A Caged Life (a collection of short stories)

Zelda (short story one)

(A/n) I was in the bus thinking of stories to write and i realized everyone writes stories about abandoned dogs or dog fighting dogs, but no one writes about the true horrors which is puppy mills they abuse the dogs and i'll try to explain what a dog has to go through while giving you an excellent storyline.

I was born in a cage. A cage where the walls were the same material as the floor. I sometimes got my tiny paws stuck in the holes of the cage. My mother who was always shivering with fear never moved an inch. Even when one of my brothers fell through those holes. I stayed close to her. I never moved nor played with my litter siblings. I was the biggest of us all. I tried to protect my siblings from the nasties of humans. When they came around to give us scraps of food.

I learned to hate them. I always growled slightly when they came to the door. I wished my mother would go after them and kill them. I guess she was scared of the consequences. She was scared of everything but most of the other dogs were too. I could hear whimpers from the other dogs. Their plees told me they were fearful and they didn't know what was wrong. They thought they were bad dogs and did something wrong. Some of those were pups like me.

I didn't fight the humans when they came to give us food and water around a week after. I still drank milk from my mother so I was not a match for the human. My mother who was a big dog tried to get over to the food but she painfully just couldn't get up. The ceiling was too low for her. I brought the bowl to her.

She ate as much as she could. I looked at the man who for some reason was watching us. I growled slightly even as a pup and I didn't squeak. I cuddled into my mom's stomach which wasn't comfy and more bony than anything, still it was the most comfortable thing right now. My sister laid on top of me, my brother laid on top of my mothers paw. Which she allowed, my two other siblings tried to sleep on mother and not be on the hard ground.

I was squashed in a hole but I was too big to fall now. I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open much longer.

When I woke up I realized I was stuck in the hole my brothers and sisters were maneuvering around the cage figuring out the layouts like all pups do. I squirmed but it didn't work. My side was sucked into the hole and I couldn't get free. I whimpered out for help. A painful whimper went through me. I struggled and then I felt a tight jaw around my body. It gently pulled me free from the cage. I tripped on the holes several times each time a mark went on my legs and stomach. I heard howling in the distance, of pain and sorrow. I smelled blood and kept thinking I heard a whip crackle. A truck came through with more dogs coming in. fear painted through my blood.

I got on top of the food bowl and slept inside it. It wouldn't be comfortable to me much longer but I continued to sleep in it when there wasn't food in it of course.

The next few weeks many humans came to our cage and we just kept getting bigger. Once we were so big that we would be considered pups and not a newborn. But that's when everything went wrong.

We were playing a bit, one paw batting the other paw. We made sure to be careful. One day the humans opened up the cage. I hadn't known they could do it but they did. The man picked up my sibling, my sister. Mom did the warning growl and then the man picked up my other sister. That's when mother striked. She pounced as much as she could holding onto his shoulder. He had not predicted this so he freaked out dropping my little sister back in the cage. A woman tried pulling my mother off him. The man fell to the ground and mother was still on his shoulder. When the woman had stopped pulling on her to go get something my mother ran as fast as a dog can run.

I didn't see much but next thing i knew i heard a loud bang and then a cry from my mother came through. I could smell the life in her scent drain. She was gone because of the big bang. She was gone. I whimpered going to the back. That's when a van drove through some gates into the yard. They got out and some ran to my mother. But she was too far gone even I could tell that. Fear ran through my blood when the man got up and closed the cage. My sister who had been shoved back in once the van came through was licking her paws in a mourning whimper.