“its suppertime, my sweethearts” greets Victoria, one of Sarah’s co-workers as she opens the kennel door to the Newfoundland kennel. Both Riley and Joanne run happily to her with wagging tails. As they know its dinnertime. First they try to jump on her and lick her face, but as the bowls are put down their attention is focused on them instead. Victoria scratches their back and watches the two dogs eat. “It’s that good, huh?” She smiles. “I’ve heard that one of you felt a bit depressed…” She looks up and sees Nancy, lying alone in one of the corners. “Well, it has to be you” Victoria walks out of the kennel again and brings back two new bowls from the food cart which she puts down in front of Nancy. One of them contains water and the other contains a mixture of dog food, a stew with meat and vegetables and different tasteless chemicals to help Nancy adapt and the amount of dog food is small, as they want her to slowly get used eating it. Adding a little more every meal, until the meal only contains dog food and kibbles. Victoria knees in front of Nancy for a few seconds and watches the dog before she gets up and walks out of the kennel.
Nancy doesn’t look up, or even move during this time. “You not hungry?” Joanne asks, lifting her head briefly from her bowl. Nancy doesn’t answer. Riley licks his mouth and lifts up his head from the bowl and sees Nancy’s bowls. “I’ll eat her food!” He rushes towards Nancy. “Don’t you dare!” Joanne growls softly. Riley freezes, knowing that Joanne is the alpha “She’s my sister, after all”
Nancy stomach growls as she looks at the food in front of her. It feels like she hasn’t eaten for days. ‘Maybe I should just try it’ Nancy thinks to herself. She get up on her four feet’s and seats herself in front of the two bowls. Victoria watches Nancy and eagerly writes down notes of what she is doing. Nancy looks down into the bowl and breath in the smell from the food. For a couple of seconds she seems confused, but then she begin to use her right paw and tries to use it to get some get some food into her mouth. But the only thing she accomplish is spilling some of the food on the floor. Riley and Joanne watch their pack mate with fascination at the strange behaviour she’s exercising “Nancy… What are you doing? It would really work a lot better if you used your mouth to eat” Riley advices. Nancy continues her fruitless attempts to use her paws as hands. “Why aren’t they working?” Nancy whines to herself. She puts her paw back on the floor. “Because you’re doing it all wrong, Nancy. Use your mouth instead, that why it’s there for” Joanne barks. Nancy try to ignore the dog that used to be her best friend, unwilling to accept the fact that she have shared her friends fate. She lowers her muzzle to drink from bowl with water, but as she don’t want to drink like a dog. She puts almost half of her muzzle in the water, trying to sip some water into her mouth. After about 20 seconds she lifts her muzzle again and breaths in deeply to get some air. As she do this she also breaths small amounts of water, making her sneeze and shake her muzzle slightly. Sitting there with a wet and dripping muzzle, Nancy looks like a very unhappy dog to any observer.
Victoria puts down her pencil and almost feels sorry for Nancy. For a moment she thinks herself into Nancy’s situation, which makes Victoria shiver for a second. “Are you done for the night?” The voice that comes from behind her makes Victoria jump with fright. She quickly turns around and faces Sarah. Victoria lets out a sigh of relief. “Sarah! You scared my pants off…” Sarah smiles “Well, you have to be able to sneak in this job, It helps a lot when you want to discover unwanted non canine behaviour among these dogs… Anyway are you done, so we can close for the night?” Victoria nods and walks to the food cart and push it back to the kennel kitchen.