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Lopside was going to be a long-term project. That much was clear almost from the start. It was a struggle to cross that gap as he seemed just as intent to teach me the meaning of his drawings as I did trying to get him to understand my alphabet of vocals, posture and tail wags. I had to abandon my superior attitude of bringing something to him and start to exchange as equals just to keep him around. Whenever we were together, Lopside seemed to consider it a favor to me and while that was infuriating, it also made me even more intent on winning him over. The thought of abandoning him and starting with another dog was intolerable. It just had to be Lopside. There was something about him...

The second day after committing myself to his education, I had made exactly zero progress with him. He remained silent, but so far I hadn't driven him away and that had to account for something. His diagrams as yet remained obtuse, but the fact that he was using them to convey meaning could no longer be doubted. He would sometimes draw something for me, look at me expectantly and then fold his ears back when the meaning of his request went over my head. It was tiring and was sorely testing my small amount of patience. It was all the worse because of the progress the others were making.

Spinner and Dizzy naturally were rushing ahead, learning new words and combining them into increasingly complex sentences. It would not be more than a week or two before they were proficient enough to start teaching for themselves. Slim and Patch were beginning to repeat words now, after working with the two smartest canines at my disposal. I was actually afraid of looking foolish in front of them if I wasn't able to make any progress with Lopside by the time that Spinner, Dizzy, Fatty and Terrier-face could start instructing new dogs.

In the two days since first meeting with Lopside officially, it had been raining on and off. All of us were damp and dirty most of the time, but that was part of living outside as dogs. We were just more damp and dirty than we were used to, or at least I was used to. When I went to the stockpile of kibble to retrieve another mouthful to use on Lopside, however, I found with incredible dismay a large wadding of ripe mold infesting the entire mass of our hard won kibble. I sighed wretchedly at the sight of the spoilage, taking it to heart. The sight of wasted food was to me like shit covering a small pile of gold coins. I was reluctant to break the bad news to the others, particularly Fat Gut and Pink Nose who were still mostly dependent on the treats for their students.

Instead of going to one of my friends, instead I decided to go hang around Lopside for a while, despite the fact that I was empty handed. The large shepherd mix was enjoying the wet weather and the consistent moist surface of the bare ground that he had to work with. As I sat near him, it was misting and not so destructive to his art, so Lopside was working on a very large piece that was more than a body length across; one of my body lengths even.

In the scene, I saw many shapes I now knew were dogs and humans, but what they were doing exactly remained elusive. I looked at the work casually, not trying too hard to decipher it and instead thinking of how I was going to tell everyone that our stockpile was destroyed and what we were going to do about our future need for training rewards.

As I was lying there, dreary, I got a sharp tap on my rounded shoulder. I looked up and saw Lopside pointing with his nose up in the air. I looked, but didn't see anything but the ubiquitous grey clouds overhead. I laid my head down. This time, Lopside boxed my shoulder hard with his paw and whined at me. So I got up, my height towering over him and after a reproachful look at him, turned my nose in the direction he was pointing. I wouldn't have seen it but for the movement which my eyes were sensitive to. Something swirling in the air above us, growing swiftly larger. What was that fluttering thing?

It turned out to be a bit of stray litter, blown in from who knows where. Specifically, it was a potato chip bag. It hit the grass of the yard lightly and then tumbled across its surface with the speed of a lean running dog only to fetch up against the fence. To me, this was almost as interesting as the squirrel.

I ran towards it, getting a head start on the other dogs who had seen it. When I "claimed" it, the other dogs backed off due to my status. I sniffed the whole thing over, smelling the tang of the plastic, but also something more, something quite delectable. The bag rose and fell with the wind, now floating against the ground, then flattening against the chain link as a gust took it. During a momentary lapse in the wind, I took the opportunity to stuff my snout into the bag itself, where that salty, oily smell was strongest.

What wonders! The inside of the bag was coated in delicious oil, similar to, but much more flavorful than the oil saturating my food. It was rich and salty and good and worth several minutes of licking. And even more fortunately, there were some actual potato chip crumbs left at the bottom seam of the bag. To a person whose only ever eaten dog food his entire life, being exposed to this was really like a drug. There was more flavor in that mostly empty bag than there was in several bowls of kibble and I relished it, licking and licking and licking.

Inevitably, it came to pass that I could not scrape even an iota of flavor off the shiny inside walls of the bag I now held between my paws. I looked down at it in disappointment, the memory of the salty tang on my tongue and a thirst in my throat. I licked my chops and got a small zing of flavor only to have that pass as well.

I looked up finally to see that I wasn't alone. Lopside was still hanging around, but Fatty and Pink Nose were there now. I wondered how long they had been watching me and couldn't come up with an answer.

"What's that?" asked Fatty now that I was apparently lucid.

"Oh... um..." I hesitated and subconsciously moved my paw protectively over the shiny plastic bag. "I think its some trash that blew in here."

I didn't know why I wanted to hang on to it. It was worthless now that the flavor and the last bit of crumbs were gone. "Can I see it?" asked Pink Nose.

I almost said no, but then handed over the bag, forcing my paws to cooperate with me. "Interesting colors..." murmured the chocolate furred lab as he flattened it out on the grass. Fatty stood next to him, looking over his shoulder.

"It's pretty when it's whole." Said Fatty, studying the drawings and sharp angles printed on the outside of the bag. And indeed, most of the litter which inescapably blew into the yard was scraps of plastic and paper. It was rare for something this large and whole to happen to fall in with us. "It smelled good when you were cleaning it out Topsy. What was in it?"

Fatty didn't mind at all that I'd taken the luxury of the potato chip bag all for myself and greedily devoured it. I cast my eyes downward and said, "Something salty and tasty. But there was hardly anything left in it."

Fatty sat down and tried to scratch at his neck, he could just barely still reach if he twisted his back. "Well, I'm glad that you got it then, Topsy. But I could go for a snack myself."

Pink Nose was still looking down at the shapes on the chip bag, but said without looking up. "Then go grab a few kibbles from the hole to tide you over. We can restock it after breakfast."

I grimaced, realized I couldn't contain the bad news any longer. "Don't Fatty." I said, the large dog in question already staggering upright. "The food's no good. It's all gone bad from the wet."

"Shit..." said Fatty sitting back down with a splat on his wide, heavy rump.

Pink Nose looked up at me. "Seriously? It's all gone?"

I nodded. "Water got in and it's all full of mold. It's no good."

The three of us sat in communal mourning for several moments. Then Pink Nose voiced my primary concern. "How are we going to keep teaching the dogs without the kibbles?"

I shook my head slowly. "I don't know." The other dogs looked up to me. They thought I was smart, but as time went on, I was starting to feel less and less smart as these problems kept cropping up that I couldn't solve.

Another minute passed and I think it was starting to sink in that I wasn't going to be able to wave my paw and fix this. Then suddenly Fatty started. "Look at that!"

I followed his nose down to the potato chip bag in between Pink Nose's paws. "What?" I asked, not seeing anything different with it,

"Look at the water." Insisted Fatty, now struggling to his feet. He paced over to the seated Pink Nose and put his paw on the bag. "Look the rain is coming down on it, but it's not getting wet!"

"That's not right..." I started saying, but as I stood over the wide barrel shape of Fatty, I could see that it was so. The water was beading on the surface of the plastic bag and not soaking through. The only other thing I knew to do that was the canopy over the water fountain. "Let me see that..." I said and took a corner of the bag gently in my teeth. As I lifted it, the beaded water ran off, leaving the surface of the bag unchanged underneath. Angling it against the grass, I opened it up and saw that the chip bag was still dry inside.

My mind was racing to the conclusion, but Fatty voiced it before I could. "We should put kibble in this thing!"

I grinned, as my nose was prodding around inside the dry interior of the bag. I lifted my head, and laid it across Fatty's shoulders in a big hug. "Fatty, you're a genius! We'll put our food in here!"

"And then bury it." Chimed in Pink Nose. And naturally we would have to, so that the humans would not take both the food and our new bag.

I nodded and then the three of us got up and walked around the yard, scouting out a new location for our secret stash. I noticed that Lopside followed us at a distance, observing us. For the time, his grand work was forgotten, and honestly, I was happy that he'd chosen us over it.

After breakfast, we got the bag a quarter of the way full and decided to make the stock pile a little bigger before taking any food out. Fat Gut complained naturally. But I told him that he and Pink Nose could have some before dinner for their respective students. Spinner and Dizzy would just have to wait until tomorrow's dinner. We buried the food wrapped in the plastic bag and not only did it keep it from going bad like it had in the ground, but it was also less dirty when we retrieved it, which made the taste much cleaner and nice on the tongue. Also, I felt like the secret of the bag was something that was binding us even more closely than before. It was something secret, and something from the human world repurposed to serve us. None of the other dogs were remotely at this level and the fact that we were learning and experimenting ourselves, with the daily proof of food storage in the shape of the chip bag, instilled in us a new confidence that I think everyone, even Fat Gut, felt to one degree or another. In short, we all felt special.