Big Luke opened his eyes and sniffed the air. His whiskers and nose twitched as he took in the morning scents. It rained last night--good thing he had slept in his doghouse. The humans were inside getting ready to leave for today: he could smell their bacon and eggs and hear their human chatter. He pulled himself up on all fours and stepped out onto the wet lawn. He sniffed around some more and found some of his markings from yesterday. It was comforting to find that they were still there and still potent. He found an unmarked place on a tree, angled himself up next to it, lifted his leg...
...and came to his senses.
"What am I doing?" he thought, perking his ears up in surprise. Then he yelped in even more suprise at feeling his ears perk up. That's when it all came back to him. "Oh right, I'm a guard dog now." He went back to peeing on his tree, finished up, put his leg back down, and reflected on just how naturally a dog's morning routine had come to him. "I must really be getting into this," he thought. Then he remembered the feelings in his ears. "Have I changed more?"
Lucas stood up off the ground and walked over to a nearby window to look at his reflection. He had indeed changed more. He could see his dark brown floppy ears, his tan wrinkled forehad, and his short mastiff-like muzzle with his new leathery nostrils at the end.
"I've got a dog's nose. No wonder I was sniffing the yard!" he thought. "At least I've still got my feet and hands for now." He opened his mouth and watched his long flat tongue tumble out. "I guess I'll eventually go all the way."
The male human scent got closer until it strengthened with the sound of an opening door, and Lucas knew his dad had just come outside. He ran around the yard toward the front door, wagging his tail eagerly. Sure enough, there was his dad all dressed up on the way to work. Lucas just couldn't help it: he had to get a better whiff of his dad's scent before he left. He put his nose to the back of the man's pants and got an explosion of information from back there: his dad had been somewhat ill recently, but he had also enjoyed some really nice meals including fried chicken, spicy green beans, and chocolate ice cream. Dad turned and started talking to him, and the deep male voice like thunder, but Lucas was so focused on the scents that he only picked out a few words. He did manage to notice that his dad didn't quite look right, and neither did the yard or anything else for that matter; everything was a tad blurry and either too yellow or too blue.
"Oh man, I've got dog vision," he thought, watching his dad walk away to the car. He waited for his mom to come out, and sure enough, she left on her way to work shortly after. She brought him out some of the bacon that made his stomach rumble. He scarfed it down in a hurry. He had never smelled or tasted bacon so vividly in his life! Lucas was fully accustomed to the tail at this point: he would have felt disoriented without that metronome-like motion broadcasting his ecstacy in measured pulses. He put that new tongue of his to good use licking up the scattered crumbs off the sidewalk. Then it was gone! His tail slowed down and he looked back up at his mom to see if she had anymore to give him. "Oh no you don't," she said in her booming human voice. "I'll never hear the end of it if I fatten you up on bacon!" Then she was gone and Lucas was left to guard the place again.
Lucas did about what he had done the day before, but this time he could smell the people and animals coming from miles away. He was ready to warn them away before they even came into view. He started to think about what he would do if any of them dared to set foot on his side of the fence. He'd bite 'em 'til they bled, and they wouldn't mess with his family's wonderful home ever again! Of course, as long as people stayed outside, he could enjoy their unique sounds and scents from over there. It was fun, but he did get bored sometimes in comparison to being able to play video games, fix his own snacks, and wander the town by himself. If he ever got too bored, he milled around and sniffed the yard again, checked on his old markings and left new ones. At one point he found a squirrel in the yard. It was fun to chase after it and watch it scurrying up the tree above him! He barked at it until he had some more potential intruders to bark at.
It was a hot day, and the tongue came in handy a lot. As a human, Lucas would have wandered downtown desperately searching for air-conditioned shops to take refuge in. As a dog, Big Luke just had to lie down in the shade, open his mouth, and breathe. Panting was definitely an advantage in being a dog, as long as there was plenty of water, which his parents made sure there was. "I went to school for all those years so I could start high school, get a job, and maybe even go to college," thought the dog-like boy-like creature to himself. "It turns out all I need to know is how to pee on stuff, beg for scraps, and bark at strangers." He let out a long annoying howl just to hear the other dogs do the same thing. "Oh yeah, and that!"
After his parents came back home, they had a wonderful evening enjoying their somewhat human-shaped dog. Tug of war was the best, as far as Luke was concerned! He could use his hands (which his parents didn't seem to find odd), but he quickly learned to have much more fun using his mouth. A dog's jaws are strong! Dinner was a big pile of dog food which turned out to be an orchestra to his canine sense of smell. Bedtime came again, and Lucas smelled another rainstorm coming and went back to the shelter of his comfy doghouse. Part of him missed his teenage human life, but he was now fully resigned to his fate and was looking forward to doing even more dog stuff tomorrow.