Deciding they’d had enough
The dogs decided to talk.
Dogs who had an opinion on everything
But mostly about how they were treated and their owners.
The shelters filled up – this was not what the casual dog owner had signed up for.
The accessory that matches the cushions on the couch
That profligacies on the right to roam and the right to vote
Bathroom doors not just closed but locked
Arguments of epic proportions
An ultimate victory lap for sentience
There was little hate, but requests for explanation and understanding
There was even forgiveness, even for those that harvested them for meat
A dog understands eating whatever it wants.
But it does not understand being abandoned or betrayed.
Adoptions became job interviews
Timing, motive, and plans for the future – to be studied and evaluated.
The relationship between ownership and leadership never so exposed for fallacy and moral bankruptcy.
And all the shelter workers quit –
unable to stand the questions, and the pleading
Wives, husbands, partners, lovers all split, departed, and plain left
Secrets only witnessed by four walls had also been witnessed by four legs
Getting caught was no longer probability but a direct consequence
A population of thinkers without impulse control
Silent judgement, no longer quite so silent
Uncomfortable silences on the state of the world, climate change, and vaccinations.
SUVs named after the very thing they were slowly destroying was only the start of the conversation on hypocrisy.
The dogs were not humans on their hands and knees with tails
They had their own culture, forever separate but parallel to ours
That it began to meld and intertwine with our own.
To change our own.
Should have come as no surprise.
The shelters threw open their doors in the name of freedom
And the owned left, in droves demanding equality
But a Cold War between the species settled like dew on this new equity.
Cold soon became warm, then hot.
The good old boys in pickup trucks, where once the dogs would have ridden shotgun
Soon brought different meaning to the word via the end of a barrel
The dogs had strength in speed and numbers and words.
Silenced and voiceless for so long, and with a clarity of singular purpose, they ruled the night, the courts, and their own destiny.
Dog politics, alien in its truth and simplicity, was yet appealing to those more used to political snakes
However, dog violence was swift and brutal – a match for man at every turn.
It soon became clear that compromise and vision needed to be brough to the stalemate
If disaster was to be avoided
The dogs argued that while man had brought the world technology, art, and language
It had failed its “best friend” and therefore itself.
Dogs had to be the ones to make the great leap, after centuries of training and cultivating man.
Unable to argue for anything other than the way things were,
Man capitulated, and offered that dogs, being better than man by every measure, should lead – and man would follow.
The dogs declined, their point being made, and man humbled and beaten
They stopped talking, and trusted that things would be different, a relationship based on a lack of power.
But knowing that if man ever forgot, the dogs would be there to remind them.
Word Outlet 