Poky and Red tried to comfort me. They nuzzled me with their noses. They licked my ears and nudged me with their paws. They talked to me and rubbed their cheeks against my forehead.
“You did the right thing,” Red told me. “The poodle was hurting your boy. You had to make her stop.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I sniffed. “She never could walk very well after that. They had to take her to the vet and . . . and . . . after she came home, she still limped.” I sighed and let my ears droop over my eyes. “Fu Fu always limped.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Poky whispered in my ear. “Fu Fu’s limp wasn’t your fault, and the daddy getting scared wasn’t your fault, either. He shouldn’t have kicked you.”
“Why couldn’t I make him understand?” I whined.
Red grunted when he stumbled to his feet. “People can’t understand dip,” he snorted. “I heard that they could understand a long, long time ago. Then they learned this thing they call language—you know, the words they use. Ever since they got words, that’s the only way they can talk. We use wiggles of our ears and our tails. We smell, we taste, we look. They forgot how to smell and taste and look. If they can’t talk with words, they can’t understand a stinking thing. I tried to tell my master about the coyotes. Idiot just looked at me and patted my head. You can wiggle your ears and give off your smells and twitch your hair till you’re blue in the face. Without words, people can’t understand diddly-squat.”
Poky stood up and looked toward the back fence. It was getting late. “What are we going to do about the coyotes?”
My tail didn’t wag, but at least I could feel it again. Red shoved me hard with his snout. I got to my feet. My nose was still hot and my insides shook, but I took a deep breath and cocked my ears away from my head so I could hear Red.
“Sweetie,” he said. His eyes and ears spoke very seriously. “You’re going to have to do something. Poky is too little, and I’m too old. You’re going to have to fight the coyotes. We can help, but we can’t do it without you.”
I shook my head. My ears popped against my cheeks. “I can’t fight. I can’t bite!”
“Why?” Red snarled. “Because you made a mistake once and bit some old lady on the bottom?”
“No. Because of what I did to Fu Fu and to Ben.”
“You didn’t do anything to your Ben. You helped him, and the dumb daddy just didn’t understand.”
“But what about Fu Fu?”
“She deserved it.”
“Oh, no.” I cringed. “She didn’t deserve to limp for the rest of her life.”
Red put one paw over the other and squinted at me. “You might not have even hurt her. She sounds like the kind of dog who just might be faking her limp to make the mama feel sorry for her and not throw her outside when she messes on the floor. Even if you really did hurt her, which I doubt, you didn’t mean to. What would have happened if you hadn’t done something?”
I shrugged my ear.
“What would have happened?” he repeated.
“Well, I guess she would have kept biting my boy.”
“Right.”
“She would have kept hurting him.”
Red gave a knowing nod. “You did what you had to do to protect your master. You’re still hung up about your brothers and sisters calling you a bully. You don’t growl or bite because you’re big and you figure you might hurt somebody. But if you hadn’t stopped Fu Fu, she would have hurt Ben even worse. When you fight to protect your master, you’re not being a bully. You have to do what’s right.”
Red grunted as he got to his feet. He stood in front of me—so close that his nose touched mine.
“You’re scared that you might get sent to the pound. But even if it’s dangerous—even if your people might not understand—you still have to do what’s right. Doing the right thing isn’t easy, sometimes. But if you don’t do anything, if you just think being a good watchdog means doing nothing but sitting and watching . . . well, you still got in trouble with your master, remember. It’s much better to do what’s right, even if you get in trouble, than to do nothing at all.
“You have to help Poky and me with the coyotes. Protecting your friends isn’t nearly as important as protecting your master, but we need you. We can’t do it alone.”
Red’s words made sense. He took his nose away from mine and sat down. When he did, he groaned again. Red was old and feeble because of his arthritis, but he was wise. Very wise. Still . . .
I plopped down on my bottom and crunched my tail again. I didn’t even move it, though. I just sat on it.
“I’m so confused,” I confessed. “When I was a puppy, I was confused all the time. But I thought that when I grew up I’d know things. I wouldn’t be confused. Only . . . now I’m grown up, and I still don’t know . . .”
“What are you confused about?” Poky asked with a wag of his tail.
“Well . . .” I felt my cheeks puff out when I sighed. “When I smelled fear on the burglar, I should have chased him off. Right?”
“Right.”
“And when I smelled fear on the coyotes, I should have bitten them, right?”
“Right.”
“But I smelled fear on Ben’s daddy and on my friend Scotty when he was headed for the pound, and I smell it on Red when he thinks about the coyotes. Am I supposed to bite them, too?”
Red stood up again. “No. It’s a different smell. Different kinds of fear have separate smells. They’re very close, but different. One odor is simple. Your Ben’s father was afraid you had hurt his boy or would hurt him. Scotty was afraid of the pound, and I’m afraid of the coyotes.
“The other smell—the one from the burglar and the coyotes—their smell is because they’re scared of getting caught doing something they’re not supposed to. The burglar knows it’s wrong to steal, and the coyotes know it’s wrong to take our food. It’s still a fear smell, but it’s sort of a sneaky smell, too. It’s hard for people and animals to be brave when they know they’re doing something that’s not right.”
I nodded, remembering how the smells were the same, only different. “Why does the smell of fear hurt my nose and at the same time make me feel big and strong inside?”
“A long, long time ago, before we befriended people, we dogs had to take care of ourselves,” Red explained. “There were animals we could eat and animals that would eat us. All fear smelled the same back then. Life was much simpler. When we ran across something that smelled of fear, our bodies told us to chase it so we could eat. That’s where the strong feeling comes from. But when people came . . . well, we like people, and we don’t want to eat them. But sometimes they smell of fear, too. Most of us have learned to overcome our instincts and not chase them.”
“I think I understand now.” I smiled. “One kind of fear—when people are afraid of us because they don’t know us or because we’re big—we leave them alone. The other kind of fear—the sneaky kind—that’s when we chase and bite.”
Red’s white hair at the side of his mouth curled to a smile. “Right.”
Poky’s brown eyes opened wide. “Then you’ll help us with the coyotes?”
“Yes.”
• • •
The coyotes didn’t come when they usually did. I guess it was because Poky’s master worked outside in the yard until after dark. He was piling hay and straw around his roses and cactuses because of the cold.
I ate every bit of my food. It felt good to have a full tummy. As soon as Poky’s master went inside, Poky and Red came to my yard. It was cold, but we were full and cozy. We curled up in the spot at the middle of my yard where we had been sleeping. I don’t know why we didn’t go into my house. I guess we were just used to the low spot in my yard.
It was a lot easier to sleep, now that my belly was full and now that I wasn’t confused anymore.
How long I slept I didn’t know. But in the very middle of the night Poky lifted my ear with his nose.
“I think we’re in big trouble,” Poky whispered. With his paw he nudged Red. “Wake up, Red. This looks really bad!”