A cacophony of other dogs joined into Ashmael's howling, startling him. The fellow stray who'd made her bed in a not-so-distant part of the junkyard seemed curious, perked her ears toward her obviously distressed neighbor, and howled along with him until he stopped. She cautiously paced closer--not too close, and not too fast--with the her ears and tail held in the most empathetic canine expressions she could muster. She didn't think this new dog smelled very aggressive, but she did think he sounded disturbingly lonely.
It wasn't normal for her to balance on such a delicate tightrope between trying to comfort a strange dog and respecting the territory of one who smelled as submissive as this one, but something about her new neighbor wasn't normal. She couldn't wrap her muzzle around what exactly was so different about him, but something told her they could both have a new friend if she played her cards right. In fact, she almost found herself coming up to him with the puppy-dog look she might give to a promising human.
Ashmael noticed her overtures of potential friendship and was grateful that at least this garbage patch canine seemed to care about his plight. He tried to make a friendly approach of his own: dog body language was still rather new to him, but some of it seemed to come automatically, and he managed to get his point across. He was still a bit nervous after his first experience of meeting other dogs as a dog, but this new dog didn't seem to be chasing him away from somewhere like the ones from last night. Instead, she gave a friendly tail wag and stepped around him to put her nose under his tail. Ashmael's eyes widened. He realized what she was doing, and worse, what she was probably expecting.
'Oh, no, I am NOT doing that!' he thought stubbornly, determined to retain some shred of whatever dignity he had left in this new form.
The other dog stopped sniffing cocked her head to the side at the aloofness of her odd acquaintance. Ashmael tried to ignore the complex assortment of scents wafting from her behind, but his curiosity and unwillingness to offend her soon got the better of him. He took a few whiffs of toward her anus from well over a foot away. Unfortunately, sniffing from a distance was like trying to listen to a new friend introduce herself from across a crowded room: his mind was asking, "Who did you say you were again?" and his muzzle drew him closer to the scents that would identify her. Soon he had his wet nose right at her hole and had his own tail raised high to give her easier access. He felt like he actually new this dog now.
She was a cur just like he was, but she had a lot more white on her legs and belly, whereas he was mostly just brown with a black snout. She was also a female: she didn't have the big brown sheath he was forced to carry underneath him as a mockery of what had once been his pride and joy as a man. More importantly, she had smelled female, even from across this part of the dump, and Ashmael was finally getting used to his nose knowing things before the rest of him did. She was a bit younger than he was, but significantly more experienced with her body and instincts. Soon she gave a tail-wagging play-bow, and Ashmael followed suit. They chased each other around the dump, and Ashmael realized he was actually enjoying himself.