The air in the room was heavy with human distress. He couldn’t quite get a read on it. There was that exclusively human sound of laughing. He wagged his tail at that. But then there was this undercurrent of sighing, shallow breaths that suggested something being held back. And then his inside person handed his leash to the person who never stood up. Alert to every nuance of human body language, he still couldn’t quite parse what was happening. And then he understood. His inside person, Rosie, was commending him to the sitting person, Meghan. His loyalties were being reassigned. He knew that he had achieved some benchmark of behavior, because everyone was happy with him. He was told repeatedly what a good boy he was.
And what a good boy he needed to be.