Bay's Wish [ONC 2024]

03 - Training

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.