Some time later, you're out in the yard, digging in the grass with your bare hands. Your parents would be furious if they were home! Your dad is super particular about his lawn. You're still loving the dog life, though, and you figure you can get everything back to normal in two weeks if you have to. You've been taking in the sights and sounds and scents of the outdoors ever since you discovered the doggy door, which you don't remember installing. Oddly, it's even big enough for you to fit through. The scents started to get a bit stronger during your time out here, but nothing out of the ordinary for who's learning to focus on their surroundings and live in the moment.
Your used to the feel of your tailbone twitching at this point. You don't even have to consciously make it move, it just seems to start up all on its own when something excites you. (Just like a dog! you think.) It starts to feel a lot stronger as you go through your day, but that doesn't catch your attention very much; you just think your getting used to it. You idly notice it looks a little longer and thicker at one point when you're curled around back there biting at an itch, but you don't give much thought to that either: it's probably just the light. It even starts to feel a bit more flexible than it did at first, much more flexible than you'd expect a single bone would, but you don't stop to dwell on that, anymore than you would stop to wonder about a little extra flexibility in your shoulder. After all, you've convinced yourself it's normal, and wiggling your tailbone is just something you do without thinking now, like scratching your itch with a toenail. You're too busy exploring all the active and fun things you can do while pretending to be a dog, like playing with chew toys and digging up the yard.
The sprinklers come back on, and you jump around in the spray a bit more, washing the mud off but getting yourself a bit grimy in the wet grass. It's a good thing your dad's a bit paranoid, and those fences go all the way up. Otherwise it could be really embarrassing to be out here naked. You'd never hear the end of it from the neighborhood bullies! Of course, you don't know how you're ever going to get used to wearing clothes again after the last 24 hours or so. The sprinklers go back off and you make your way back toward the doggy door. If you had fur like a dog does, you could play out here for hours and not have to worry about getting sunburned. Oh well, part of the curse of still being 100% physically human during your spontaneous little experiment with dog life, or so you think.
Before you go back in, you shake yourself dry, kick up a leg, and let out what you've been holding in. Now that that's done, it's time to go back in and replenish yourself from the dog bowl, because you're getting pretty dehydrated. You barely stop to breathe as you eagerly lap up the water with the same floppy tongue you were using out there to pant with. The cool refreshment of the water and the fresh memories of fun in the yard make you wiggle your tailbone again, only this time it feels like a great big motion more like waving around an arm. You're still face first in the dog bowl totally focused on your water until you feel a great big part of yourself pound against the kitchen wall, sending a hard vibration up your back. The startlement makes you jump up from your water bowl and twitch your tailbone in a different direction. You instantly look back to where you heard the impact; you don't see anything, but you do feel the same weird part of yourself poking around near your belly region. You spread your front legs (I mean your arms) and look down. You gasp.
There, tucked firmly in between your legs in shock, is your tail. There's just no denying it anymore! The little one-inch nub you learned to wiggle around this morning is certainly not a one-inch nub now. It's a long, thick, pointy mass of your own flesh and bone with visible joints down its length. And it really is the same part of your body you discovered earlier: a cautious attempt to wiggle your little nub makes the whole thick stick curl left and right a bit. Something that barely reached the top your butt cheeks this morning is rubbing against your belly!
A thousand thoughts are racing through your mind about this new development. There's no way your friends and family are hiding one of these in the back of their pants! It's not obvious that you're ever going to fit in a pair of pants again as long as you have one. Is this your punishment for peeing on the bushes? Is this something that just happens when someone acts like a dog enthusiastically enough? Did your parents do this to you somehow with the collar? Your too stunned to follow any of these trains of thought right now, though. They all get pushed to the back of your mind while you stay solidly focused on the situation at hand. You have to try to get a firmer understanding on what exactly happened and give yourself a chance to process what your new tail feels like and how exactly it works.
Sitting yourself down in a comfortable position, you spread your legs apart and put your hand gently around the middle of your tail. You can basically feel your hand around the end of your spine! Well, not quite. To really get to the end, you have put your other hand way over at the pointy tip where it stops. This thing's got to be over a foot and a half long! A quick pinch at the tip of your tail sends a pain single all the way up your lengthened spinal cord into your brain, making you wince. It tries to move, but your hands hold it steady. Bringing one hand back to where your nub was, right above your butt, you realize that this doesn't the end of your spine anymore, but more like the middle. This is crazy! This isn't the kind of thing humans are supposed to experience! Tails like this belong on dogs!
You're the one who wanted to experience what a dog does, though, so you might as well stay calm and figure it out. You gulp, let go of your new appendage with both hands, take a deep breath and stand back up on all fours. Now that the shock has worn off, your tail relaxes. Watching it hang down limply between your legs, you choose to make it move again. At your personal whim, it raises straight up like a mast over your back. Every joint gets pulled into position by the new tail muscles. After a second your two, you stick it straight out behind you. Look how far it reaches back there! Remembering it felt to wag it, you make it start to swing back and forth in an arc motion. It feels frighteningly normal, because you have been adjusting to its new length the whole time it's been getting longer. You even smack it against the wall again, just to confirm for yourself what that felt like.
Yep, your tail is a dog's tail alright! All that's missing is the fur. And you aren't so sure you won't be getting that.