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If dogs could talk #1
Gruff
(Please note that latter on in the story I will switch between character [Sparky or Gruff])



Windsor, Ontario Canine kennel and Hospital



I am trapped here behind these metal bars, awaiting the day I die. The other dogs around me are barking, scratching at the ground, peeing on their cages, demanding their release into freedom. I do nothing. I sit as I was taught. I wait as I was taught. I do not try to escape or bight, or pee as other dogs do. I merely wait. I do not however, wait upon another’s command. I wait because there is nothing else left for me. No one is coming for me. Not my family. Not the Farmer. Not my brother, Gruff. Gruff, I am so sorry. It is my entire fault for what happened to him, you see. My fault for letting him leave the confines of the farm we grew up on. My fault for what he became after leaving, but most of all for what I did to him. My brother, I am so sorry. I must sort the events straight in my head for this all to make any sense. I must go back to the days when happiness had started to end… The days on our farm.


Walker farm/ Essex, Ontario


I awoke to the sound of a rooster atop the barn we where sleeping in, calling out to the day that was to come. My eyes still tired, gazed upon the bright barn. Light seeped in through large cracks in it. The barn was a red color that had started to fade over the years. Little paint chips lay strewn across the ground. Hay lay in the corner of where my brother and I slept. A cow that stood in front of the hay we slept on stood staring stupidly at a shotgun that hung on the wall, wondering where it’s “room mate” was and why there was such a tool used when it went away. Stupid git I thought to myself. I looked upon my brother. He was still a puppy like my self, I think he was a year older then I was. We where both Golden Retrievers, both still waiting for our fur to grow in at its fullest seeing as the winter was coming in only a few months.

I took my small little paw and bopped him on the head with it. He jumped up in shock at this. He looked around wildly at this. “What?! What is it?! Is something wrong?” I shook my head and said, “Nah, just time to get up. I think the farmer is still asleep, let’s scare him awake!” Gruff Laughed at this notion and followed me out into the house. We crept up the stairs, and snuck up to the bedroom where the Farmer resided. I poked my head in to see. “Come on lets just go on in!” I looked a little closer. “No wait he’s-.” But I didn’t finish. Gruff jumped through the door, yipping like a madman, but there was no one in the bed. “Where did he go?” Gruff asked me, thoroughly befuddled by the tall lanky farmer’s disappearance. I shrugged and looked in my self. Then, just at that very instant the Farmer jumped out from behind the bed and shouter, “BOO!” I merely jumped, but poor Gruff ran right out of the bedroom, skidded on the newly polished wooden floor and crashed into the wall. The Farmer and I howled with laughter as he wobbled his way back in the room.

The farmer was a kindly man. He always fed us, always played with us. He was just a little daft, but that’s why we liked him. He was about as tall as the door frame which made him have to duck to avoid collision with it, but of course he didn’t always do so. There where marks on the top of the frame where his balding head had made contact. He was wearing his vertical blue and white striped pajamas. He picked us up and said, “Come off it, you can’t fool your daddy, even if it is early still. Now, let’s go get some breakfast. What do you two want? Eggs, bacon, toast?” We barked our approval at this as the farmer took us down stairs to the kitchen. Those where the simple days; the days when Gruff and I where as close as brothers could be, when he was still right in the head, when I could trust him. That all changed about a few years from then. That was the day that all the bright and gleeful coulors left the sky and where replaced with the dark coulors of an ominous future. I doubt if I will ever forget, even as I sit in this cage, waiting for my eternal sleep.