Jared awoke in surprise. He needed a moment to ascertain that he had arrived at his unwanted destination.
Pandemonium reigned at the Palmersville Animal Shelter when the truck pulled in back of the facility to unload its transport of various animals include one English sheepdog that, until recently, had been a baseball-playing, average American teenaged male.
Yips, barks, howls, and woofs combined in one monotonous din of canine protest, and leading the charge was the aforementioned Jared, who tried his best to communicate a terrible misunderstanding.
He had also, for a fleeting instant, forgotten his transformation into dog form.
"I'm not a dog." Arf. Arf. Woof! "This is some crazy mistake!" Ruff. Ruff. Arf!
It all came rushing back. Everything he tried to say got twisted about within the jaws of his new canine skull, reducing his attempts at communication with members of his former species to a grating series of yaps, yips, and barks.
"I'll give you money to shut that one up," the harried driver told an the attendants greeting him at the back door.
"No!" Jared rendered as a sheer howl of desperation that only persuaded the attendant to grant the driver his wish. In an instant, Jared felt the woman plunge a hypodermic into his flank. Mere seconds later, a steady calm spread warmly through his entire system as he floated like a cloud in a blue sky.
He was no longer all that concerned about finding himself canine. He was concerned, in fact, about very little as workers at the facility lifted him from the cage onto a waiting exam table for a quick health check. He barely registered as the attendant gave him his exam.
"Male, obviously," she said, running her gloved hand along his stomach. Her other hand, also gloved, worked into his mouth and looked at his teeth. "Coat's in good condition, so someone's been taking good care of him."
"No tags?"
The driver shrugged. "Beats me. Local park called us to pick him up."
That wasn't nearly the entire story, but Jared was too loopy on whatever had been in that injection to dispute it.
"Help me get him on the scales," she told the driver.
The got him, more or less, on a set of portable scales. She followed the jiggly bar in the face of the scale. "About 100 pounds, I think," she said.
"Hundred-sixty-two," Jared tried to correct her, but he was thinking of his last weigh-in for his physical exam for the baseball team last spring when he had been human.
Someone moved the scale and he sprawled over the exam table, in want of a nap.
She rubbed him behind his ears, and it felt a little bit like heaven. He let his tongue loll from his mouth and panted happily the longer she scratched there.
"Well, we can't keep him long," she said. "I hope he finds a home soon."
Jared knew that he should be concerned, but he just couldn't muster the intensity of emotion needed to do so at the moment.
"Well, let's get you in one of our pens with some new buddies," she said. The driver helped lower Jared from the exam table to the floor.
"No, not another cage," he wanted to say, but he got to his feet, albeit unsteadily, and let her lead him to a nearby large communal pen used for holding the newly-arrived male dogs.
There she introduced him to the other occupants...