The latter half of the school day passed just as uneventfully as the first. Lucky for Val, there were fewer periods of classes in the afternoon block than the morning one. As the school day drew closer to its end, time may have passed more slowly, but at least the smaller duration of time evened out Val’s misery. Her eyes continued to watch the numbers change on the clock.

At last, the bell rang to release the students. Val found herself among the stampede of students who hurried to get out of school as soon as possible. Others followed more leisurely in their wake. Out of the entire student body at Silver Hope High, no one rushed out of school for the same purpose as Val. To be fair, the vast majority of students being below the age of eighteen could not possibly partake in her intended after school activity.

Val headed straight to the animal shelter to volunteer once more. There, she greeted the shelter worker. “Hello. I came to walk the dogs again!”

“Wonderful! I was really hoping to see you here again,” the shelter worker said.

“Could I put my backpack somewhere? There’s nothing of value in it.”

“You told me yesterday that you were not a high school student,” the shelter worker said carefully.

Val shrugged. “Sorry, I lied. At least I did something good with my time outside of school! It’s not like I’m ditching school just to get high, or whatever it is that other truants do.”

“True, but you can always come to volunteer after school like you are doing today. It is important for a kid like you to stay in school.”

With this lecture from a near stranger, Val nodded along. “I know. That’s why I am going to school again for the rest of the year. I made a deal with my mom that if I do, then we could adopt a dog!”

“That’s wonderful! Good negotiating,” the shelter worker said with a laugh. With a gesture toward the back wall, he continued, “I suppose that you can leave your backpack right here behind the desk.”

Val crouched down there to leave her things. Before she abandoned her backpack and lunchbox here, Val took the bag of soiled carrots from her lunch along with her. When Gina had thrown that moist apple in her direction, some droplets had splattered over her baby carrots. This had made Val lose her appetite, but a dog would not bat an eye. Like humans, carrots also made healthy snacks for dogs, or so the Internet had told her.

From there, Val headed into the stretch of kennels that held the dogs. In the same way as yesterday, all of the dogs started yapping, led by the number one watchdog, Foofy. Today though, she dared to calm down all of the nearest dogs with Keep the Peace. As though accustomed to her sedative energy, Foofy silenced first. From there, fewer barks rattled throughout the shelter. Those that still barked spanned further away from her, deeper in the shelter.

“It seems that some of the dogs have already gotten used to you,” the shelter worker said.

“Maybe some of them recognize me already,” Val said. “I want to walk Foofy again, first!”

Just as she wished, Val got to hook Foofy on a leash and walk with him out into the fresh air outside of the animal shelter. The plastic bag of her carrots crinkled around in her pocket as she took out a treat for Foofy.

Just as she had expected, Foofy did not bat an eye at the carrot. He looked up to her with fascination, puppy dog eyes wide and pleading.

“Would you like a carrot?” Val waggled the carrot in front of his Dobie nose, further enticing him with it.

Foofy reared onto his hind legs. His mouth cracked open in an attempt to gently accept the carrot from her fingers.

“No,” Val scolded. She lifted the carrot above her head to prevent Foofy from snatching it from her. A good doggy ought to wait for his treats to be given to him. Val looked Foofy in the eyes and told him in a level voice, “Sit.”

After standing there for a moment, Foofy decided to put his haunches to the pavement in a dog's sitting position.

Val could feel her eyes light up in her head. With a squeal, she said, “Yes! No way. Good boy!” Foofy had earned that carrot, considering how she had expected him to look at her in utter confusion. Much to her surprise, he actually knew a command and responded, so that deserved the carrot that she flicked into his mouth.

Foofy snapped and crunched away on his snack with the nub of his tail wagging.

“Let’s go on our walk now!” Val headed out with Foofy, a different way than the one they had run into Gina with. While she doubted that they would have a repeat of yesterday’s incident, Val wanted to maximize the new stimuli that Foofy would experience on his walk to keep providing a challenge for her abilities.

Foofy tromped about on their walk like a good boy. For training herself, Val got to use Keep the Peace over Foofy. As their walk progressed though, Foofy deserved some training too, so she loosened her grasp over him. Val attempted to control him physically rather than mentally, trying to get him to walk nicely on his leash. She forced him to heel at her side, no matter how much she had to correct him. Even with her physical enhancements, pulling against eighty pounds of Doberman with one arm brought an ache to her shoulder eventually.

“Hey,” Val called to him. “Carrot!” She wiggled a fresh carrot in front of his nose. With this carrot, she tried to lead him like a donkey. Unlike a stubborn donkey, Foofy pranced in front of the carrot. He pushed on ahead, eager to get his treat. This let her keep him at her side, though, at the very least.

At intersections, Val asked him to sit until the road cleared for them to cross. This walk proved very enjoyable for Foofy. Beyond just the fresh sights and smells, many carrots were munched and crunched by Dobie teeth as well, whenever Val deemed him to be a good boy deserving of a treat.

After a good, long walk, they returned to the shelter. Once again, the shelter worker asked, “Did you learn anything about Foofy on your walk?”

“He knows how to sit!” Val cheered.

“Does he? That’s good!”

With Foofy returned to his kennel, Val looked around for the next dog that she would walk. While she could not say that she particularly missed that dog, the obnoxious Chihuahua that was Gigi no longer jittered about her kennel. Instead, a little black and white dog with reddened eyes sat there, almost as though he were crying with his shivers.

“Did someone adopt Gigi?” Val asked.

The shelter worker opened his mouth to respond, and he continued to move his lips even though no words came out. At last, he managed to speak. “Gigi had already been here for a full week. We get new dogs in every day, but there are a limited number of spaces to house them. Chihuahuas do not get adopted very often. The Brillion City Humane Society needs to service all animals in the area to the best of our ability.”

Not wanting to read the message between the lines, Val stared at the shelter worker with narrowed eyes. Gigi’s disappearance needed a better explanation than that.

“To make room for possibly more, uh, adoptable dogs, we had to let Gigi go.”

Val did not need to explicitly ask this, but she felt compelled to anyway. “So, you are saying that Gigi was put down?”

The shelter worker nodded grimly.

Every bad thing that she had ever thought about Gigi yesterday now riddled her with guilt. Not just Val, but apparently a lot of people felt repulsed by that energetic, little thing that had been Gigi. Undesirability had led to Gigi’s death. To think that just yesterday, a random stranger had taken Gigi on her final walk—and that stranger had been her.

Val had not even been in a particularly pleasant mood on their walk together. If she had known that Gigi would be dead by today, how would she have treated her differently? A part of her would want to slip off the leash and let her run away, or maybe scoop her in her arms and run away with her. As much as Gigi annoyed her, that little doggy deserved its life.

While Val knew that unwanted dogs and cats were euthanized in animal shelters all of the time, she did not expect to notice the absence of a dog that she had met while volunteering here. As glum as the loss of Gigi made her feel, Val looked around to the dogs that she could still give attention. The other little dog that she had walked yesterday, Polar, sat there wagging his puff of a tail. His pink tongue hung out of his mouth, making him appear to pant in his excitement.

Val sprung Polar from his cage and hooked the leash onto him. As she walked down the aisle of dog kennels with him, though, Val could not help but wonder. Would today be Polar’s last day alive?

Most worrisome to Val, though, she let her final gazes hang onto Foofy as she walked past. Yes, she did play favorites. Foofy happened to be the dog that she appreciated the most in this animal shelter. Would Foofy be among those dogs who could make it out of the animal shelter alive, or would he share the same fate as Gigi? Considering how Gigi had only been here a week before being put down, it seemed that he would not have much time left.

Her feet trudged on in her walk with Polar, heavy in dread.

Character Update:

* New information is marked in cyan.

* All entries are based on what Val knows.

Foofy Title: Good Boy Rank: Dog Attributes: None Abilities Name Class Description

Sit

command

- can sit like a good boy