Chapter 1

Hi. My name is Butch. I can't remember ever having another name. This is a little unusual, but I got special permission from – well, I don't really know who, but I have permission to put my version of events up on the internet.

There are a few things I guess you should know about me. First, I'm a Veteran of the Afghanistan thing. Did they ever decide if it was an official war? I don't know. I do know that I was there for over a year. I was a guard at a big supply and ammunition place.

Second, I'm dead. Maybe I should have put that first. It's kinda important. That's why I don't know who is in charge here – or even where 'here' is. Right now, I'm just thinking this story, and it appears on a kind of monitor in front of me. Somehow. When I'm all done, I guess, somebody will hit that giant 'send' button and you'll get to see it.

Third, I don't have a very big voca – a big choice of words. But I'm smart, or I was smart, I guess. I know a lot of words considering I'm a dog. Or was a dog. Somehow my mind – or my spirit, maybe – expanded and I learned some more words. So, I have all the good and bad things about being a dog. Like for example: My coat was dark grey on my back and lighter grey elsewhere. I'm what people call color-blind, so I can only see things in what you call shades of grey. To me, that's the way the world is; I have nothing to compare it to. My partner, Jim Carpenter, said that I was a German Shepherd dog, so that might give you an idea of what I look like. Big for a German Shepherd.

So ... why did I get special permission to put together my version of events? I just wanted to clear my name, I guess. And somebody thought that would be a good idea.

I was trained as a recovery dog first. You know, the dogs that go around to disasters, like collapsed buildings and tornado sites, and find where people are buried under the junk that's covering them up. I was also trained to smell out dead bodies that are buried in the ground. Well, or living bodies, but there weren't many living bodies under the ground. That's kinda the same thing as finding people who were trapped in rubble, you know. Then the Army decided they needed some recovery dogs in Afghanistan, 'cause of all the explosions there, but they wanted me to learn about guarding, too. And that training included attacking people who were trying to get into the thing I was guarding. Or hurt the person I was guarding. So they made an offer to Jim to join and to take me along with him.

Like a dumb cat, he said yes. We would have been perfectly fine just living in the small city near the big city of Chicago, getting on flights to here and there – wherever somebody needed to have somebody discovered under rubble. Usually there'd be the same bunch of recovery dogs at these emergencies. There was Marty – he was a bloodhound that could track people over land, too. He had a great nose. My favorite was Anabelle – she was a bitch from somewhere in the southwest. She was a little smaller than I was, but a German Shepherd too; everybody made a big fuss when I mated with her while she was in heat once. We were supposed to be working a tornado area in Oklahoma, but she – well she smelled right, you know? Anyway, we snuck off to the middle of the field and I jumped on her real fast, before Aristotle could get there. Aristotle was a small little recovery dog – a yappy terrier who thought he was dog enough to take Anabelle. He wasn't. He didn't even get to sniff her ... I'm getting sidetracked, I think.

Anyway, Anabelle got pregnant and had a litter of five. I never got to see them, and frankly, I really didn't care about them much. I really liked Anabelle, though. Next time she's in heat, I'll ... wait, I'm dead. I won't ever get to mate with Anabelle or any other bitch again. That's one thing about my current situation that I don't like much.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Afghanistan. Jim and I did our time in that place and then we got to go home. I was getting too old they said. In human years, I was only nine. Hell, I was seven when I went into Army training, so what did they expect? Maybe it was the explosion we were close to. Who knows how the Army thinks? I got some metal in my right rear leg and Jim got some in his ass. That stupid piece of metal hurt more than a cat scratch on the eye. I got one of those, too, sniffing around in a building in Montreal, once, looking for people. Damn cats!

I don't remember the operation at all. I guess I slept through it. When I woke up I had this ridiculous plastic thing around my neck and I couldn't even lick where I was hurt – and I couldn't lick my ass or my balls either, and I wanted to so bad. When they took the plastic thing off, I spent a long time licking my balls and dick. There was two weeks of dirt on them, and they itched.

Anyway, at least they let me into the room where Jim was. He was on his stomach, 'cause like I said, he got the metal from the explosion in his ass. Some idiot said that he was crazy for trying to save me. Which is what he did – he jumped on me, when the explosion happened. He knocked me to the ground and got metal in his ass. I wanted a piece of that idiot's ass, but I couldn't really go after him without Jim's permission. But I wanted to, and I let the idiot know when he came to visit Jim. I know a lot of words, but even more smells. That guy smelled like a dog hater. He probably had cats at home. Like I said: he was an idiot.

So, shortly after that, we both got a medal – they were the same, a dark, dark grey fabric thing attached to a kinda round metal thing. Jim showed it to me and said we had earned a purple heart. I looked at him and licked his hand. I smelled the medal thing and it wasn't interesting at all, just cold and hard. After we got the medal things, and spending some time recovering from our injuries, we got sent back to Chicago.

We went back to our old job of recovery, but we didn't get the hard cases anymore. Jim and I both had a little limp – he favored his left leg and I favored my right. It was only a little bit, and I think we'd have been fine, but they didn't want to let the 'war hero dog' do anything that might be dangerous. So it wasn't as much fun.

We did go to the park, though, near our home. Jim would throw a ball or a stick and I'd get it and bring it back. Pretty dumb, I know, but what else was there to do? Squirrels, of course. They were pretty fast and could climb trees, so I never got one. Fun to chase though. I chased after some tail, of course. Funny how people use the same phrase for getting after a bitch in heat. But whenever I'd get close, Jim would say, "Butch! No! Down!" and then he put a leash on me. And there I'd be, with my dick all hard and sticking out, and the bitch would be making 'those moves' that told me it was okay to mount her. But the bitch's owner would say something like, "Keep him away from Fifi." And that would be that.

Big disappointment, let me tell you.

Anyway, one time Jim threw a fuzzy little ball, and it rolled under a bench in the park. Trouble was, there was somebody sitting on the bench. So I ran around it for a while, barking like crazy. I'd make a move toward the ball under her feet but then dodge back. She got the idea. Jim was just coming up near the bench, when she reached down and waved the ball back and forth.