"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" said a swarthy, curvaceous woman as Tony paced into the room with a leash clinking from his neck. She looked middle aged, but something about her knowing demeanor made her seem much older, as though she had been sizing up specimens like Tony for centuries. "Is this our new drug sniffer? Oh, isn't he adorable. You're going to make such a fine German shepherd, Tony," she continued, seemingly without even looking at his name tag. "I truly hope you enjoy your new life and body, don't you?"
Tony raised his eyebrow, looking into her eyes and shivering a bit by the way she almost seemed to have met him already somehow. He shrugged and answered, "Yeah, I guess so. Sounds better than my old life, at least." He couldn't deny that he was looking forward to chasing criminals and having better senses and perfect health, even if he would be experiencing it on all fours. The strange woman looked him up and down as though examining him all over again like the doctor had, but it felt more like she was examining a gift or a work of art than a patient. Somehow, he suddenly felt a lot less self-conscious about being naked except for his collar. She smiled warmly, reached out a hand, and started scratching his head with her nimble fingers. He grinned, closed his eyes, and leaned into her comforting touch.
"I'm the famous Madame Illusia," she introduced herself, "and I'm here to start you on the path of putting all those human worries behind you, and giving you what you deserve. But it's up to you to use it, to cherish it, to embrace it. Let the incantations begin!"
Madame Illusia started singing in a language that Tony had never heard and continued rubbing his head gently, even as she brought out a vial of strange oils and dribbled it gently onto some of his exposed skin. His vision dimmed, the sounds around him blended together, and he felt like he was going into a trance, but that didn't stop him from noticing the sensation of some sort of energy flowing out of him and some other energy flowing in. When he finally snapped out of it, he noticed that she had stepped back and was gracefully emerging from her own trance, her eyes opening and meeting his own with a smile like someone who had just awoken from the most refreshing nap of her life. A shiver ran down his spine from the inexplicable spiritual moment he had just experienced. And somehow, as a tingling settled deep in the core of his very being, he realized that from this moment forward, he would never be the same as he had been.
Even as Tony's eyes began to dart around and his mouth gaped open as if to gasp or say something, a pushing sensation emerged from underneath his fingernails and toenails, so he looked down to see his cuticles inching forward on his fingertips and pushing out new growth that quickly took on a rounded and darkening shape. Before he could even fully begin to ask himself how his nails could move and reshape themselves like that, the pressure intensified into a dull burning, and through his wincing eyelids he could see them narrowing out and curling together into gray, hook-like cones that were stretching out surprisingly far from his fingers and toes. As the feelings of change subsided, he held up a hand in amazement and stared at the thick natural weapons that now adorned his digits. Turning his hand to see it from every angle he could, he could not find any trace of his human nails anywhere, and fully appreciated for the first time that everything he'd heard about the process was true. He had signed his life away and was finally in front a modern-day sorceress, getting his first honest look at his new claws. His real, genuine dog claws.
He looked up again at Madame Illusia in what appeared to be some strange mix of anxiousness, gratitude and wonder, and she looked back at him in playful satisfaction while his leash-holder just checked her watched like she had been through this a hundred times and was leave for the day already. Then a loud "SNAP!" echoed out the room and Tony flinched like someone had just slapped him. The leash-holding employee looked back up from her watch but didn't say anything. Madame Illusia chuckled and covered her lips with her hand. Tony exhaled again and left his hands on his butt-cheeks while letting himself dip into a still-cautious but more relaxed stance. That snapping sound from behind him had nearly startled him out of his wits! Especially because he had felt something break loose at the end of his spine and bulk up in a way that still felt very odd and uncomfortable back there. It was as though he could sense some sort of hard swollen place right above his ass and just about where his tailbone should be.
Just then, the lump behind him sprung to life and started lurching around in whatever new direction it could seemingly find. Tony widened his eyes and looked behind him, patting his own posterior, yelping when his palm made contact with a squirming bump protruding from the end of his spine. He kept craning around in circles to try to see it, clicking his claws on the floor as he rotated. The Madame and staff member could see his stub of a tail twitching while he quested for a better view of it. Madame smiled at the sight of her new subject spinning in circles like a young puppy learning to chase its new tail.
"Don't worry. That will grow out enough for you to play with soon enough. Why don't you let Mrs. Bedlow show you to your room while your new dinner is prepared for you?"
Tony stopped in his tracks and looked to the Madame, and then to the woman holding his leash. "Uuhhh, yeah, yeah, of course. Thank you, um, Miss, um, Madame, Madame Illusia, ma'am, I'll do that. Just lead the way, um, Ms. Bedlow," he managed to stammer out, calming himself down and gathering his thoughts and letting his tail nub fall still again. Hearing his claws click on the floor as he was led out was one of the most surreal experiences he thought he'd ever had. Hopefully this would all become normal to him in time for him to actually begin working as a police dog. He wasn't sure he could make it for another ten years wondering if he'd made the right decision and getting distracted by the movement on his ass or the look and sound of his claws every time he went somewhere.