The fight was over in seconds. The sting of teeth in Ashmael's back was unbearable! He yelped and tucked his tail and tried to get away. Then another dog lunged at him, and he felt his skin getting ripped at his side. Ashmael wailed into the night and then bowed deeply with his tail tucked in as far as it would go, begging his betters for mercy as pathetically as he had begged the genie. They weren't having any of it. The biggest dog barked again and paced closer, and Ashmael turned and bounded away as fast as he could. By the time he stopped and calmed down enough to realize they weren't following him, he realized he was several blocks away and only a few seconds had passed. He'd never accomplished such a speed in his life! He would have marveled at his new running ability if he weren't so frustrated. Was this his life now? He'd be letting STRAY DOGS boss him around now? So much for taking charge of a millionaire's estate thanks to a genie!
He was very careful for the rest of the night to avoid encroaching on another dog's turf. If he got too close and got barked, he took the hint. The blood dripping from his wounds eventually stopped. He felt like he wanted to do something to those injuries, but he wasn't sure he would be able to do with no hands and no bandages. Maybe he was too nervous to think straight, or maybe some part of him didn't want to acknowledge the answer. He wanted to sleep, but he knew he would have to find a place that wasn't already claimed, at least not by any dog who smelled stronger than him. It was tough, because this was the first time he was realizing that living as a dog was actually going to take work. His new body wasn't just a curse, a nightmare or a genie's plaything: it was his only tool for finishing his shorter light with as little pain and hunger as possible.
The fading fear and the hours of wandering combined into an explosive pressure in Ashmael's bladder.
'Aw, man!' he thought. 'I've gotta find a place to go! Oh right, I can go anywhere... at least as far as humans are concerned.'
Careful to follow his nose far away from any more dominant canine's explicit claims of ownership, Ashmael found the side of a wall where lots of animals had urinated just to more-or-less say hi. 'I can't believe I'm going to do this...' he thought, looking around careful to make sure no one would see him. At first, he kind of wanted to stand in front of the wall and go the human way, but he could stand without putting his front paws against the wall to hold himself up. He couldn't get anything out in that position anyhow. He knew what he had to do: he'd even seen a pet retriever do it this very night on its nightly walk. He got back on all fours, lifted a hind leg high toward the wall, and felt the relief wash over him. At first, he dreaded having to through this with a more sensitive nose, but much to his embarrassment, he realized he LIKED the smell of his own urine. It told a story about him, even if that story so far was that he felt submissive. There was a unique blend of odors in his urine that no other dog seemed to have, and that made him feel special. In fact, he saved some urine just in case he wanted to leave some more of it somewhere else.
Finally, Ashmael found a crevasse in one corner of the town dump that seemed up for the taking. It smelled fascinating, but it didn't smell right to him, not yet anyway. He knew what he wanted to smell here if he was going to camp out here at least for tonight. He left a nice coat of urine next to him, circled around a few times, and lay down on his belly in a dry spot. Something still seemed to be missing, though. Watching a fellow stray relaxing in another part of dump, he noticed it doing something he'd seen dogs do countless times but never really thought about: it was bent around licking itself in places no human tongue could reach, even in some--shall we say--intimate areas.
'Whoa, we can do that?' Ashmael thought curiously. He curled himself around and soon found himself nose-to-sheath with his own maleness. It felt good to get a close-up whiff of his own personal scent. He also realized he was going to have to keep those parts clean, and why his massive tongue was so important. He tentatively let out his tongue, took a good look at the first animal part the genie had given him, and drug his tongue against his own male organ for the very first time in his life. He was hooked: if he had to make the most of living out a small but unknown number of years as a cur because of a genie's curse, then licking his own maleness was a newfound ability he was going to let himself indulge as often as he could get away with it. Heck, he could even get his tongue down there to tickle his own asshole!
At last, he remembered the scrapes and bite marks from his fight with the dumpster dogs. He decide his tongue would feel good next to those. He was right. The pain seemed to almost melt away as he cleaned his wounds like an animal for the first time. It was only when he was done grooming himself all over that he finally put his head on his paws and drifted off to sleep.