Primitive Instinct: The Journey Home

I felt like I was a bumbling idiot following the hunter through the snow. I mean, I had long legs that had often made it easier for me to get through the thicker parts of overgrowth in the woods, but hiking through vegetation and trudging through several feet of fresh snow that had yet to settle were two completely different tasks. And here this guy was, waltzing through it all like it wasn’t even there. Not just the hunter, though, but the people pulling the sleds, too. Of course, having at least two extra feet of height to work with was an advantage for them, but way the heck down here in Teenyville, it was a struggle.

I had noticed that these people weren’t very similar. I mean, they were in the large part, just like humans were, but like humans, there were small differences. Bone structure, facial features, body shape, and build were all over the map. The most obvious, though, was the fur. Some had darker fur, some lighter, some were reddish, some more brown, and several shades of gray. There were also patterns in their fur. Some had thick stripes like a tiger, others had smaller stripes like a tabby cat. Some were a solid color with small spots that were a slightly different shade than the rest of their fur. The hunter with me had mostly white fur with what looked like a dark purple, swirling design that I’d never seen before, much less in any type of fur unless it was dyed that way. It was most likely black, though. After having nothing but white to look at for the majority of the day, I wouldn’t be shocked if my eyes weren’t quite taking in colors the right way at the moment.

After twenty minutes, the hunter was clearly getting exasperated with my much slower progress through the snow. If I had to stop a dozen times to wait for someone to catch up to me, I’d probably feel the same way. Even Diesel, the huge creature that he was, was moving along faster than I was.

“I’m sorry, really, but I’m trying. My legs are numb, and I stopped feeling my feet at some point last night,” I said. “I’m also hungry and everyone knows you aren’t you when you’re hungry.”

The hunter tilted his head and Diesel stared at one of the sleds as someone pulled it past us.

“Yeah, I know. Your heritage is calling. In all fairness, it’s very tempting but you are kind of a marshmallow, buddy,” I told him as I kept pushing my legs through the snow as hard as I could manage. “Nobody likes muscle fatigue and you’ve never pulled anything. Unless we’re counting you damn near dislocating my shoulder when we tried using a leash.”

The hunter spoke and Diesel did the head tilting thing again and I held my hand flat and sliced through the air. Silence.

I trained Diesel the traditional way with vocal commands. Sit. Stay. Lie down. Things that the owners of normal dogs teach their pets. Diesel is a lot of things, but normal isn’t one of those things. After he breezed through the typical training and obedience lessons in a fraction of the time it took other dogs, I realized that I had unwittingly stumbled across one of the highly intelligent specimens of canine.

While I was looking into what and how to train a dog like Diesel, I taught him signs. Not sign language, but signals. Hand signals, a click of the tongue, a snap of the fingers, anything and everything I could think of to give him the mental enrichment he seriously needed, or he’d end up getting bored.

When I adopted him, I was warned that he was a problem dog. He’d been adopted many times before, but they brought him back because he was loud, destructive, and untrainable. But he wasn’t any of those things. He was just too smart and easily bored to tears.

“Diesel, I love you, but can we please refrain from the ear murder for a bit longer?” I puffed as I kept pushing my legs forward.

He listened for maybe half a second before he did another very out of character thing and jumped on me, planting his big, icy paws on my shoulders and letting his substantial weight lean on me. I was going down and there was nothing I could do about it except glare at my best friend and only joy in my otherwise lonely life.

You are so not getting the special treats when we get out of this, I thought just before my back hit the ground.

Between that impact and the added bonus of Diesel falling on top of me, his pointy elbows digging into my stomach, I was slightly winded, and my body curled up on instinct to protect my soft parts.

I groaned and Diesel had the nerve to lick my face before he got off of me and sat down on my legs, putting a paw on my foot. I recovered enough to reach up and tug on his fur near the base of his tail, making him snap his head around and play growl as he grabbed my hand in a wetter than necessary play bite.

“Get your big butt off of me or you won’t get to be the little spoon again,” I groaned, pushing at him.

The hunter moved forward, and I stopped, watching as he knelt at my feet, a confused and wondering expression on his face. He held out a paw and stopped, looking up at Diesel before touching my boot. He might have had paws for hands, but they were shaped a lot like a human hand, which he used to give my boot a few squeezes and tilted and turned it, inspecting it.

Diesel dug his claws at the laces of my other boot, and I tilted my head, watching the hunter look at my dog before looking back at my boot, then to my hands where I had planted them in the snow to sit up. I frowned, looking between the hunter and my dog a few times before tugging at my boot brought me back to the situation at hand.

“Hey!” I exclaimed as my boot slipped off and I pushed Diesel off and snatched my boot back from the hunter. “It’s cold and I like having all of my toes and no frostbite.”

I pulled it back on and tied the laces again before pushing to my feet. I stood nearly at the same height as the still crouching hunter as he stared at my feet. He spoke softly and Diesel seemed to be very pleased with himself, sitting there with a puffed-out chest and high head.

“We are absolutely discussing your bullshit behavior in the very near future, Diesel Mack,” I told him, and he flicked his ear at me in a very dog ‘whatever’.

I was going to tell him something else, but ended up yelping as I was lifted up maneuvered until I was hanging off the hunters back. He actually laughed before he started to walk much faster than I could have managed on my own and I groaned a whiny sound and stuck my face into my shoulder while my face heated.

“This is so embarrassing,” I muttered as we quickly made our way down the line of sleds being pulled back and forth.