"Manny!?" Mike barked. "Open the door! Manny..."
He felt shock overwhelm him as he realized that his expectations of a quick solution had just vanished behind a closed door, and then he yelped when the man holding the noose reined him in tightly.
"He's a vocal son of a bitch," the man said as he wrestled captured Mike closer to the curb and the waiting truck.
Mike realized he was making things worse by barking and carrying on. By the time they reached the truck, he had changed tactics and was doing his best to try to reintroduce himself to the men.
He stretched out on his belly and groveled on the sidewalk.
He got choked for his efforts when the man impatiently lifted up on the noose to persuade him to get back on his feet. The other man opened the back of the truck and revealed some anchored cages, none of which were occupied at the moment.
"Look, you don't need to do this," Mike whimpered and kept trying to grovel.
"Lend a hand?" The man with the noose said.
His partner scooped his arms under Mike's belly as the guy with the noose kept tight control over Mike's head. In a dizzying instant, Mike found the noose slipped off his neck and himself locked in one of the cages in the back of the truck.
That hadn't been the plan. He was supposed to convince them of his trustworthiness and get them to let him go with a warning.
"Guys!" Mike barked. "Let me out!"
Instead, they closed and secured the door to the back of the truck.
Mike began to bark like mad.
"There he goes again," the man said as he fitted the long-handled noose into a cradle on the side of the truck.
"He'll calm down eventually. They all do."