If his face hadn't been covered with fur, Jared might have blushed at the thought of what he would like to do with Cassie. Keeping company with her made him feel giddy and in high spirits, which prompted him to tug on his leash.
"I think that means he's ready for his walk," Cassie commented.
Jared liked how Cassie and her kid brother seemed to instinctively anticipate his every desire.
"Did you bring a baggie?" Alex asked. "You know, for after Shaggy does his business."
Cassie pulled a white paper bag from a pocket. "Yeah, mom made sure I left with one."
Jared's happy-go-lucky mood disappeared. "Oh no!" Jared realized with horror. Sometimes, he forgot exactly what being a dog entailed. Dogs didn't just get taken on walks for exercise or a chance to socialize. Walks inevitably concluded with attendance to some basic bodily functions that he would much rather not have to do in front of a girl he had such a crush on. "I can hold it," Jared vowed.
Unfortunately, the rich meal that he had been given instead of the tasteless but basically nutritious fare Mrs. Henderson had intended for him, got to work on his lower digestive track. They hadn't walked too far when he felt the first of the slight rumblings. He whimpered, mortified at the prospect of humiliating himself.
"What's wrong, Shaggy?" Cassie asked, lowering herself in front of him and distracting him with an eyeful of the curve of her breasts beneath her blouse. "Do you need to go?"
He whimpered again. He just wanted to head back to the house, but Cassie mistook his whimpering and walked him to a grassy area next to the curb. The soft, recently mowed grass felt soft beneath his paws.
"So, tell me again," Cassie said. "Cy Whalen just stopped by the house with this dog and handed him over to you?"
Alex nodded. "I'm not sure he was telling me the whole story, but I could tell Shaggy didn't like him."
She nodded. "It's not like Cy to play the good Samaritan for anyone, let alone a stray dog."
With Cassie and Alex not paying him close attention, Jared began to make tight circles in the grass. The pressure was becoming too much and he was forced to leave a souvenir in the grass.
"Good job, Shaggy," Cassie remarked. She had noticed, after all, that the sheepdog had done his business. She slipped on a plastic glove and, holding the paper bag in the other hand, quickly cleaned up after him. She gazed about and saw a nearby receptacle marked specifically for dog waste and dropped the bag and its contents neatly into the metal container.
Realizing that neither Cassie or her brother seemed overly perturbed, Jared realized he was dwelling too much on the incident. For Cassie and Alex, cleaning up after him was simply a customary chore associated with responsible dog ownership. He felt a little better as they started back home.
Then his mind kicked into red alert as they walked past a bench seated among plantings of ornamental shrubs. Straining on his leash, he sauntered over to the bench and took a few exploratory sniffs that told him of every dog that had previously visited. He also smelled the scents from a couple of squirrels and one feral cat. He turned from the bench and began to sniff an evergreen shrub. As he did, he felt another pressing need. He was do distracted by the chaos of intense scents he hardly recognized his own actions as he lifted a leg and began to water the small tree.
Once again, when he focused on his actions through the eyes of Jared, he felt another wave of intense mortification. But, when he looked back at Cassie and Alex, they didn't seem overly concerned about his blatant public urination.
"I'm a dog," he told himself. "I can't entertain all these silly human hangups about basic biological functions!"
But that scared him, too. He didn't want to start acting too much like a real dog. He felt his anxiety rising again as they headed back to his new home. Perhaps he should try to communicate with Cassie or Alex and let them know the truth. But that led to some other uncomfortable and humiliating truths that he didn't want to examine too closely. No, for the time being, Jared decided it was simply best to play the part of a dog, and the best dog he could be, too.
When they got home...