"I don't think so," the big Rottweiler growled as he proceeded to shamelessly mount his latest bitch right in front of the little girl and her mortified parents.
"Mommy, what's that dog doing to my dog?" Jared heard the little girl inquire.
The mother shrieked, the father grabbed the daughter by the hand, and the whole family — Jared's hopes for a ticket out of the Palmersville Animal Shelter — fled in a huff. He heard them beyond the door into the cage area, the parents registering their distaste with some of the shelter's hapless staff.
Jared felt the Big Guy's maleness swell and knot. The Rottweiler growled a contented chuckle. "You're not going anywhere, human bitch," the dog boasted. "I'll see to that."
Jared wiggled and squirmed, pushing back against the immovable Rottweiler.
"No," Jared barked. He felt like he might be on the verge of tears. "Don't you realize what you've done?"
The Rottweiler grunted and released. "That's a good bitch," he barked and waited for the chance to end their union.
With neither of them able to retreat to separate corners, as it were, Jared tried to breach the thick skull of the alpha male. "You realize we're in a shelter? If we don't get adopted, they're going to put us down."
"Might as well have my fun while I can then, bitch," the alpha said while waiting for its knot to deflate.
A few minutes later the Rottweiler slid from the defeated sheepdog, leaving the newcomer to keep to himself. Jared stared dully at the bars of their cage. He'd been so close to rescue...
He suddenly heard a yippy voice. He turned and saw the wary Boxer.
"Hey, you," the Boxer barked softly. "That stuff, you know, you were telling Big Guy..."
"What about it?" Jared asked.
"Is it true?"
Jared didn't answer right away. Instead, he asked the Boxer who had been in the shelter the longest.
"That would be me, bub," the spirited Boxer answered. "Big Guy and Dane came after me."
Jared felt some empathy for the Boxer, mostly because he knew he might be staring at the same fate. He also partly got the feeling perhaps they could work together.
"We've got to get out of here," he barked. "The families that visit — we've got to get one of them to take us home with them."
The Boxer seemed to consider it. "Big Guy won't like it."
Jared thought about saying what Big Guy could do with what he disliked. "Never mind him," he said. "Can we work together?"
The Boxer gave Jared a long, contemplative look before responding.