Somewhere over the rainbow

I just know they will take my babies away from me again. They’ve done it so many times. It’s an endless cycle.

Like my mother before me, I was born right here. In the barn of the Nasty Man. My sister and I were only pups when he came to take us away from her. His scent was everywhere, and it’s all we had ever known.

We heard a door open on the other side of the barn and our mother stepped in front of us. She wanted to protect us from the Nasty Man, but what could she hope to accomplish? She was a little poodle. The Nasty man is a giant.
“Get out of my way, poodle.” He brushed her aside with his foot and came straight for us. We cried as we were carried away. He didn’t even let us say goodbye.

Then we were out of the barn and into a much brighter space. There were crates with open tops. Just like in the barn where we lived with our mother, only much cleaner. There were soft blankets on the ground instead of smelly, scratchy straw. We were placed in one of these crates. The crates next to ours all held pups too. Instead of curls they had long straight hair or short bristly hair, but we recognised each other just the same. We were all lost babies.

That was the day I realised something: the world was bigger than the Nasty Man’s barn. 

There was another door in this new place. A bell rang every time it opened. People would come through and walk around, looking at all the babies in all the crates. They would often pick one of us up and cuddle us. At first we were afraid. The Nasty Man had picked us up too, and taken our mothers away from us. But these people were nice to us. They would often pick out one of the babies in the crates, walk up to the Nasty Man and say, “We’ll take this one.” The babies that got picked were treated with kindness as they were carried out through the door with the ringing bell. I hoped they found a better life out there.

That’s what happened to my sister. A woman came up to our cage and picked us both up. My sister was not as shy as I was and she kissed the woman. “Oh, you are adorable,” she said as she kissed her back. She put me down and carried my sister over to the Nasty Man. “I’ll take this one.” That was the last time we saw each other.

Two days later, the Nasty Man came up to my crate. He picked me up. After all the sweet smelling, kind people, his stale scent smelled even worse. I was so scared, I couldn’t stop shaking. “Good thing I haven’t sold you yet. Now that that poodle is dead, I’m lucky I still have you.” He carried me back to the barn. Surely he wasn’t talking about my mother. Was my mother dead? I cried out, hoping to hear her voice. There was no answer.

I don’t know how much time I spent in the barn. I was in there for so long, I almost forgot how it felt to be clean. Soft hands no longer petted me before moving on to the next crate. Smiling humans with sweet scents no longer looked down at me. The only one who touched me now was the Nasty Man when he cut my hair if it got too tangled. My nose no longer wrinkled at his scent or at the smell of stale urine that was everywhere.

I knew that I wasn’t a baby anymore at some point, because the Nasty Man started making me have babies. And he took them away. All of them. Each and every time.

Like my mother before me, I didn’t stand a chance of protecting them from him. It didn’t stop me from trying though. No amount of kicks would make me not stand in front of my babies, baring my teeth and growling. It never worked.

I’ve lost count of how many babies I‘ve lost. But I am getting more and more tired. There’s never enough to eat. Even my babies are going hungry. I don’t have enough milk to feed them all. No matter how hard I try, I can’t save them all.

I’m about to give birth, but it hurts. It hurts too much. Something is wrong, but the other dogs in the barn can’t help me. They can’t even help themselves.

I don’t know how long I’ve lain here, trying to push them out. But I can’t. I’m too tired. I hear footsteps outside the door. Someone opens it. It’s not the Nasty Man. The scent is all wrong. I smell something clean instead of sweat, cigarettes and greed. I remember that clean smell from the bright room. It’s the scent of smiling people. I hear friendly voices as they pass through and try to reassure the dogs in the cages.

“Take this one out first. Get her to the vet. Hurry!” The footsteps have finally made it to my crate. The face that goes with the voice looks friendly.

For the second time in my life, I’m carried out of the barn. Only this time I’m not afraid.

They carry me outside. It’s so bright. It hurts my eyes after spending so much time in the barn. “I bet you’ve never seen sunshine.” Is that what the light is called? Sunshine? It’s beautiful.

“Hey! What are you doing? Get back here. That’s my dog. You can’t just take her.” I hear the Nasty Man and I begin to whimper. He’ll take me back to the barn. I can’t go back! I bury my face in the coat of the man holding me. If I hide, perhaps he won't see me.

The man carrying me suddenly looks very angry. He turns towards the Nasty Man. “Watch me.” He looks down at me and pets my head. He keeps talking to me as he hands me over to a woman with blonde hair. She, too, smiles at me. 

“Hello, darling. Let’s have a look at you.”

“She’s in labour but she looks exhausted. I think she needs a C-section,” the man says.

The woman looks at me, and prods my belly. “You’re right. We need to move. She doesn’t have much time left.” The woman looks worried. I feel like I should be scared. I can’t, though. It hurts too much. I feel something stinging my leg, and I close my eyes.

When I wake up, I’m in a cage, but there is a blanket. Food and water. And three sleeping babies. The smell in the air tickles my nose and I sneeze. There’s a sharp scent here that I don't recognize.

The woman walks over to my cage. “Oh, it’s nice to see you awake, darling. We need to see about getting you a name, though. I can’t keep calling you Darling. We’ve decided not to rehome you. You’ve probably lost enough puppies in your life. You and these babies will be staying with me.”

I have a human, now. Finally. She lives in a nice house. My pups and I get to go outside and look at the sun whenever we want. The ground outside is soft and green. My human calls it grass. I’ve learned the smells of  grass, sunshine and rain. Heaven must smell like this too. My human named me Dorothy. After the girl who clicked her heels and finally found her way home. She told me the story, but I didn’t get it all. Doesn’t matter. I’m hers, and she’s mine.
 

I pledge to donate the SBD income from the upvotes on this post to the Tazewell ARC by way of @rhondak. I met her about five days ago and I already love her to bits. She's a real live hero, who runs an animal shelter without funding or community support. For more info on the hurdles she faces, go here. She's also an amazing person with a warm heart and a sharp mind, and don't forget her sense of humour.

Besides doing amazing things for animals in need, she also does amazing things for this community. We owe her for the existence of  #fiction-workshop, the SFT curation trail, and a lot of other things that I don't even remotely understand.

This story was written in her honour. I owe big kudos to @bex-dk and @thinknzombie for their help today. I woke up with an ending in my head, and they help me story my ending into something readable. I realise that most people end a story instead of storying an end but I never said I was conventional.

Thank you!!!