Heyo, beautifuls! I thought I’d share this piece, which is a concept for a maybe future story. Note that there’s certain elements which I’m not happy with - wolves are so overdone in shape shifting genre - but it’s still a great start and I hope that you enjoy it.
Kit at the Vet
By Rosanna P. Brost
October 26th 2017
A kind, animal loving woman is sobbing. She has brown eyes, curly black hair and her husband is as bald as a baseball, with a voluminous moustache capable of winning best in show in any facial hair competition. He sits with one arm around her, consoling her and using his other hand to pet the strawberry blonde and grey dog laying at their feet. Despite the blood matted in the dog’s fur on one hind leg, it appears to be mildly annoyed, as does the receptionist who is sitting at the clinic’s counter. The waiting room is painted a soothing green, the floor is honeyed wood and the dog is really wishing that she could do something about the leash in the lady’s hand, which is so inconveniently attached to her neck, which the man won’t stop touching.
The dog is me and I am not a dog at all but a wolf but I’m also not that either, because I am actually Aurora Peters, Homo sapiens. These schmucks who have brought me in to Pleasant Hill Veterinary Practice are just two more in an annoyingly long line of idiots who apparently can’t read the ‘if found injured, please admit to hospital, not vet’ tag on my collar, or my name, or my mom’s phone number or even my home address. Instead, they’ve all taken me to the vet and it’s only stupid luck that there is only one veterinary practice in town for them to come to. Everyone here knows me, right down to the Russian Blue greeter cat, who has just come to say hi, but Jacob Hars, my well-meaning benefactor, rudely shoos her away. Luna gives a dissatisfied brrrt and wanders off, tail waving in the air, passing Doctor Hank Johnson as he steps out with a clip board. I meet his eyes and we share a moment of shared disgruntlement, then he greets my benefactors, the Hars, who tearily declare the usual.
“Doctor, we think she was hit by a car -”
“Her owners should know better than to let her roam!”
“There’s no name on her collar at all -”
“Doctor, if her people don’t want her, we’ll take her! She’s a beautiful animal!”
“I am truly grateful for your concern for this animal, Mister and Missus Hars,” says Hank charitably, “but I assure you, Kit has a good home and we have her on record. She’s just got a nasty little habit of jumping fences, that’s all.”
The Hars gasp and complain a bit more, but eventually Hank chivvies them out, the receptionist Tanja assuring them that they really do know me, then Hank pulls me into the back room with one of the clinic’s leashes. The moment that we’re through the door and out of sight of the waiting room he unclips the leash from my collar and glares at me. Despite the fact that he’s one tall dude, colour me uninspired - after all, there’s rainbow tabby cats all over his scrubs and he wears a bowtie decorated with paw prints. Plus, he’s like family to me, almost a second father; we even celebrate Christmas together every year and I gave him a birthday present just last week. (An obnoxiously lurid set of new scrubs, of course.)
“Kitsune, you gotta stop getting yourself into so much trouble,” says Hank crossly. “What’d you even do to yourself, girl?”
With some effort, because doing so opposes my current cute ‘n fluffy form, I speak, “I got caught in a barbed wire fence. It was rather against letting me continue on my merry way.”
He rolls his eyes. “You know, there are safer ways of practicing your bloody shape shifting! Couldn’t you have waited for shutzhund tomorrow?”
Ahh, shutzhund. Some girls have volleyball, some girls have jogging and then there’s freaks like me who compete in the lovely German dog sport of mauling guys in heavily padded protective suits - as a dog. My team mate is even a real dog, Hank’s champion Russian bred German Shepherd Vlad, (who, if you’re wondering, does indeed kick my ass at Shutzhund.) Hank got me into it because he figured that since I insist on moving around on all fours and pretending more or less to be canine, I needed to learn how to defend myself that way. Thus far, it has helped me learn how to bark convincingly, which has proven incredibly entertaining.
“Work was so boring, I needed to go out for a run,” I say, extending my hind leg and wincing at the shallow gash in it. “Good thing I’ve had my tetanus shot, eh?”
“Aurora Peters, what season is it?” demands Hank, crossing his arms.
“Fall…?” I say, cocking my head to signal my what-are-you-getting-at because honestly I have no idea why he is asking this dumb question.
“Yes, it’s Fall - hunting season, Aurora! The time of year when a bunch of idiots with guns who don’t know a deer from a shadow are running around our fields and forests looking for wildlife to put bullets in! And what are you, currently, woman?” he snarks.
I glance at myself, then bare my teeth in a smirk which I have been perfecting in front of my mirror. “Gorgeous.”
Hank looks heavenward, as if asking God for help with bettering my youthful lack of brain cells. “A wolf! And if they don’t mistake you for a wolf, which lots of idiots hate, they’ll mistake you for a bloody flaming coyote, which people hate even more! Do you want a bullet in your brain, woman? ‘cus I can’t fix that!”
He likes calling me ‘woman’ - it’s as if he’s trying to remind me that I am actually a human, a fact which I am quite painfully aware of, thank you.
“Not particularly,” I say, “but I wasn’t really in a field -”
“It don’t matter!” snaps Hank. “Kitsune, you gotta stay in town right now! And wear a bloody reflective vest, you ninny - emulate dog instead of arrooo.”
I sniff, “I wear it when I am hiking, but I need someone to put it on for me and I was alone, so -”
“Couldn’t you have stopped by here? Or gotten Rick, anybody to put it on for you?”
I look at him blankly, silently admitting: this would have been smart.
“But I’m alone tonight, so how the heck would I get it off afterwards?” I ask shrewdly.
Cue another eye roll. “You come by here and I’d take it off for you, you know I’m here for another hour. Kit, why can’t you have a weekday hobby? Why do you have to spend every spare minute you have running naked around town?”
He’s right, actually; if I were to transform right now, I would be naked, a fact which many townspeople have witnessed, thanks to the first time that I was hit by a bicycle (bikes are my nemesis) and the good Samaritan cyclist tried to help me. When I spoke up to say that I had just been stunned and was fine, the cyclist had fainted. Me, being kind of an idiot, had transformed back to perform CPR if needed, thinking they were in cardiac arrest - and at that moment, a long line of kindergartners had walked past the park where we were with their teacher on the way to the pool, the kids discovering quite abruptly what boobs look like. I had been unable to concentrate enough to change back, so I had ran streaking for home, only for my embarrassment to become truly complete by the police officer who had stopped by to write me a ticket for public indecency that evening. It had not ended there - for weeks I had had the parents of the kindergartners being terribly rude to me and that was about the time when I opted to spend the rest of my secondary education at home.
“Well, since you were dumb and forgot to bring by another set of clothes for circumstances like this from the last time that you swore you wouldn’t show up here like this, you can spend the rest of my shift hanging out with Vlad until I can drive you home,” determined Hank and he herded me into his office, where Vlad was quite happy to slobber all over my face. Tail clamped between my hindquarters to thwart Vlad’s mundane yet cherished canine hobby of butt sniffing, I turned back to the door, just as Hank was about to shut it. His eyebrows shunted low over his dark eyes and I nervously laid back my ears.
“Y’know, Kit, someday this shape shifting nonsense is going to get you into some real trouble, and I might not be there to help,” said Hank and with these forbidding words, he walks off, cheerfully calling a greeting to his next, real patient.
Unfortunately, he repeats this warning in some format every time I end up at his clinic on four legs - after all, that’s how we first met - so I don’t really listen to him. Instead, I proceed to horse around with Vlad.
Thank you for asking!!!!!! Mav and I have finally joined an IGP club which is amazing. We have only been to two meetings so not much actual work yet bet I’m learning a ton and it’s so great to be hanging out with cool working dog (and especially working GSD) people in our area
We have also been getting to work on IGP tracking outside of club since he is very much a beginner, but it’s so obvious how he is naturally built for that style of tracking and I can see improvement every time.
If anybody has any favorite tracking resources I’d love to hear about them! I’ll try to get cool videos ASAP
My Female Kara. Full blooded West German bloodline. First stage drive and prep for Shutzhund training. #shutzhund #germanshepherd #germanshepherds #germanshepherdlovers #germanshepherdworld #germanshepherdworkline https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn1gSvdAYhg/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=hzulomddqkow
I would like to nominate Windy Pool for National Dog Trainer of the Year. After experiencing a home invasion almost 20 years ago, she got her first dog and then began training dogs. She's now the training director and founder of C3 Hundesport in Corpus Christi, Texas where she trains Shutzhund dogs.
Pool makes it a priority to ensure training dogs for defense is a fun experience for both the dogs and humans, and the results speak for themselves as she's won four international level performance awards.
