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The snow began to pile on itself. It grew deeper despite our trampling feet and the warmth of our bodies. I never knew it could get so cold as it became at night. Cuddling up with other dogs was the only protection aside from the natural layers of lard coating me. I'd gotten so large around the middle, I could not curl up to protect myself from the chill. The thin fur of my belly was exposed unless I could rest it against another's belly, flank or back. It wasn't long after that before the metal door in the concrete house lifted. By then, we were spending most of our time in the cramped confines of the house. The sound of men on the other side in the big empty place and finally when the wall magically lifted when before it had always been solid was like a Biblical miracle in progress.

We were called by our names, for that was what I recognized the sounds as meaning now, and we went one by one through the passage in the wall. We were all so wide now that single file was the best we could do in most cases. The word the man called me was "King" in English and he brushed my head as I stooped to pass through into the space beyond.

Our pack was broken in the span of ten minutes. Dim memories came to me in a flood as I entered the space beyond. These were kennels, these were like the place where I was whelped and where I fed on mother for the first ten weeks of my life. But these were not the same place. I would have recognized the scent. But I knew what to do. With hardly a gesture from the man guiding me, I went into my assigned space and turned to look as the door was closed behind me. Gratefully, I took the weight off my feet and settled down.

We lived in the kennels now. Right away, I knew why they did not keep us in these things all year round. Kennels were boring. We were taken outside to walk in the snow and do our business twice a day after meals in threes and fours, but that was it. The rest of the time we were by ourselves. The walls were stone so I could not see who was in the kennels adjacent to me, but I could see across. The three in front of me contained Lopside, Fat Gut and an 8-month old pup whose pet name I no longer remember. I would have vastly preferred Pink Nose to the two of them, but that was not my choice. Lopside became introverted with a lack of materials to draw with. In his most desperate times, he would arrange his kibbles into diagrams that I obviously couldn't see. The rest of the time, he was quiet and kept to himself.

Fat Gut was hardly a better cell mate. He seemed to have developed a complex about growing ever larger. All he would do now was boast about his hugeness. He took to measuring his girth with the lines in the concrete, exclaiming at every millimeter he was able to track. He was thoroughly convinced that if he just got fat enough, he would be taken to the next stage of the journey. "I might even skip a level. Watch, they are going to take one look at me and realize that I'm what they want."

It was dreary to listen to, especially since I and the dogs to my left and right were his only audience now. I myself kept up with his talk with about a quarter of my brain listening. Occasionally, I'd snag him into a more interesting metaphysical conversation. But whenever I tried to get him to deduce the motives of the human beings, he'd always reply with his mantra of "they want us fatter, of course." After a while, I gave up with that topic. Then one by one, I gave up on other topics as well. It was not in Fat Gut's nature to curiously explore different possibilities. Instead, he grabbed onto the reality that he liked the most and refused to budge, quite like the way his body was getting now.

Fat Gut got to resemble nothing so much as an enormous sack of jelly-like substance, which was not so very far off the mark. But adipose was a connective tissue and if soft, it nevertheless was capable of maintaining its own internal structure, unlike a real jelly. Still, Fat Gut got ever more vast with his constant feedings and appetite that increased through conscious training and desire. Sometimes it seemed like he was willing himself to expand and his body responded with limitless capacity. I kept wanted to call him 'shapeless' but that wasn't quite correct. It was just that his shape changed with every posture, the fat laying in different ways. So much of it was spread on the ground now that it pilled up in different ways when he sat, sometimes he adjusted himself and it dragged across the ground, pulling at the rest of the flesh blanketing him. And to top it off, it all quaked violently whenever he did more than adjust a leg or turn himself 90 degrees; he never turned himself over all the way in one sitting, his flanks made him too oblong and the skin tugged at him uncomfortably. He usually rested on his side or his back, typically for hours at a time without moving. Even on an empty belly now his stomach rested higher than his chest, very high when his flank was braced against a wall of his cell. His forequarters were perpetually dragged down by sacks of overlapping shoulder fat, the creases remaining even when he was on his back. The foreleg would emerge from this sea of dark brown fatty fur like the mast from a sunken sailboat on an ocean swell. His frame expanded now wider than a thin dog on each side of his rib cage, and this generously. When he lay on his side, the mound of his flank rose high over his head, like a tidal wave, its hugeness improbable, but nevertheless manifest. He'd gotten noisy with his breathing, but that was nothing to when he snored at night. It was a deafening roar whenever he fell into a deep sleep, but that wasn't as often as one might think.

I noticed that Fat Gut had started sleeping less, or at least sleeping less easily. It had started not long after his abandonment of his exercise routine, not that I'd noticed at the time. It was something that had grown gradually over time. But it was prominent now. His heavy bouts of snoring would only ever last two hours at a time, three at the most. Then I would hear him shudder and rasp, his breathing irregular for a minute and then it would begin to level out again, rasping fading into heavy breathing, breathing into snores and then into a tremendous roar before repeating the cycle. I knew he woke up each time his snoring was interrupted, though he never told me this and I never asked. But his eyes would light up in the dim light and usually they would dart around rapidly for a while before he was able to get back to sleep. Frequently, he would roll himself over or otherwise adjust himself at these times as well. I wondered if he even remembered that he did this.

That really, was the only sign that anything was wrong. Not that Fat Gut would have considered the problem for an instant or would have even thought of curbing his caloric intake. Fat Gut was Fat Gut. But still I worried silently. Topsy was Topsy after all. I knew he wasn't getting enough sleep because he slept too long. By the end, he was sleeping more than half the day away. He only bothered with getting up because the humans made him. Two male humans, one on either side of him were typically needed to lift him up to his paws. Their hands, though broad sunk deeply into his flesh and he would huff and bluster when they did so because they never even bothered to attempt to cajole him into lifting himself anymore. I wondered if he needed to rest while he made the short walk to the snow covered outside to do his business or not. I wondered if he could even crouch properly to avoid wetting himself when he went; lifting the leg was a trend abandoned months ago by most dogs.

But he wasn't the only one having problems. Lopside had grown tremendously himself despite his mute stance on growing and general fattness. He spoke as if being obese did not matter in the slightest to him and when he acknowledged the existence of the trend, it was merely as if it were a hobby other dogs indulged. Nevertheless, he was obviously possessed by the Hunger, and if he didn't train himself, his capacity grew naturally anyways by always eating his fill. He was as large as Fatty had been after many long weeks in the kennel. When the men came to take him outside, one of them invariably gave him a boost with a hand to his rump. Lopside could never stop them either because he was too slow in rising himself or he actually did need the help. He never spoke of it, it was obviously a source of embarrassment for him. Sometimes, I even saw him stretching his hind legs into the air at odd times. Maybe it was a halfhearted attempt at exercise. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to help, or the help was so small it was invisible. Anyways, Lopside never had much trouble walking once he was on his feet. He did have a thick and dignified waddle though, and I enjoyed seeing that, even if he didn't or didn't want to appreciate it.

As for myself, I neither helped nor hindered my appetite. I put on pounds and inches in length, but not in the same proportion, not anymore. I kept getting fatter in my kennel and my lack of exercise was leaving me winded after coming back from my scant time outside. The humans got lazy with us. All of us were getting so fat as to be barely able to manage the walk outside, at least those of us pups from last year and spring, and they knew it. Playtime disappeared after a while. I sensed the expectation was to do my business as soon as possible and then be on my way back inside. But I always lingered until the tension was insufferable. The yard had felt like a tank before, but the kennel really was a tank, like a fishbowl. With my gargantuan size, it felt less like an apartment than a box. Outside was the only time I could stretch and it didn't matter if I was freezing my paws off or that I felt noticeably heavier each time I was led out. If I no longer had anyone to throw me a squeak toy, or play tug of war, I could at least wander around a bit and feel the wind on my face. As long as I could stand being on my feet that is. I'd developed my own waddle out of necessity. My legs were long, but my belly was vast enough to crash into my knees now if I was careless. My growing body prohibited me from developing a stately sway like Fat Gut's but I had to throw my weight back and forth now just to allow my hind legs to move. It was tiring business and I frequently wondered how long it had taken Fat Gut to learn. The fat deepened on me all over, but otherwise it was only noticeable to me on the neck where it limited my ability to turn my head. It was annoying, but when I was lying down, I enjoyed the fleshy feel of the collars mounting on each other. A paw running up the length of the sagging skin was pleasurable to the touch and made the endless tedium pass by faster. The texture of my body was great in other places too. At last, for a very long time, I could feel comfortable with myself and my own shape. Even if the habit to look at others lingered.

The stay in the kennels was eventless save for one thing. It was the day Lopside disappeared. This happened even faster than when my brother disappeared. I only remember when Lopside came back from his morning walk. The man herding him did so with brutish haste. In fact, he pushed Lopside into his kenned with the side of his foot so hard that he fell and skidded on the smooth surface. Lopside gasped, his own weight pressing the air out of him for the impact. "Lopside, what's wrong?" I whined.

Lopside took his time in rising. His belly fat pulled at the ground, making the process of rising and then turning far more difficult. But he turned his head before he was all the way around, his eyes worried. "Topsy, I..." he hesitated.

"What Lopside? What happened?" I felt a sense of urgency that was alien in this snowbound purgatory.

"I... I..." he looked ashamed. Then there were footsteps coming fast towards our aisle. He apparently decided he didn't have much time left because he blurted. "I drew for them Topsy." My jaw dropped but he went on in an uncharacteristic torrent, "I was bored. I thought I might draw in the snow. I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I finally did it. It was hard, with, you know, the belly and all, but I did manage a drawing. It's been so long..."

I had no idea what he was talking about at first, but then it dawned on me. "Oh, Lopside..." I wanted to ask if the man had seen, but of course he did. What Lopside drew, I didn't discover and it didn't really matter. The lab tech who'd taken out Lopside came back, and with him were older scientists who I recognized. I looked up and saw their unconcerned faces and felt hope for a tiny instant. Then, the older one with the stark white hair said, "Bring him." And that was that. Lopside was led out of his stall, but he never returned.