2 months postmortem

Whoever said the afterlife was paradise had never trained a puppy upon their death.

In life, I despised three things: squirrels, bathtime, and puppies. Thankfully, two of those three things did not exist in Dog Heaven. When I first met the tail-hunting Special Assignments puppy, I figured it was a one-time mishap. A fluke. And yet, somehow, I ended up sneaking as much time as possible to secretly train this puppy to be the perfect companion for Bay before it was sent to Human Heaven. It took some stealth to go around keen-eared and sharp-eyed Geronimo, but she was none the wiser about how I spent my time around her trainee. As far as she knew, I had taken a liking to the puppy that had a potentially lethal fascination with my tail.

I had not, in fact, taken a liking to the puppy.

"Okay," I said, turning around for the hundredth time to face the puppy as it chased my rear end. "We've gone over protecting her from men and squirrels, protocol for crying over a movie, and walking on a leash. Now we have to—hey!"

The puppy pounced, roughing up my tail. I whipped around to face it but withheld my snarl when it backed away, ears flat and tail tucked. It had finally picked up on some of my cues. Not enough to keep it from trying out every antic that occurred in its tiny brain, but it at least knew it'd done something wrong.

After nearly a month of endearing endless tail chasing and pouncing, it was the best I could hope for. The puppy with black and white fur and a white patch over its eye that a resembled a cloud illuminated against a midnight sky was nothing short of a behavioral catastrophe.

"Anyway," I continued, "Our next topic is—oh, you've got to be kidding me."

I lifted my eyes to see Geronimo trotting towards our grassy clearing, which was purposefully out of view from the trainee house. Her long-furred and authoritative tail bobbed with the rest of her body. Her presence alone was enough for the puppy to follow unspoken orders to sit, though it still panted in excitement and fidgeted its paws.

"I trust you two are having fun," she said, eyeing the puppy. "It's time we head back. Class is about to start."

Upon hearing Geronimo's gentle orders, the puppy exhibited a surprising amount of restraint it lacked around me and pranced back towards the trainee house alone.

"He's taken a liking to you," the retriever said. "And you're so good and patient with him. Have you ever considered helping with more of the trainees?"

I held back what could have been a mix between a snort and a gag. Spending time with puppies was the last thing I wanted to do. What I wanted most was to watch Bay, but she needed a friend to guide her through life, and a puppy couldn't train itself.

If I had my way, the puppy wouldn't even need training. I could just dump it on Earth and let it do its job, but Bay deserved more than that.

"It's nothing," I said, averting my eyes in the hopes that Geronimo would not notice my hesitation.

"Think about it, Hugo. Whatever you're doing is working. Ever since you two started your mornings together, he's shown major improvement. So much that he's slated for Earth soon."

My legs stiffened. I had to remind my tail to keep wagging so it wouldn't give us away.

"It—he's really gotten that much better?"

My blood ran cold. If this puppy was going to Earth soon, it would go where Geronimo wanted it to go, and that person would definitely not be Bay.

Geronimo turned to follow the puppy, but I stopped her before she got too far.

"How exactly does a Special Assignments puppy get to Earth?" I asked.

"There's a process. They're born, just like every other dog in the world. They don't remember their training right away, but it comes back to them as they age before they're matched to a human."

"But what if the puppy doesn't have time to grow up and remember? Couldn't you just... drop it off?"

Geronimo tilted her head at my questioning. Against advisement, my tail fell limp.

As her dark eyes searched mine for the deeper meaning behind my questioning, I was sure that she saw right through me. I swallowed hard and forced my ears to attention in the hope that she could not read the true intentions buried beneath my eyes.

Thankfully she continued, but her soft voice carried a hint of caution.

"Well, there's a door, just like there is for everything else. We only use it for extreme circumstances."

"But if you really had to—"

"There are rules and an order for a reason, Hugo," Geronimo said, her cautious tone shifting to an annoyance I had never heard from her. "We can't just go dumping dogs off on Earth. You should know best of all there are too many dogs who die waiting for a family. I'll be damned if I put that on anyone—especially my trainees."

As Geronimo huffed through her nose, I backed away. Whatever I said had caused a string in her to snap, and I was not keen on her discovering the reasons behind my questioning. Without another word, she galloped back to the trainee house where the puppies had run rampant without supervision.

Finally out of the line of Geronimo's fire, I turned towards the Earth Observatory, but not before stopping for my daily bone.

Dog Heaven was teeming with endless baskets of chewing bones. Sitting outside every building and around every corner, you could not throw a stick without hitting one. I certainly had no complaints about it. Every day after my secret puppy training sessions, I grabbed a bone to hold me over while I watched Bay.

I admittedly faltered on occasion, sometimes taking my time to walk over. As the weeks went on, I began to wonder if Bay needed me to watch over her. After all, what good would watching a television screen do when what I really needed was to make her happy?

At first, I made sure to be up before the sun. With the passing days and puppy training, my arrivals gradually became later and later in the mornings.

At the basket, I stuck my head in and clamped my teeth around the only bone available. When I lifted it, an identical bone materialized out of thin air to replace it before all four of my paws had stepped over the threshold.

The inside looked pretty much the same every day with few exceptions. A new arrival or two usually settled in for a few days to watch their previous owners before running off to take advantage of Dog Heaven, never to return to the Earth Observatory. Sometimes I envied them. They trusted that their humans were happy enough to not need them.

Some of the other regulars like myself lived similar afterlives. We woke up just before our humans usually did, gathered provisions for the day, and sat in front of our respective televisions until our humans went to sleep at night. There were at least a handful of dogs present at any given moment who all had the same desire to watch their humans as I did. In some cases, like Ziggy the schnauzer, they never left their post.

"Morning, Ziggy," I said as I passed her stout curled frame. Her television—which no one ever dared to take—showed an elderly woman asleep in a bed just big enough to fit her frail body. The bed was much smaller than what Bay slept in, and the woman never left. I didn't think I had ever seen Ziggy's human open her eyes, much less stand up.

Ziggy huffed a sigh that turned into a groan.

"Hugo," she greeted in her gravelly voice.

I settled in front of a television two spots down from Ziggy.

"How's she doing?"

"She'll be here soon," Ziggy said without taking her eyes off the screen. I had no clue how long Ziggy had been there, but she always said she would not be there much longer. Her human was going to join her soon, but she never seemed as thrilled as I thought she should be when she talked about it. If her human would arrive soon, how could she not be elated?

Pushing the matter to the back of my mind, my belly flopped onto the floor, my legs spread behind me with the bone positioned between my front paws. My chosen television blinked on to show Bay with her new human companion. They were both dressed already, their hair tied back and their foreheads damp, looking like they had just finished a run.

Bay's new friend—who she called Honey—had been around for at least a few weeks. They met while Bay was on a run by herself in the middle of the day. She'd just finished crying and pulled herself out of bed, but her run had not lasted long before she all but collapsed on a park bench. That was when Honey showed up, and they had been together almost every day since.

In full transparency, I was a little jealous of Honey. She got to touch Bay and be with her when I couldn't. She at least seemed to make Bay happy... except for when she didn't. Their days together usually started affectionately, but sometimes ended with yelling and high emotions.

Now they sat on the couch together, with Bay in her usual spot and Honey in mine. Scraping my back teeth against the bone, my ears tuned into their conversation.

"We should go on a trip soon," Honey said. She leaned into Bay, who hummed half-heartedly.

"But what about..." Bay trailed off, then glanced towards the corner where my bed used to rest. She absently nodded and turned to Honey, plastering on a smile. "I'd like that."

Bay leaned in and touched her lips to Honey's like she used to do on the top of my head. I whimpered, longing to feel her pets and scratches again.

Bay and Honey passed the morning together in peace. Somewhere around lunchtime, things took a turn for the worse, just like they always did when Honey was around.

"It's only been a month," Bay said in a raised voice from her spot at the kitchen table. "Just because I don't want to move in with you doesn't mean I'm noncommittal."

"Come on, Bay, you've had one foot out the door this whole time."

"You were the one fooling around with your ex up until the day we met!"

"And I stopped because I'm committed to you! At least when I was with her, she trusted me enough to live together."

"Stop comparing me to her!"

Honey rolled her eyes and stood, scraping the legs of her chair against the floor. She stormed towards the door and turned back to Bay as if she expected her to follow. Bay remained seated.

"If you walk out that door, we're done," Bay said through a loud but cracked voice.

"Believe me, we already are."

Honey left and slammed the door behind her.

Anger visibly seethed out of Bay through a tight jaw and clenched fists. She sat still and tense for a moment before she gripped an empty plastic cup and hurled it towards the door in Honey's absence. The cup clattered to the ground, forcing my ears back on impact.

Bay's head fell into her hands as her shoulders shook. Tears fell down her face. Once again, I could not be there to lick her pain away.

— — —

The next morning, I went through my routine all over again: get up, train that stubbornly clueless puppy, retrieve a bone, and watch Bay. When I arrived, she was running outside by herself. Heavy clouds loomed in the sky, the threat of a storm hanging above her.

My tail tucked itself between my legs. Bay hated running alone. Even when my old knees slowed our running pace to a casual stroll, she never went outside for such an excursion without me. When Honey was around, they went out together. Bay felt more confident when she had someone with her. To see her alone meant Honey never came back.

I was forced to watch Bay continue alone as the clouds overhead darkened. When a man approached from the opposite direction, she moved to the farthest side of the path. A reaction she rarely had around women, children, and dogs.

The run did not last long. Her pace gradually slowed until her legs came to a complete stop at a park bench. Defeatedly, she plopped down on the black iron bench, her elbows on her knees and her head between her legs. Her shoulders rose and fell at a rapid pace as she struggled to catch her breath. I would not have known she was quietly crying had she not wiped at her eyes instead of her glistening forehead.

I whined at Bay's image on the television and stamped my paws against the floor. Bay was hurting more than ever, and I knew then that my efforts could not be in vain. She may not have been mourning over me in the same way anymore, but she still had no one to console her the way I could. I had promised to make her happy again, and I was going to uphold my vow.

Bay needed that puppy, and fast.