but Shadow immediately turned and deposited his face back in the corner.
A steady stream of people came by throughout the rest of the day. Everyone wanted to offer their love to the “poor, sad dog”, scratching his favorite spots and speaking in those high-pitched voices usually reserved for puppies.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby. We’ll find you a new home.”
“Look! I have some food in my hand! It’s right by your nose. Do you want some food?”
“Hey buddy, if you roll over, I’ll give you some tummy rubs. Would you like that?”
Shadow barely noticed the distant voices, and didn’t bother to acknowledge them. He didn’t want to love any more humans, and the depth of Brian’s betrayal actually made that task quite easy. The IV slowly dripped away Shadow’s dehydration, but it did nothing for the sadness. He fell apart a little more every time someone scratched his ears or patted his back, because the gestures only reminded him of the family he had lost. He was alone, floating in his own private ocean of despair. And all he wanted was to sink beneath the waves.
After the last reassuring voice went home for the night and there were no more humans around to hear, Shadow allowed himself a single, quiet sob.
Chapter 5
“Hey Anthony?” said a voice just outside of Shadow’s kennel.
He recognized the voice. It belonged to someone from the parade of people who had been visiting him. There had been visitors more often than not since Anthony fitted him with the IV two days earlier, all of them petting him softly or pushing food in front of his face. Not that it really mattered. None of them could replace his family.
“Is it alright if I take one of the spare keys home tonight?” asked the voice. “I want to come back after I feed my dogs and get some dinner. I’m going to try and give this guy a little extra love after we close tonight, when it isn’t so crowded. Maybe he’ll eat a little something.”