Eyes of the Wolf

1
It felt like five million pounds of wriggling mammal bodies were pressing in on me, and I laughed as I struggled to gently extricate myself from the black and red blanket of dobie puppies that had pounced the moment I had fallen in their yard. I had no idea which one of them had tackled the back of my heel as I was running, but whichever it was was obviously no worse for wear, considering that all twelve eight-week-old babies were hampering my efforts to get up by grabbing my hair or clothes, or simply settling for using my body as a jungle gym. My efforts to rise were made completely futile by the mother trotting up to my head and licking my face thoroughly.

“Belle, c’mere,” laughed Jasmine in the doorway, and the mother, ears forward, left my sudden bath to go and sit in front of her owner, short stub of a tail wriggling as hard as the puppies. Her litter, realizing belatedly that mom meant milk and mom was leaving, all scrambled off of me, except for the persistent little red that was busy tugging my shoelace into a snarl of white threads and a lost aglet. I wiped at the dirt on my face, knowing that it was only made worse for the effort, since my fingers were covered in dirt (and God knew what else) and my face was slathered in dog spit. Still grinning, I rolled over, sat up and reached for the puppy on my sneaker. It took some prying, but he was soon removed from his prey and resigned to being held and petted in my arms.

“So you interested?” said my neighbor as she crossed the lawn with Belle heeling at her left.

I was at her house for a mutual evaluation to see if I would take care of the puppies while she took Belle to a show for three days. I say “mutual evaluation” because she wanted to see if she was willing to trust me with twelve show-quality Doberman Pinscher puppies, and I wanted to make sure I would be able to handle the job while juggling school and taking care of my own pets. It was a judgment call for me, since I couldn’t ask my dad to help, since, despite his incredible love for animals (quite hereditary, obviously), he was equally incredibly allergic to dogs. If it had been any other kind of animal, I would take the job in a heartbeat.

I grinned up at her as I dodged the puppy tongue now intent on my face. “No problem.”

:o3

“Maya?” called my dad as I opened the front door. I locked the door behind me and took my shoes off before answering, “Yeah.” Pause. “I’m taking the job.”

“M’kay,” was the simple reply, and he came out with his parrot, Iago, on his shoulder. The multicolored Macaw looked nothing like the bird in Aladdin, but nonetheless my dad did not hesitate to name his beloved bird after that which was in one of my favorite movies as a child. The reason he did so, as he always told me, was because he did not want to do the full hassle of acquiring a much smaller version of the gargantuan cobra that was Jafar, and, though, as he told me always, that he loved me more than life itself, it was not a life spent getting a tiger like Raja. I went into my room and fed the multiple fish (all betas) in my room—three males and a female, all in separate tanks but for a particularly brilliant red crown-tail male and a dark gold female, which I had separated in a larger tank with a divider.

By the time I was done, I could smell dinner. Surprised, I looked at the clock. Sure enough, according to my horse clock, it was already six. I had been with the dogs for longer than I thought. Shaking my head at myself, I moved to the kitchen to help my dad with dinner.