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By the time I was eighteen weeks old, the pen had become as much a home to me as anywhere else I'd been in my life and in many ways it was far superior to the now fuzzy memories of mother and her sweet milk. I was feeling more and more adult, and that was where I wanted to be in my constant "nowness." I left the past behind me like a chewed up toy and embraced life in the pen whole heartedly. By the end of my second month there I actually felt like I belonged, like I was in a pack, in a living community of canines who also accepted me in turn.

I was taller and stronger too, and even heavier for the constant feeding, but again, I hardly noticed. The wobbling bulk I felt on my flanks and belly didn't slow me in the slightest. But it was obvious my puppy fat wasn't going anywhere; not that that was in anyway unusual for life there at the lab. I grew taller than my brother actually, and soon it was I instigating wrestling matches with him. I also began to eat more as I adapted to the system of feeding. To start with, I was stuffed before putting a dent in a single bowl. Now I getting more than halfway through it. The dogs who ate the most often got extra attention from the human lab techs, even if it was fleeting, or even derogatory sometimes. It didn't matter, the tiny inference, combined with the Hunger inside of me prompted me to do my best at finishing the big food bowl, eating until I was stuffed in the morning, and until I was bloated and sick in the evenings.

If eating until you're sick to your stomach sounds odd, it is only because you cannot imagine what the constant presence of the Hunger is like. When I say it was an angry ape on my back, I meant it. It never left me, even when I was eating, doing the thing that I felt ought to quell the ancient sensation and drive. When I was full, it was quiet, but no matter how full I was, I felt the drive to eat still; I simply felt it less. When I ate until I was actually ill to my stomach, however, that was the only time I ever felt free from the Hunger. The pain of my bloated stomach walls was enough to banish the ape for a time and it was only because my body was sending signals to my brain that I simply couldn't eat anymore. As for why I ate to this extreme at night rather than every feeding, well the answer was simple. I wanted to scamper around during the day and if I ate too much, I risked losing my breakfast jostling my stomach like that. As for the evenings, it was easier falling asleep with a stomach ache than hungry.

By the end of my second month of residency, three more litters of male puppies had come to stay with us, nearly all of them arriving within a week of the first, actually. So I had many more smaller playmates I could lord over, although some were as spunky, if not more so, than myself. In the same time, two of the older dogs left us. One of them was the fattest collie.

I remember that dog seemed possessed by a demon of hunger that only grew with time. The week before he was gone, he was finishing a fifth bowl, morning and dusk, and nibbling on a sixth. Every time he fed, he ate more than previously and he wheezed after meals. I remember that and he'd eat so much that you could actually see the enormous lump of kibble in his midsection, even through all the thick fat. He, more than the rest of us, seemed to interest the lab techs. They patted him more often and the female human even spent a little extra time with him after hours. She taught him to sit, lie down and to speak on command. That collie had a throaty, rasping bark and would likely as not set the rest of us barking as well.

Then one day, a human came who I didn't recognize. He was older than the young lab techs and he came and gave the collie a cursory inspection, feeling his sides and his throat and listening to his breathing. The humans exchanged clipboards and the female made him bark. Then they put a simple loop around his thick neck and led him away. That was in the morning. In the evening he returned and his fur was wet and smelled a little funny. The poor collie seemed exhausted and stressed, but I wasn't able to connect his condition with the humans or whatever place he might have gone. The collie was withdrawn and didn't want to socialize or be groomed, though he looked like he could use it, his fur was spiking up in all directions on his back.

Everyone left him alone. As for me, I kept my distance as well. His smell and demeanor frightened me and the way he fought to catch his breath upon his return and immediate collapse into agitated slumber; although that may have simply been from the walk back from wherever he'd gone. I didn't wonder what had happened, I wasn't capable of that kind of abstract thought. He just frightened me, so I stayed away. Only food could motivate the collie to move his huge bulk from his resting place. He wolfed it down in huge gulps like normal, but on getting half way through his regular fourth a shiver ran through his enlarged torso and he prompted vomited it all back up, and in nearly the same condition it had been in the bowl. He retched some more after it was all gone and then paced away a few more steps to lie down at a distance.

The human female didn't have the good sense to read the collie's body language because she went over to him and laid her arms over his round, cylinder shaped body. The collie-pup whined a bit, but accepted her presence. Undoubtedly, he would have lashed out at another dog. He was hungry and in pain for some reason.

She petted him for a long time while the two males were left to finish the feeding. To my chagrin and to others' they cleaned up the huge pile of free kibble the collie had spat up and dumped it. When the feeding was done, I was lying outside, half aware of the world outside the churning, happy pain in my gut. The youngest pups were still being fed, but after they were done, the female had a long human talk with the other two males. She gestured to the bloated, sick collie several times. The males were reserved and answered mutedly, while the female became more aroused. Finally they just stopped talking and left. The next morning, the man who I'd seen yesterday came before breakfast. They roped up the collie and led him away. He went willingly and on steady legs. He was apparently feeling much better now for a long night's sleep. That was the last time I saw him.

Not every dog who disappeared received this sort of drama. The collie was apparently a special case for a reason I couldn't begin to fathom at the time. The other dogs were simply taken. The strange older human did not make a reappearance. The lab techs would come, usually in the morning before breakfast, put a nylon loop over an older dog's head and lead them away. Some resisted of course, as we'd never been walked on a leash before, but most went quietly, in simple trust of the people who fed and cleaned us.

Did I miss the dogs who left? Or did I worry about my own fate? The simple answer was no to both questions. I didn't dwell on the past, so I was incapable of feeling anything for a dog I didn't think about. And I didn't think of the future either. Like Peter Pan, I was trapped in an eternal state of puppyhood. There was only today, at least until it became tomorrow. If I thought anything at all about the matter, it was that getting taken away was an older puppy thing, and thus not a concern of mine.

After another month, the pen was actually feeling a little crowded with all the spring puppies. Not nearly enough dogs had been removed to account for yet another three litters of male pups dumped in with the rest of us. For myself, their whining and howling and biting was already getting annoying and I was barely older than they. My friend the black lab and I got closer and my brother began to hang on my heels and go with my decisions. There was a good reason for this. At twenty-two weeks, I was quite a lot larger than my brother. So much larger, in fact, that it was more than unusual, it was anomalous.

If I'd said that the collie had been possessed by a demon of hunger, then so was I. I could really pack it away if I wanted, and I did want to. And bizarrely, I shot up like a weed for all the Calories I was dumping into demanding stomach. And despite my growth, I maintained my round, filled-out frame. Though we were the same age, I was nearly double the weight of my brother and I looked like I was eight months old, not merely five and a half. I had no conception that this was unusual, of course. It was just how I was, though sometimes, I wondered when my brother had become such a shrimp compared to me.

My friend, the black lab, took more of an interest in me as my size increased. He'd grown a little taller as well, but a lot wider. He waddled when he walked and often asked me to scratch the wide fatty shelf at the base of his tail for him. When I say, "asked" I don't mean that he talked to me. Nobody talked, but we still communicated. Scent and body language were our dictionary, and really us special dogs communicated a lot better than our peers outside the lab might have done in the same situation.

So the black lab asked me for a scratch. He didn't open his mouth to do so, but he asked nonetheless, and I obliged. In return, I gained a buddy and an ally. I came to appreciate the black lab ten fold as I got larger because there was another layer to our society that I had been too young to even recognize was there.

Though my body advanced in size far more rapidly than my brother's it contained an untruth for my proportions remained that of a five month old puppy, I was just bigger than average. It didn't matter, I was still treated as an older puppy. And furthermore as my body appeared at least to race ahead of me and expectations of me grew, I struggled cognitively to keep up. I had to leave behind mindless romping and biting early because when you were bigger, such activities would start a fight, not be viewed as cute. When a tiny round puppy jumps on your ankle, it is cute, but when that puppy is a 100 lb. dog and leaps at your chest, it is not at all the same. So it is with humans, and so it was with us dogs as well.

So I had to grow up and fast. It was hard, but I leant on the considerable support of the stolid black lab and he caught me when I fumbled and backed me up when otherwise I might have started a fight. I mentioned before that there is a human world and a dog world and that us dogs have to live in both. I am sure you imagine that the human world is indefinitely more complex and deep than the simple-minded dog world. And while this might be the case in some areas, you would be wrong to assume our world is simple. The movement of your eyes and the slant of your tail can either invite a friend for a game of chase or challenge the same dog for dominance. For a pack of only male dogs, the hierarchy was like a religion. and for those sexually mature, and to a one sexually frustrated, the tension ran especially high at times.

Taking my size into account, I was considered halfway between infant and "adult;" although there were no true adults among us, even though we tended to pretend we were. Thus, I lost my protected status and moved immediately down to the bottom of the pecking order. To me, it happened in the blink of an eye, and really, I think it did.

My world changed the first time that I was forced to fight and actually defend myself.