Kevin had delivered a bowl of dog food, but that had been hours ago.
Jared waited, but still Shaggy didn't return. The sun had set and night bugs had begun their humming by the time the light at the back door flickered to life.
The door opened and someone stepped onto the lanai. The breeze blew the familiar scent to Jared's receptive nostrils ahead of Shaggy's arrival. Jared looked up at his former self and unleashed his hours of anxiety and frustration.
"Where have you been?" Jared barked. "We can't go look for the collar now. We'll have to wait until morning."
Even as he barked, Jared began to sniff out something that Shaggy had hidden in the pocket of his jeans. For the moment, he ignored it.
"I'm sorry," Shaggy offered. "I had no choice."
"What do you mean you had no choice?" Jared barked. "Don't you realize how important it is that we find that collar?"
"I do realize it, but master/dad ordered me to stay in my room and study," he said. "Everyone is sleeping now, so I came out to tell you."
"Never mind," Jared growled in frustration. "But we will have to go to the landfill first thing in the morning to..."
"I can't do that," Shaggy interrupted.
"What do you mean?" Jared barked in shock.
"I can't skip school to help you search," the former dog explained. "Dad/master has ordered me to focus on school and baseball."
"He's not your master!" Jared yelped in exasperation.
Shaggy reached a hand into his pocket. "I brought something for you."
Jared drooled, recognizing what it was before Shaggy unfurled his hand and revealed the bacon treat.
He scarfed up the offered treat.
With the attempt to soften the blow accepted and Jared crunching on the treat, Shaggy said, "I think we are going to have to accept that the collar's lost," he said.
Jared almost choked. When he recovered, he barked, "No! Are you crazy? I can't stay a dog!"
Shaggy reached down and scratched behind Jared's ears, knowing exactly where to scratch to achieve maximum results. One of Jared's hind legs began to kick from the intense sensations from the expert scratching. "Don't worry," Shaggy said. "I will always take care of you. I will feed you, and walk you, and play with you."
Jared sputtered and spit the bacon treat onto the ground. "I don't want to be your dog!"
"It's really not so bad," Shaggy said. "You'll get used to it."
Jared whimpered. "But I don't want to get used to it!"
Shaggy felt sorry for the sheepdog, but he didn't know what else he could do. So, he patted the dog's head. "Everything will be OK, boy," he said.
Jared felt so downcast that he didn't even growl when Shaggy called him "boy." He watched as Shaggy returned to the house, in his former body, and walked through the door, closing it behind him.
The light flicked off, leaving the yard, and Jared, in darkness.
He whimpered some more before he smelled the crumbs of the bacon treat in the dirt and licked them up with his tongue to try to take his mind off the possibility of a future on all fours.