If not for the thick fur covering his face, as well as the rest of his canine form, Jared would have blushed redder than the tomatoes ripening on the vines growing in his mother's row of container gardens. He saw Kevin's look of surprise as his younger brother poked his head into the doghouse, no doubt to determine the source of some rather unusual sounds.
Kevin, rather than scolding him, began to laugh. "Did Jared give you the lesson about choosing a private place, too?"
Even through the burning of his embarrassment, Jared's memory jolted back to an incident only a few weeks prior to the discovery of the amulet. He had arrived home from school to find Kevin on the living room sofa, shorts pulled down, tugging at himself.
He imagined that Kevin had felt almost the same level of shame and embarrassment, but at the time he had sought to shrug off the incident. "It's not a big deal," he had said as Kevin tucked himself back into his shorts. "But you need to find a private place to do that."
In the here and now, Kevin backed out of the doghouse entrance. "I guess you did have a private place until I interrupted," the boy said. "Sorry Shaggy."
"Wait!" Jared tried to focus. "You're right! You remember!"
"WOOF!" Jared scrambled onto all four paws and smacked his front left paw in the half circle of dirt in front of his house. "Kevin, that was me! I gave you the advice. Please, please, make the connection."
"Something wrong, boy?" Kevin stopped his retreat.
Jared could hardly breathe from his excitement. He smacked his paw down again. "Woof!"
"Aww," Kevin sympathized. "What's wrong?"
They were communicating! Well, to a degree. How could he respond? Where could he begin? There was the obvious... in two days their parents meant to have him fixed.
He whimpered from frustration. He needed words. He needed...
Kevin stepped forward and scratched behind one of his brother's floppy ears. It felt so good.
But Jared forced himself to heave his bulky body away from Kevin's fingers. "Woof!" He patted the dirt with his paw again and left an impression of his paw print. Both brothers stared at the print. Jared got an idea. He needed a stick... something he could use to write in the dirt while he had Kevin's attention.
"Stand still, boy," Kevin said and grabbed his collar.
Jared struggled until he felt Kevin's other hand position fingers to scratch behind his other ear. He felt his squirming cease as his hindquarters wagged in pleasure from the scratching fingers.