dog race

For all the babies? :o @Pasha @Swift @Whittier @Allure II - I'm going to race you.

As adorable and fuzzy as her potato babies were, they could only sustain the interest of an adult brain for so long. Well-wishers came and went, leaving Bazi with gifts and kind words that saw her through the endless hours spent sleeping, nursing, or cleaning up shit. She longed for her children's senses to develop - so that she could teach them something about the world. Feeding was an essential part of preparing the foursome for life, of course, but it was a very passive activity - and something they had come out of the womb pre-prepared to do. In their two days on earth, the pups had learned nothing that would help them in, say, a hunt. Or a bear fight.

That morning, Bazi hatched a misguided idea. Before the pups could latch on for their morning feed, she shifted them to the opposite wall of the den and plucked a dark strip of meat from her pile of presents. It was on its way out, and smelled strongly of meat and very, very slightly of decomposition. Perfect.

Bazi stepped across the skins and straw, dangling the prize in front of her children's blind faces. "Smell that? Smell that, babies?" she cooed, aware that they couldn't hear a word of it. Bazi took one small step back across the padded den floor - the smell moved with her. "Come on - follow! Follow!"