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I got a few hours of sleep as dawn swiftly came and began to sweep into morning. I slept under the pavilion along with Pink Nose and Fatty while the rest retired either to the concrete house or else simply lied down in the damp grass. Although I did long for the warmth of piled bodies inside the house, I needed to see for myself how the humans would respond to the gate when they came through to bring us breakfast. At least the pavilion kept the occasional droplets and mist from landing on me while I napped and waited.

I had a dream that I was nipping at Fat Gut's heels, forcing him to waddle and jog ahead of me as we went in laps around the yard. He was struggling, but I was relentless, biting him when he staggered or slowed. Fat Gut was breathless and he was trying to plead with me about something, but I wouldn't hear it. His massive flanks joggled as if they were barely attached to his body and the joggling got worse as time passed. I realized he was getting fatter still as I continued the march. He slowed as his paunch began to get in the way of his hind legs, his scarred feet bowlegged around the vast hanging mass between them. Still, I bit at him and enjoyed it. He widened and his belly dropped, lower and lower and wider and wider until he was literally dragging his gut across the ground as his breath rasped in his fat clogged throat. Finally he collapsed under his own weight and though I bit at his widened rump until it was bloody, he would not get up. I went around to the front of him and looked into eyes peering out from a congestive mass of brow and cheek fat that wobbled there too for the force of his pants. "Get up." I commanded. "It amuses me."

He tried, failed, and tried again. "My feet..." he gasped and as I looked past the wide curve of his side, I could see that his hind feet were bloody and torn, and bruised where they weren't bloody, though I didn't remember touching them. "Topsy... remember..." Fat Gut went on, still struggling to relay his message despite his severe lack of oxygen. "...The... humans..."

No sooner than he said it than there was a massive figure standing behind me, casting us both into shadow. I turned back to Fat Gut only to see in horror that the fat of his neck/torso was swelling around his face, enveloping it and soon there was nothing left but a smooth surface of skin and fat. "Fat Gut!" I cried, but then a massive hand grasped me firmly around my body. I was a pup again, tiny and frail and helpless. Disturbingly, the human glared at me and smiled. When he spoke, I understood. "You're next." He said and in his free hand, I saw a syringe which he squeezed slightly to spray a clear liquid...

I yelped when a few droplets fell on my face, blown in through the side of the pavilion. My chest was heaving and my heart was racing, though it soon quieted. I found myself longing for the simple dreams of running and of food and suckling that I'd had when I relinquished my higher cognitive functions some long, long months ago. Of course, going down that path again would mean the end of my dream of my pack all talking and thinking together and sharing... I didn't even know if I could release my thoughts again as I had done in the past.

I lingered on the dream for just a few moments as I lay there, still, but eyes open and staring at the sky, dark grey above, but broken by hopeful patches of blue in the west. Of course I knew what it meant, I was not at all in the habit of lying to myself as humans seem to be, nor lying in general for that matter. I knew that I felt immense guilt still with regards to Fat Gut and to spare myself from another disturbing dream, I resolved to face this matter as soon as I could.

Before I could gather myself to go and meet with Fat Gut in the concrete house, however, there came the sound of footsteps from around the corner of the building. It was breakfast time. As usual, one of the male lab techs was in the lead, one arm weighted down with the heavy weight of the large bucket of dog food. However, when he reached out to the lock on the gate with his free hand, and his hands closed on the lock, which was not really locked, after all, only dummy locked, he turned his head and said something in as yet intelligible English to his two other compatriots.

He did not open the fence, and instead called over the female lab tech to inspect it. I swallowed and suddenly found my heart beating faster. My tongue escaped my mouth as I wondered, wondered what they had noticed, and wondered what we'd done wrong. The female said something to the first male, and he responded defensively. She put a hand on his shoulder and lightly gave him a pat while he bristled silently. The female removed the lock from the gate and walked in, carrying the many bowls; my large one was close to her breast, and my tail wagged at seeing it. My gut was already sending me unpleasant signals that filled my abdomen like a pulling vacuum.

The other dogs of the pack were already moving out of the house at the other end of the yard, yawning and stretching as the lab tech went about their business. I spied Fat Gut leaving the domicile and began to walk over to him. I met him as he was still waddling to where the dogs were sitting down and being given their bowels; quietly and obediently for the most part since there were few very small pups now left in the pack. "Good morning." I said, brushing my side against his rounder one.

Fat Gut grunted a polite affirmative. "It's about time they got here. I'm damn hungry." He said whilst licking his chops eagerly. I was slightly surprised that he didn't seem to show any interest in the outcome of his efforts to correct the lock.

I touched him again, his side was warm as well as soft and I wondered if he'd been laying against somebody during the night and early morning. "Fat Gut..." I hesitated, "I wanted to talk to you about yesterday."

The shepherd-lab groaned in the back of his throat. "Can't this wait until after we've eaten, Topsy?"

My stomach insisted it could, but I didn't want to risk being distracted after breakfast. "I just wanted to talk with you... before the others start wanting me to tell them what to do."

Fat Gut eyed me suspiciously from the side. We stepped up to the back of the crowd and the heavily fattened canine sat his plump rear down on the grass. "Alright. What'd you want to talk about?"

I sat down at his side, facing him slightly. I could feel my croup squish against the ground, on top of and to the sides of my tail. "I want to know that we're..." I turned my snout away, then back, "That we're ok. We got a little barky at each other last night."

Fat Gut growled softly in this throat. I could tell that he didn't really want to talk about how we'd behaved last night... at least in lieu of the oncoming breakfast. Seeing as the front rows of dogs were still being served, he had time to say, "Don't worry about it. I don't hate you or anything."

Why?! I remembered thinking insanely just then. I cleared my throat, then said, "It's not that exactly." I looked at the ground, then back, "But we can't be fighting like that; not in front of the others." I didn't have to explain how his contrary ideas weakened my position as Alpha.

Fat Gut's brow got even heavier as he squinted at me and one of his canines was revealed in a little half sneer. "Ah, don't tell me you can't handle a little dissension, Topsy." He poked his nose out at me, "You need to be more assertive! Next time I get out of line, just pin me to the ground... we both know you can do it." That last part he said with more than a little growl and his eyes went a little cold.

I showed my teeth a little; dogs may grin, but smiles were generally not friendly. "I don't work like that, Fat Gut." I looked down at him. "And I don't want to work like that. That's why I'm talking with you now."

"Well if you won't..." Fat Gut cut himself off as the female lab tech strode up to us and deposited a filled bowl of kibble down in front of the fattest of our pack. Fat Gut licked his chops and said nothing more, having eyes only for the long awaited bowl of food. He stepwise lowered himself down onto his chest to eat, his brisket welling plentifully against the side of his bowl as he scarfed down the dry food like a dog starved.

I wrinkled my nose at him, partially grateful for the distraction if he had been about to say what I'd thought he was. He was more than a third done with his first bowl when another lab tech brought my own enlarged bowl. The savory smell of the kibble rose to my nose and my stomach took over my actions for a time. It was indeed a relief, this surrender and the uncomplicated action of eating which sustained my body.

I had a lot more food than Fat Gut, even if I did eat faster than him by virtue of being able to take larger gulps of kibble in at a time, so he finished his first bowl before me. The humans were starting on the second rounds - always two serving and one scratching on their clipboard - so we had some time yet before we were served again. When there was not a dust mote of food left in his dish, Fat Gut said, "I think I get where you're coming from, but I still think its a bad idea to go messing with that gate."

I was still eating, but my mind conjured for my the small drama that had occurred at the gate today and I could only speculate at the cause of that... Oh the feel of food on my tongue, the weight of it, causing my mouth to salivate heavily until I could swallow that mass down whole without chewing. I got it down in a hurry, so I could welcome the next large bite. Inside my abdomen, my stomach clanged around, hollow and empty, somehow feeling emptier now that I'd started eating than before. That'd change, but not until sometime into my second bowl. As I was preoccupied and couldn't respond except in the vaguest way with just my tail and my posture to assist me, Fat Gut went on. "As I said last night, we have everything we need here. They take care of us and clearly if they had wanted us to go out, they wouldn't have built a fence in the first place." Cursing a bit under his breath, Fat Gut put a paw on his bowl, tilted it and scratched it at the ground some to make a little noise. Sometimes it drew the attention of a human lab tech, sometimes not.

I released a heavy breath as I swallowed my last, the food fever slipping from my mind and allowing me to think a little more clearly; though I was still rather preoccupied with the prospect of my next bowl. I began to wonder if Fat Gut hadn't been right in wanting to wait, but I shook the thought off. After eating, he and I both liked to nap, and sleepiness was hardly more conducive to talking. "I can understand your point." I said, trying to be generous with him. "But I'm not here to talk about that just now."

"What else is there to talk about?" growled Fat Gut, and he looked at where the humans distributing the food were moving about the other eager dogs; some of them still barking while being fed. He turned his head, his thick tan neck framing the black of his face as his ears sat high on his head. "Sometimes I just don't get you."

'Sometimes, I don't get me either.' I thought then. I tried lowering my head a little more to his level, but it was too hard from my high vantage, so I carefully laid myself down. I was still higher than him. "I just don't want us fighting every time we disagree on something, like last night. It's not good for the pack."

Fat Gut chuffed and looked longingly down into his bowl. "So just knock me down like I said, if that happens again."

I sighed wretchedly. "I'm not going to do that to you, Fat Gut."

He looked at me with honest, but puzzled eyes. "Why not?"

And here, let me say that democracy does not come naturally to canines; nor do I suspect did it come to humans to start with. It was the most natural thing in the world that the Alpha should impose his ideas on those under him. The Alpha is tried on the success of his policies, and if he chooses bad ones and weakens himself or others, then that just makes him an easier target to displace by someone else. It is a simple, animalistic system that doesn't require thought so much as an innate feeling. But I could sense the barbarity inherent in it because I'd suffered on the receiving end for so long. I longed for a different way to organize ourselves, but naturally, I didn't have a sharp idea of how to do it, other than that clearly punishing those with different ideas or sensibilities from myself was wrong. This I'd been stewing on unconsciously for the longest time, but my response was all emotion. "Because haven't I done enough to you already?!"

Fat Gut's eyes widened as much as they could, but before he could respond, a man stepped over him and the sacred rain of kibble fell into his bowl from the plastic scoop and bucket. Thus distracted and with the barest moment of hesitation, he bent his head down and began to sate that burning need inside his enlarged frame. I too was served a moment later, several scoops falling into my bowl to fill it, and it was only by rigorous correction from the lab techs in my youth that I was able to resist plunging my nose into the succulent morsels as soon as the first scoop was in.

We both ate for a time and neither of us found it odd that our discussion should be broken as it was. If anything, I was at fault for choosing the time of our talk. Naturally, Fat Gut finished his smaller bowl before I was 2/3 done with mine. At least the pause had given him time to think evidently, as he said, "Topsy..." Fat Gut paused, and during that pause, he released a small belch followed shortly by a larger one. I didn't know if his burp interrupted his pause or prompted it. "...If this is about last night. It's ok. Heck, I actually kinda liked getting up and actually doing something for once."

I longed to respond, despite the allure of the food calling to me in the bowl and the pleasing rhythm of taking it inside me. Finally, worried that Fat Gut himself would soon be interrupted by another bowl, I lifted my snout away from the dish, breaking the easy chain of feeding with not a little willpower. I said quickly, "It's not just last night."

"Then what is it?" he asked, staring across at me while he reclined easily on one elbow that was mostly buried in his evolved shoulder fat. He seemed perfectly clueless and I couldn't understand how he didn't dwell on it when I couldn't stop thinking about it every time I laid eyes on him.

I stole another mouthful of kibble. I couldn't help myself before I stole a second. Pulling my head away was like resisting a strong gravitational pull. "Your feet, Fat Gut." I said, emoting honestly with my eyes despite the constant distraction of the remaining food in my bowl. "Don't you care that I've practically crippled you?"

Fat Gut turned his snout away, showing some emotion for the first time this morning. But the emotion was mixed and hard to read in his tail and the movement of the tips of his ears. "These things happen Topsy..." he said, but not convincingly, and while staring at some other dog out in the pack.

"No they don't, Fat Gut." I intoned, food momentarily forgotten. I moved my paw to touch him and the closest part I could reach was an outlying curve of shoulder meat; the skin shivered at the contact and he looked back at me. "You used to be strong and active and I... and I..." I gritted my teeth, the image of the old Fat Gut sleek and graceful despite his enormous size was too much to bear, "And I ruined you." I could feel my eyes hot and irritated as I said the last.

Fat Gut took a few deep breaths. I could feel them as I still had my paw on the side of him; my pads sinking a little into the soft fatty weight of him. He shuffled his hind feet a little and I think he did it subconsciously. He winced. "You didn't ruin me Topsy."

I shook my head, refusing what has been obvious to me for over a month now. "You used to be the fattest, fittest dog here and the best fighter and I took that away from you..."

Fat Gut growled now and snapped my eyes to his. They were intense. "It wasn't your fault, Topsy."

I met his intensity, but without anger. "I'm the one who tore up your feet. Whose fault is it if it isn't mine?"

Fat Gut swallowed. Inside his cavernous innards, there rose a grating churning noise but we both ignored it. "It's my fault."

I was rendered speechless at Fat Gut's perception of the incident, and before I recovered, the female lab tech stepped up and generously filled the lab-shepherd's bowl. He was lost to me for a time. She then grinned down at me and bent over to rub my neck and ears. I leaned into the touch; pets were still precious and far in between. She finished with a pat to my crown and I took that to mean she was surprised that I wasn't done with my second bowl yet. Hastily, I set to finish the job, but the entire time, I dwelled on Fat Gut's admission and the food was tasteless.

She must have been watching me for no sooner than I'd finished my big bowl than she came back and filled it again; the tinkle of falling kibble interlaced with the scratching on the clipboard as always. Because the habit of scarfing was strong, I bent my head and went at it again. It'd almost felt normal again when I noticed in the corner of my eye that Fat Gut had his head raised and was looking at me. I held my breath and forced my head away again. He was waiting, so I said, "Fat Gut, I don't see how this can be your fault. I hurt you. I hurt you more than I needed to to win."

Of all things, Fat Gut began to laugh. "I think you're overestimating yourself Topsy. You hurt me exactly as much as you needed to to beat me."

I suppressed a growl with effort. I took a breath to steady myself, then said, "I don't understand why you're not angry at me." I sniffed, "I took your life away."

"You didn't." He said, and raised his nose to gesture around him, "I'm still pretty much the same, still eating, still watching my ass get bigger."

I had no idea at the time whether he was being deliberately evasive or dense or honestly had no conception of the horrible wrong I'd done him. I answered with some heat, "You know what I'm talking about. Your feet."

That expression again. Guarded and complex. It didn't get the sense that he was hiding something from me so much as he was trying not to feel something himself. "I told you, it's not your fault. Stop worrying about it."

"Then whose fault is it, then?" I asked snidely. By this point, I almost thought he was making fun of me as I tried to confess to him.

"It's my fault!" he growled at me, and when he said that, it made the mass of food in my stomach feel suddenly like a stone block. In my silence, he continued. "It's my fault because I'm so damn heavy, you know." He looked up at me and I could see plain hurt and fear in his eyes. "You don't know what it was like... after the fight when they took me..."

I'd always wondered, but never had there seemed a good time to ask, between teaching him to speak in the first place and the recent dramas. "Do you mind telling me what happened?" I asked softly, ignoring the food in my bowl completely.

Fat Gut snorted. "Not a whole lot, except for a lot of pain. They kept me drugged for most of the first week. They were doing something with my feet, I think. But then came the hard part."

My mind turned again to my previous dream. Syringes and drugs and wires... "What did they do to you?" I asked, fearing the worst.

Fat Gut shuddered, as if the memory still disturbed him. "They... They had me..." he swallowed, grimaced then said, "They had me exercise."

We had no word for rehabilitation, but Fat Gut went on to describe the ways in which he'd had to work at regaining some of the use of his hind paws. There was a treadmill under water, which he was put on for hours at a time, but there was also stretching involved and a lot of handling by humans. There was clearly more to it than he was telling me, but he shared the gist and I could see now how injury and subsequent rehabilitation could have caused in him such a dramatic weight loss such as I'd seen and only in the past few days has he appeared to have recovered from... mostly. I have to say that at the time, I found no humor in the descriptions. But after his explanation, I still had the overarching question, "Why do you say that this is your fault then?"

Fat Gut put his paw in the oily dish, swirling the grease absently with his paws. "Don't you see, Topsy? If I wasn't so heavy, I wouldn't have had to go through all that and I would have healed faster... I'm still healing you know."

"You can't know that, Fat Gut." I said.

"I know it as well as I know my feet hurt when I'm standing. It feels like I have too much weight on them."

"That... that doesn't make any sense." I said because as far as I knew, it was only natural for dogs to attain our sizes as we grew older. I hesitated because the sight of the dogs at the other lab was definite proof against my inherited world view.

Fat Gut chortled under his breath. "When you're my size, you'll understand. You'll know what it feels like."

The woman was approaching again, undoubtedly to fill up Fat Gut's bowl for the third time. I gobbled down a few large mouthfuls - Succulent! Delicious! - Then said, "I am glad to hear that you are still getting better, though. I didn't know..." I let my last statement trail off, realizing what I'd been about to say.

Thankfully Fat Gut ignored it. "There's less pain and my feet are feeling a little stronger..." The kibble tinkled in the bowl again. Fat Gut managed to say something else though before he tucked in once more. "But I'm also getting heavier."

Fat Gut just unloaded onto me a lot to think about and none of it was simple absolution or forgiveness to ease my guilt such as I'd been hoping for. Although there was hope and in the absence of any real type of medical knowledge, Fat Gut's word that he was getting better was the best that I could hope for. The female human looked down at me again and my unfinished third bowl. She inquired of me meaningless syllables in a high gay tone. I woofed for her and wagged my tail. She petted my neck and left me to finish my business. I saw that her eye was lingering on me now, however, so I endeavored to finish my bowl quickly so I could work on my fourth. However, the eating was rougher than usual for my strange thoughts and feelings. One thing was sure, Fat Gut had thought about and understood his condition of obesity far more than I did. Heck, I'd been so focused on speech, words and symbology, that I'd taken that part of my life almost for granted since my fight with him. I realized then that my understanding of our system and our values was still that of a puppy, and like a puppy, I thought only of adventure in the outside when in reality there were mysteries to be found right here at home.

These thoughts did not make it any easier to get my food down. Such was my decreased rate that Fat Gut finished his fourth bowl before I was a quarter done with mine. "Topsy..." he started after he finished wiping his mouth on the fur of his leg, "I know you feel bad because you think you've done something wrong to me." I lifted my head from my bowl, actually glad for a distraction from the uninteresting food. "But you have to think things through. Use that big head of yours." He gestured with his nose, "There's nothing that can be done now. I'll get as well as I can, but we both know that we're done fighting each other. You're Alpha."

"Fat Gut..."

"Let me finish!" he growled. "You're Alpha and there's nobody who can fight as good as you, and you're growing a proper gut almost as fast as that collie did." He didn't mention the fact that I was getting to be 2/3 taller than a golden retriever had any right to be, and that spoke highly of where his priorities were. "I picked on you for a long time because I saw him in you. I knew you were coming for me, I knew it and I was expecting it and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it, no matter how hard I tried. The time was right and I was happy to go down fighting." He moved a paw and laid it over his brisket, which was the best he could do to reach, "That was what I felt when you laid me low... even if it took me some time to realize it." He chuckled again, but I sat somberly, listening. I'd been an animal when I started fighting with him and realized that I'd have to wake up to win during it. I wondered then if Fat Gut realized that without him I might never have decided to wake up again.

"So you see," he was finishing, "I knew in my heart it was gonna happen like this, one way or another. So I'm not angry that we fought or even that I got hurt, cause that's just natural. You know that without humans I'd be dead, right? And I'm far better off than dead, doncha think?"

I didn't necessarily agree with Fat Gut's reasoning. I felt in my heart that dogs could solve their problems without killing each other, even without humans. Although clearly Fat Gut had benefitted immensely from medical treatment. What I said was, "And without humans, I think you'd be less than half your size!"

"Ha! Half of a half, more like." Fat Gut said. And for the first time that morning I smiled.

Beaming, I said, "You know, those other dogs, I think that your hind leg weighs more than half of them."

"Poor sorry bastards." And deliverance came for him again in a shower of brown, greasy bits into which he promptly shoved his snout. I continued to look at him and grin before habit more than anything else turned my head back to my own dish. We didn't talk that much more during the rest of breakfast. Fat Gut seemed content to just eat and let the conversation settle. However, I, in a talkative mood, asked of him trivial things like how his lessons with Slim were going and if he thought the lab techs were cutting back on their after hours time with us. I think I blabbered on because I didn't know how to end the conversation with him, or perhaps I felt that he still had more to offer me, to make more sense out of the world instead of less. Because although the guilt had eased somewhat, I could not look at him and not see the dog he used to be.

That morning, I couldn't finish my fourth big bowl. I just wasn't interested enough in the food, and I lacked the momentum which usually carried me past fullness and into the stomach bursting territory I usually settled after meals. Fat Gut, meanwhile, ate more than ever, finishing six bowls. He, in fact, ate more than me. Belching triumph, he waddled away to sun himself in the increasing light as the clouds began to roll away and reveal the new autumn sky. I didn't forget to steal a mouthful of kibble for the stockpile, and I slinked away from my unfinished bowl, because I felt that the eyes of the humans were on me for some reason.

I'd just left my stolen bits in the care of Pink Nose before I was pulled aside by one of the lab techs. They felt my neck and under my forelegs and peered into my eyes, pulling down the lids uncomfortably. They looked in my ears and under my tail as well after they checked my gums and felt my tongue with their fingers. I was used to such treatment, but right now it felt ominous and I was a little scared that one of them would pull out a leash. But they left me instead, gathering up the bowls and securing the gate. I saw one of them linger after closing the portal, deliberately manipulating the lock. I heard a small click with my sharp ears, then she left.