As the days turned into weeks, Mike started to miss his human friends and his old hangouts, and just the general freedom of being able to go wherever he wanted to go on his own time frame. It was also around this time that he started to stare at Jake during dinner--kibble was great, but it gets boring after a while, and Mike still remembered what it was like to eat pizza and steak and chicken chow mein. He never thought he'd find himself begging for scraps at his own table! But it was Jake's table now, and Jake was easily convinced to give him the occasional morsel, just like Mike used to be. And although his clubbing days were over, Mike knew his old buddies were having a great time with Jake, because he could smell them every Friday night on Jake's clothes. Mike's new friends were his pee-mail correspondences and his eager playmates from the dog park. He was such a social butterfly in this form!
As the weeks turned into months, Mike remembered his original estimate that he'd spend about a year as Jake's pet, and he knew that he wouldn't have any trouble lasting at least that long. In fact, sometimes he secretly hoped that Jake would let him stay this way a little longer, since Jake was the one in full control of the Chronivac. Mike knew it would be hard to go back to his old human life after spending so much time as a pet. He wasn't sure he even remembered how to do his job. He'd have to relearn all his old friends' birthdays and feign interest in their hobbies, and he get a chance to win any more races with Bruno or find out if Sadie liked him the way he liked her.
His first dose of reality happened that Christmas when Jake invited the whole family over. Mike couldn't help but feel slighted and certainly a bit jealous. There were so many human sounds and smells in the house, and most of them were his very own relatives, but they barely involved themselves with him at all. His siblings laughed at all their old inside jokes with Jake instead of with him, and his parents kept nagging and doting on Jake as if he were their son instead of Mike (which, in this reality, he was). He just had to remind himself that he was still Jake's best friend, and he was still an important part of the family in that way. At least his little nieces and nephews adored him. They played with him all evening and didn't think twice about feeding him secretly underneath the table!
As the months turned into years, Mike gradually stopped thinking of himself as a human who had been given the unique chance to spend some time as a dog. He simply was a dog, Jake's dog, and it he didn't really think about his old life any more often than most adults think about their middle school homework or their early childhood. It felt like decades since he'd switched on the Chronivac and switched off his humanity. When it did cross his mind, it was mostly to think about how he still liked being a dog at least as much as he'd loved being a dog owner. Still, occasionally there were things that got his attention or made him stop and reflect on his unique situation and how much it cost. More holidays came and went, and Mike could easily hear everything Jake and other people talked about over the phone, even if he was in the next room. Every month or two, someone would get married or pregnant, an old drinking buddy would get a lucrative promotion, or an aunt or uncle would announce their retirement. Mike's life wasn't really going anywhere; it had pretty much reached its destination. Dogs don't have all that much to look forward to--just little things like a new trick, a new toy, a new friend at the park or a different brand of dog food. He'd already fathered his own children--the several litters of puppies he'd sired with Jake's friends' bitches--but he would never really know what happened to them because they had been adopted hundreds of miles away within weeks of their birth.
It was about the third year that it really sank in that Mike probably wasn't going to change back. Mike made peace with that pretty fast, though. Being a dog was so normal that he would have been more shocked if he DID change back. Sure, the humans were getting married, but they were also getting divorced. They were getting promoted, but they were also getting laid off or fired. They looked forward to retiring, but he had all the free time he could ask for already. And yeah, he might have to settle for dog sex, but he couldn't really think of that as settling. Seeing his dog erection for the first time back when the Chronivac gave it to him was nothing compared to actually putting it to use! There just isn't a word in human language for what it feels like to lick yourself clean after your knot goes down while your partner's pheromones are still fresh in your muzzle. Who needs upward mobility when you've already arrived?
It wasn't until about the sixth year--when there was too much arthritis to ignore and that sharp doggy hearing had mostly faded away--that Mike finally had to really come to terms with what he had actually done to himself. Jake had already been about five years old when Mike transformed into him. He had lived the second half of his pet's life for it, and his pet's life had been short. One day, that adorable tail that had followed him around for six years would wag for the last time, and that slobbery pink tongue with a life of its own would dry up, and who was going to miss him and truly remember his life, except Jake? His "funeral" would most likely be a garden shovel dumping dirt over a dead dog. No obituary, no tombstone. Mike had been a bachelor at the prime of his life, with a big family and cool friends, with potentially decades ahead of him to explore new roles and new milestones, and he'd had the most advanced technology of all time dropped right into his lap. The FIRST THING he did was give it all away to eat dog food and make puppies and sniff butts in the park.
* I'm even worse than my third cousin who got married after the third date! *
Mike had made the most important decision of life without any real thought or planning or any consideration that it would be the last decision he'd ever make as a human being. His curious little sample of dog life WAS his life, and it was almost over. Sure, it had been a GOOD life: he had never experienced most of the bad things that happen to humans, and since Jake was such a cool owner he hadn't even experienced the really frightening things that can easily happen to dogs. But it still irked him that he had been so stupid and never actually thought to stopped to think about what he was doing and consider the alternatives. And the one he'd given it all away to would never even realize it had been a gift in the first place.