The effects from the anesthesia kept Jared loopy as he began to reassert his consciousness. He spent almost five minutes trying to stand, always flopping onto his side.
"What the hell's wrong with me?" Jared asked. The nearby bark of a dog made his head ache. He tried again to call out, but he heard the same barking noise.
Finally, it dawned on him. "I'm barking!"
As he lay on a blanket spread on a concrete floor, everything returned. The collar, his family, running away from home, that crazed Wepwawet, and the memory of a car that had rounded a curve, seemingly out of nowhere, and had given him quite a thumping.
He still felt groggy. "Where am I?" Jared whimpered.
He sniffed, detecting mostly unpleasant chemical smells. As he tried to move, he also felt a dull ache around his groin. Probably some lingering pain from getting run down like a dog by that moron in the car.
He tried to gather more details, but his eyes felt heavy.
When he awoke again, he heard a familiar voice. He saw his father and a strange man standing over him.
"So, he's ready to go home, Doc?" Dad asked.
"Yes, but be sure to keep a watch on him for a couple of days. Make sure he's eating and drinking."
"Sure thing," Dad said.
"And you'll need this," he said, handing Dad a plastic-wrapped package. "Just fasten that around his neck. It will keep him from licking at the operation site."
"Operation?" Jared woofed in surprise. The accident must have been more serious than he realized.
Dad fastened a new collar around his neck and then attached it to his leash. "C'mon, Shaggy."
Jared felt wobbly, but he managed to follow his dad through a waiting area and out a door. He saw his dad's SUV in the parking lot. He looked back at the building and was surprised to see that he had been in the local animal shelter. He didn't remember any details, but he must have been taken there after getting hit by the car.
He had just enough stamina to make it back into the vehicle, with a lift from his dad. He had fallen asleep again before they made it out of the parking lot.
When he woke again it was to exit the vehicle. Dad led him past his usual doghouse and inside their home. He stopped at the utility closet and showed Jared a blanket spread on the floor near the washer and dryer. "Doc says you should recover inside the house for a few days."
Jared eased himself onto the warm blanket. He felt exhausted.
Before he was allowed to sleep, Dad got out the package the doctor had given him. "We can't forget this." In a couple of moments, he managed to fasten a plastic cone around Jared's neck. The cone blocked both access and vision to look at his body. He got a look at his reflection in the stainless steel exterior of the washer. "I look like a dork," he whimpered.
The pain centered around his belly had returned. He whimpered and tried to get comfortable. He slept some more, but was awakened by someone calling his name. Well, not his name...
"Hey, Shaggy," the impostor said. "Come on. Wake up, boy."
Jared opened his eyes and saw the impostor grinning at him.
"I know you might not believe me, but I am glad to see you alive."
The admission surprised him, but it also sparked a flash of memory. The memory of a red car — his own car — speeding toward him.
"You!" Jared exclaimed. "You were driving the car!"
The impostor shrugged. "Yes, but I didn't force you to run out into the road right in my path."
Jared groaned. The pain was getting worse, but whenever he felt the urge to lick or examine the aching area, the cone stopped him.
"Get this thing off me!"
"I can't do that," the impostor said. "Dad says you'll need that to recover from your surgery."
"Surgery! What surgery?"
The impostor looked genuinely surprised. "You don't remember?"
Suddenly, more details flooded back into his mind, including the reason he had run away from home in the first place.
"No!" Jared barked.
"Well, I'm afraid so," he said. "And I guess that settles any discussion on whether we will be trading back bodies in the future. It's only right that I should get my own body back intact."
Jared, horrified, tried to confirm the impostor's story, but the infernal cone prevented any such examination.
"I'll let you rest now," the impostor said and walked off.
Jared barked. "Come back! You can't leave me like this! Come back!"