Not A Dog

Wolfhound meets some wild dogs at the landfill and starts having some very strange questions.

Once there were two dogs that were best friends. One was an Irish Wolfhound, and the other was a Teacup Chihuahua. They did everything together. They ate together, they chased things together, they pooped together, and they dug holes and buried things together.

These guys were inseparable. They always had something to talk about. Wolfhound always made sure no one messed with Chihuahua, and Chihuahua made sure Wolfhound didn’t get too aggressive. It was a great relationship.

One day Wolfhound returned from a morning run, and he had met some wild dogs at the edge of the landfill.

“Did anything go down?” asked Chihuahua.

“No, we just talked.” said Wolfhound. “They were friendly.”

“What did you talk about?” asked Chihuahua.

“Oh, just stuff about the landfill and stuff,” said Wolfhound.

“Oh.” Said Chihuahua, but he saw something in Wolfhounds eyes. Something had happened that Wolfhound didn’t want to talk about.

The next few days were pretty much the same as any other day, until they went to the river to have a drink of water. They both heard something walking around on the other side of the river.

“I’ll check it out,” said Wolfhound as he practically jumped over the water and disappeared into the forest.

Chihuahua waited a long time for Wolfhound to return, and when it started getting dark, Chihuahua started to worry. But he was tired and he fell asleep.

When he woke up, Wolfhound was there, sleeping next to him.

“Wolfhound, wake up!” barked Chihuahua as he shook Wolfhound.

Wolfhound woke up, barely.

“What is it?” said Wolfhound groggily.

“What happened last night?” said Chihuahua. “Where were you?”

“Oh, I was just hanging out,” said Wolfhound closing his eyes to go back to sleep.

“Were you with those wild dogs again?” asked Chihuahua. But Wolfhound had fallen asleep.

The next few days, Wolfhound would wake up, go across the river, and stay there all day, sometimes all night. Chihuahua didn’t see much of Wolfhound anymore. He missed his friend.

One day, Chihuahua was hanging out with squirrel and his family, when Wolfhound appeared.

“Hey, Chihuahua?” asked Wolfhound. “Can I talk to you?”

Chihuahua excused himself from Squirrel’s table and walked over to Wolfhound.

“Is everything alright?” asked Chihuahua.

“Oh, yeah,” said Wolfhound. “everything’s fine. I just wanted to hang out.”

“Cool!” said Chihuahua, happy to be hanging out with Wolfhound again. “You want to go chase something?”

“No,” said Wolfhound. “Not really.”

“Well, do you want to go dig up some of those bones we buried?” asked Chihuahua.

“No!” said Wolfhound. “I don’t.”

Chihuahua was confused.

“Well,” said Chihuahua, “do you want to smell my bottom?”

“Come on!” stomped Wolfhound. “Why would I want to do that?”

Chihuahua stopped walking.

“Because it’s what we do,” said Chihuahua. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Wolfhound. “I just don’t want to do that stuff anymore?”

“What stuff?” asked Chihuahua.

“Dog stuff!” huffed Wolfhound.

Chihuahua’s ears perked up.

“But,” Chihuahua said cautiously, “you’re a dog.”

Wolfhound turned to him.

“Well,” said Wolfhound, “Maybe I’m not.”

Chihuahua laughed.

“Oh, man, that’s funny,” snorted Chihuahua, but Wolfhound was not joking.

“Maybe you’re not a dog either,” Wolfhound said directly.

Chihuahua was still snickering a bit. Then he stiffened up.

“What are you talking about?” asked Chihuahua. “I am totally a dog. Look at my tail, I wag it.”

“Well, sure,” said Wolfhound. “But Cow has a tail, and she wags it.”

Chihuahua was silent. He was thinking really hard. He had seen Cow’s tail, but he’d never noticed if she wagged it.

“I’ll be right back,” said Chihuahua, and he ran off toward the pasture.

In the pasture was Cow, and you know, the first thing Chihuahua noticed was that Cow was wagging her tail. It was the strangest feeling, realizing he had never noticed it.

“Hello Chihuahua,” bellowed Cow. “How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” said Cihuahua. “I just have a question for you.”

“Sure,” said Cow. “Anything.”

“Have you always wagged your tail?” Chihuahua asked her.

She looked back at her tail. It was wagging. Really just swishing and whipping, but it looked like wagging.

“Well,” said Cow, “I suppose I haven’t ever noticed, but yes. I guess I have always wagged my tail.”

Chihuahua looked down at the ground.

“Thanks Cow,” he said as he walked away.

“You’re welcome!” she mooed.

Chihuahua found Wolfhound just where they had been before.

“Well?” asked Wolfhound.

“Yeah,” said Chihuahua. “She wags her tail. But she’s not a dog, she’s a cow.”

“I never said she was a dog,” said Wolfhound proudly.

“Well, that doesn’t prove anything!” said Chihuahua. “Look, I’ve got a really good nose. I can smell things and...”

“Mole has a good sense of smell.” said Wolfhound. “So does Pig.”

Chihuahua looked at him and tilted his head.

“I’ll be right back,” said Chihuahua as he headed for the pigpen.

When he reached the pigpen, wow, did it stink. He kept having to blow air out of his nose to get the smell out.

He found Pig sitting in a pile of food or garbage or something.

“Hello, Chihuahua,” snorted Pig. “What brings you here?”

Chihuahua was having a hard time concentrating because of the smell.

“Pig,” said Chihuahua, “do you smell good?”

“Well,” said Pig with a smile, “it depends if I’ve rubbed myself in flowers or in Skunk’s pee.”

Chihuahua laughed a little.

“No, no,” said Chihuahua, “I mean, does your nose work really well?”

“Well, actually,” said Pig, “I smelled you coming.”

“How could you smell me? It smells so bad around here?” asked Chihuahua.

“Well,” said Pig, “You smell different than all the smells I live with every day.”

Chihuahua nodded his head.

“Wow,” said Chihuahua. “Thanks, Pig.”

“Sure,” said Pig. “Would you like to stay for lunch?”

Pig stood up and pointed to the pile of food or garbage or whatever he had been sitting on.

“Uh,” said Chihuahua, “No thanks.”

And he went back to see Wolfhound.

“Wow, Chihuahua,” said Wolfhound, “You smell like a pig.”

“Well,” said Chihuahua, “You were right. But Pig is a pig, not a dog.”

“Chihuahua,” said Wolfhound, “I never said Pig was a dog.”

“But you’re saying I might not be a dog,” said Chihuahua.

“That’s right,” said Wolfhound, “and you haven’t proven to me that you are. In fact, I’ve presented evidence that says that you might not be a dog.”

Chihuahua was dismayed.

“You might be a cow,” said Wolfhound, “or a pig, or a mole, or a parrot. You know parrots can bark.”

Suddenly, there was some movement in the forest.

“I’ll see you later,” said Wolfhound, and he left Chihuahua to his thoughts.

Chihuahua thought long and hard about this. He spent the next few days asking all his animal friends if they could do something that dogs could do.

He had Horse rolling over and playing dead, Squirrel fetching a stick and Lizard on her hind legs begging for food. He rubbed Duck’s belly until his leg twitched, threw a Frisbee for Frog to catch (which he caught with his tongue) and even gave Fish a bone to bury at the bottom of the pond. The bone floated to the top a few minutes later, but that’s beside the point.

Chihuahua was finding out that many of his friends could do some of the things he could do.

He needed to find Wolfhound.

Well, Wolfhound was busy too. He was trying to see if he could do things that were specific to some other animal.

He tried slithering like Snake, but just got dirty. He tried hopping like Frog, but was too big to sit on a lily pad. He tried chasing Rabbit, but Rabbit could make really sharp turns. He tried to swim like Fish, but he kept running out of breath. He tried to dig a hole like Groundhog, but only got a couple of feet before his paws started to hurt. He tried to turn his head like Owl, but he hurt his back and had to rest for a while. He tried to fill his cheeks with nuts like Squirrel, but since he doesn’t have cheeks, they just kept falling out. He tried to hop like Kangaroo, but his tail kept getting in the way.

Then he decided he wanted to try to fly like Grackle.

First he had to climb a tree like Bobcat. This was very difficult. Bobcat, Squirrel and Deer came to help him up and he just barely made it to the first branch.

“You got it?” asked Deer.

“I got it,” answered Wolfhound. “Thanks.”

Grackle was waiting for him a few branches higher.

“You’re almost there,” said Grackle.

Wolfhound was having a terrible time climbing. He was slowly deciding that he was not a cat. He was sure determined to get up there, though. He almost slipped a couple of times, but finally got a good hold of the branch where Grackle was waiting for him, and pulled himself up.

He hadn’t looked down until now and realized he was really high.

“Woah!” said Wolfhound as he hugged the branch.

Chihuahua walked up to the tree.

“Hey, what’s going on?” asked Chihuahua. He hadn’t noticed that Wolfhound and Grackle were up in the tree.

Suddenly, “SPLAT!” Bird poop fell right next to Chihuahua.

“Hey!” protested Chihuahua. “That almost hit me.”

“Sorry,” said Grackle. “I can’t always control the release.”

Chihuahua looked up. That’s when he saw Wolfhound.

“Wolfhound!” yelled Chihuahua. “What are you doing up there?”

Wolfhound didn’t say anything.

“He’s wanting to see if he’s a bird like Grackle,” said Squirrel.

Chihuahua tilted his head at Wolfhound, who looked very pathetic up in the tree.

Suddenly, without notice, Squirrel, Bobcat, Deer and even Grackle disappeared. They were frightened away by three wild dogs that came out of the forest.

All three of them looked up at Wolfhound, who was hanging on for dear life, and they began laughing and rolling around on the ground.

“You look so silly!” one of them said.

“What do you think you are, a BIRD DOG?” laughed another.

They were snorting and whimpering and laughing and yelping. And they didn’t stop.

“Why don’t you go ahead and jump?” said one of them.

“Hey, leave him alone!” said Chihuahua.

Suddenly, all three of them stopped laughing and turned their snarled lips toward Cihuahua.

“What did you say?” growled one of them.

“I said,” replied Chihuahua, “leave him alone.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” barked the largest one.

“Look,” pleaded Chihuahua, “why don’t you just leave. You’ve caused enough trouble here already”

“Trouble?” said the small one. “Oh, you mean him.”

They all looked up at Wolfhound, who looked more like he was gonna fall than stay up there.

“We didn’t tell him to get up in a tree,” laughed the grey one.

“We just told him he looked more like a horse than a dog,” said the large one.

“You said fuzzy horse!” corrected the small one.

“I thought you said big stinky fuzzy horse!” laughed the grey one.

They all laughed again.

They stopped laughing for a second when they saw that Chihuahua had snarled up his lips and was growling his little Chihuahua growl.

“Wolfhound is my friend,” growled Chihuahua crazily.

Then they started laughing again.

No one really knows what happened next. Wolfhound says he heard all sorts of whimpers and cracking of bones and biting sounds, but that was right after he fell out of the tree, so he was a little dazed and couldn’t really make out what he was seeing.

“It looked like there was five or six Chihuahuas all running around biting and jumping on the wild dogs,” recounted Wolfhound. “Then they ran off in different directions into the forest with Chihuahua chasing after them.”

“Wow,” said Deer. “Who would have thought?”

“Where is he now?” asked Bobcat.

“He’s sleeping at the edge of the river,” said Wolfhound.

“Let’s go wake him up so he can tell us what happened!” said Squirrel.

They all went to the edge of the river, and found him sleeping soundly, without a scratch on his body.

“Oh look,” said Wolfhound, “He’s twitching. He must be chasing Rabbit.”

“Oh, poor thing,” said Deer, “Someone wipe the foam off his mouth before we wake him.”

The End