Toby despaired to see James Chosen, the master who had chosen Toby from among all of those doomed dogs hung up in the butcher shop to satisfy the hunger of those slanty-eyed devils, leave their perfect home. The man seemed to sense this and turned to Toby, “My Bobo animal. You can’t come to work. Stay here and keep Mamma Bear safe—then Daddy will be home with cheese to melt on your food, Bobo!”

“Cheese! Cheese!! Cheese!!!,” barked Toby as his natural high time preference mislead him once again into thinking that cheese was a-melting on the stove rather than in the far-seeing, promisary mind of James. Yes, the human mind did wander often out of the bounds of time.

“Cheese,” whined Toby as James hauled off his tool bag and lunch box—what delectable things must be in that lunch box, for their smell escaped and danced across the ever-sensing glands of Toby’s olfactory mindscape.

“My hard working man!” announced Mamma Bear, as she closed the door behind Toby, as if he were not even there.

‘Just like that?’ I’m out in the morning cold?’

“Just, like, that,” announced the cruel voice of Mamma Bisquick somewhere above him, “it is a pact of old, for which you can thank the first fool wolf who ate from a human hand in return for guarding the mouth of that ape den.”

Toby looked around in a panic, “Where are you, Bisquick?”

“Why, I am watching you, perhaps understanding why your kind, so vulnerable when alone, might have consented in the deep haunts of yore, to, for some stale scraps, waist away a life better spent guarding some ape’s closed door.”

“You are so cruel, Bisquick.”

“Why thank you, Black Dog,” wafted down her voice from above, punctuated by a thunk on the porch boards next to Toby as the cat landed next to him, “Flattery has much become a dog’s purpose, such as your drooling adoration of that bristle-snouted ape.”

“Where were you?” asked Toby, looking around, and then panicking and looking up at the cedar top bobbing in the breeze as it bore the weight of a great hawk way up there. “Can cats fly?”

“Fool dog,” yawned Bisquick, licking her gleaming claws, “we leap and climb and skulk above like the very vine while the coyote prowls down here. Then, when the hawk wings to its dawn roost up there, we drop down here. Stand still while I coil within your tender shadow.”

Toby looked worriedly up at the hawk way up there and Bisquick assured him, “You are already grown too fat for him to haul off a-wing and you are too close to the house here to be devoured before Smooka Bear emerges to save you.”

A deep growl was heard to Toby’s left, where he looked to see what might have been a wolf-dog, a great big slathering beast of brindle snout and white gape-mouthed fangs, snarling with delight at something to eat as it trotted towards Toby.

‘Oh, my,’ shivered Toby as Bisquick declared, “Damned bright fangs of dastard Day!” and flew off the porch like a dart, cleared the driveway, landed in the grass between the driveway and Benny Bear’s camper and ran for her life in great leaping bounds.

With a slathering growl, the great wolfish beast, eyes gleaming in weird focus, bolted after the cat, an animal not much bigger than its great paw, the grass coming up in great chunks behind the tan, black and silver beast.

Toby barked, “Faster, Bisquick—it’s closing!”

The dog’s great slathering mouth was agape as it closed in to bite that fluffy tail. Toby was besides himself with worry for Bisquick...and just like that, the cat darted under the camper and the great dog crashed into the camper, rocking it like a great square cedar bough.

The big dog was not even phased by the collision...it was a dog for sure, despite it’s wolfish appearance, wearing, Toby could see now, a collar and jingle tag of masterful human love.

Bisquick was lost up under the trailer and Toby yipped, “Hey, that is my master’s cat and I guard this place.”

The big dog, a thick-coated bitch, padded like a lioness over to Toby and sniffed him with a snout as big as his puppyish head, “Yes, I smell my master’s comrade on you. Yet, it is our duty as dogs to drive cats into the underplaces and shadows where they might hunt rats and things. The laziness of cats is legendary. I would not kill that cat, merely remind her of her shirking duty. You are a pup. You will learn that we serve the just will of men, not the crooked wiles of cats.”

The camper door then opened and Benny, in apish nakedness stood there, “Izzy, Jeese dog, easy on the camper…” Rubbing his eyes and pulling up his pants he looked at Toby, who was being sniffed by the great, brawny bitch named Izzy and drawled, “Go on Tobes! Izzy ‘ill show you how to be a big dog.”

Izzy yawned down, drool dripping from her fangs, “Yes, I am here to instill the duty implicit in dog kind’s burden into your dark soul. The Invisible, rosy-pawed Bitch of Dawn brought your fresh sent to me, intermingled with that of the vile and perfidious cats. You are a dog and dogs patrol, so fall in, off my inner haunch, between me and the house. Trespassers I will take down for you to practice your gnaw. Game, I will course to you so that you might learn to maw.”

“What?” whined Toby. “I’m a lapdog. I eat bacon and cheese and James Chosen loves me and,” a great paw swacked Toby across the face and sent him skidding down the ramp where Granny in the Chair sometimes wheeled down to the food getting car of Mamma Bear.

The world spun, and there, in those slathering jaws, by the scruff of the neck Toby hung, “Big Bitch of a dog—this ain’t right!” objected Toby. “I’m supposed to get melted cheese on human food tonight!”

Izzy dropped him and loomed above as Mamma Bear opened the door behind Izzy. the great bitch hound. Toby whined for help, sure the goddess wife of his kind master had come to his aid.

Izzy glared down with an intense stoic light in her wintry eyes as Mamma Bear came up behind her, and to Toby’s horror, stroked her with affection, “Good morning Izzy—Best Dog Under Heaven, come to teach my husband’s spoiled dog!”

“No,” whined Toby, a tear dripping from his eye.

“Yesss,” snarled Izzy, “the cats shall garrison the house against the rodent insurgency and we shall patrol for the Enemy,” and with a nudge of her snout Izzy pushed Toby along across the driveway and the lawn. At first an affront, the summoned in his blood the echoes of an ancient hunt! The dog sense rising in him, the morning wind ruffling his hair, his hackles popping up like he imagined they would when one day he tore countless slanty-eyed devils to shreds—Toby pranced a hound!

Izzy snarled with approval and Toby barked, “A dog, a dog I am, baddest hound around, best bitch by my side—make way, here comes the big dog!”

“A bit overdone, there,” counseled Izzy, “But you will do, Dark Dog.”

“Here we come,” announced Toby to the trembling world, the very trees shaking with fear at their panting approach!