Dog Boy

39

"Still holding steady," Dad said.

Ashley and I were at his work with him, as he looked over a blood sample from us. It was my third or so time coming here now, as he tried to understand the viral activity going on in us. He had thus far only really discerned it was higher than average, but not the root cause.

 After getting our blood drawn, they'd put special round bandages on our arms. They had sensors that could read some amount of bio signs. These Dad hoped, would help give some additional insight into the virus, being able to track the viral activity throughout the day - and perhaps see any trends in how it fluctuated.

The best theory he had right now was that it was due to me having the first generation of the virus, which I then passed on to Ashley. He wasn't sure what differences between the versions were causing this. He'd been using his "borrowed" data from Generation to examine documentation from that time, but had been unable to thus far parse anything out. Depending on his results from looking at our longer term data from the bio-monitors, he wanted to test Jackie and the few other first generation canis people.

Dad had been putting as much time as he could into this. He was being better about making time for our family, but it was obvious that he was trying to distract himself from being canis now. We were now nearing the end of March. They'd been canis for a month now, and I'd now been changed for about two.

As time wore on, I had stopped thinking a ton about it all. Seeing canis people around was no longer out of the ordinary, but more often than not me seeing new friends - and those I didn't know I made an effort to smile at. A lot of people at Applegate high school needed it. Some had changed in the riot, but no amount of taping off the drinking fountains slowed the spread. We were still definitely a minority - but there were now at least a few canis people out of the thirty or so people in each of my classes.

For me, it was comforting. For them I knew, it was torment. All I could do was smile at them, and talk to them like I would any normal person. Some of them refused to talk, but many did. As awful as the riot had been at the beginning of the month, the perpetrators were on suspension until further notice, as the school district tried to enact more serious consequences.

All that mattered to me was that Horace and the most prejudiced of the non-canis people weren't around. When they were taken away, the mostly normal of us were left. Because of that, a silver lining to the terrible incident came about - on the whole, people were nicer to us. We stopped getting stared at, at least in an openly repulsed way. I started seeing non-canis people smile at me. Whether they felt some sense of guilt after seeing the horrors of the riot, or whether they felt real genuine remorse - at least we were slowly finding our way.

It was... a liberating feeling. Sure, there were still crappy people - but they were the outlier. I felt like I could chat with people in my classes again, be active in answering questions without feeling embarrassed about drawing attention to myself. Further, I didn't really hide my canine behavior either. I licked my nose when I needed to. I wagged my tail and panted when I was in a good mood. It was just something I did now, and a good amount of other canis people did too.

At our club, people were having fun. I saw new canis people go from feeling great anxiety to making friends with fellow canis people, going on dates with them, and adapting to their new lives.

When I came home from these improving circumstances though, I saw that under the surface it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Mom, Dad, and Ashley still struggled with it. They were in a better mood overall - even Ashley - but it was ups and downs. I again had to be patient, and realize that many people would take time to adjust - and some would not embrace it in the same way I had. It was a struggle I'd had to accept as I lead the club - that sometimes the best thing to do was give people space.