Birth of a hunting dog Part 4

I don't know if you could call it Stockholm Syndrome where you grow an attachment to your captors.

Not long after being set free, I found myself feeling miserable. I tried to finish school, but for some reason found myself longing for my life as a dog.

I kept thinking I was going crazy. I didn't tell anyone about those feelings. I didn't want to be locked up in a psycho ward.

But when I came home at nights, I would strip off my clothes and slip for a little while into dogmode. I missed the old man. He was a kind master to me. I missed his dogs, they were more like brothers to me. I felt more like one of them than as a human.

I would look at dogs and their masters and be envious. Deep down the feelings grew greater. I wasn't a human. I was an animal. I was a dog.

Finally, I decided I had had enough. I told my family I wanted to go back to work on the farm I had worked on for so many months. I began making plans.

I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know the man's name, so I couldn't call him. I didn't know how he would react. Maybe he wouldn't take me back as his dog.

But I wanted to try. I put what money I had into an account. Sold my car. Every stitch of clothes I had except what was on my back, along with my furniture, I gave to goodwill.

I had it all planned out. It was the start of hunting season. I called a cab and had the driver take me out into the country to a dirt road next to the man's property. He was surprised when I asked him to drop me off. I watched as the taxi drove off. Once it disappeared over the horizon, I stripped off the last clothes that I owned.

I put them in a trash can across the road and suddenly felt a cool autumn breeze blow against my naked body. I'll get used to it, I thought. I walked over to the barbed-wire fence at the edge of the man's property and climbed through and walked deeper into the woods.

I knew at some point he would be out hunting with the rest of his dogs. I long to hear their yelps in the distance, but walked deeper and deeper into the woods, but didn't hear them. Suddenly, I came up to a familiar site, the lake where I went swimming, where he forced me completely naked out of the water those months before.

I grinned when I saw him out on a boat. There he was with Duke and another dog by his side as he was fishing. I didn't care how cold the water was, I dove in.

Usually I would have been wearing a life jacket when we were duck hunting, but I was a pretty good swimmer. I swam up to the boat as much like a dog as I could. He didn't notice until I let out a howl as I was approaching the boat.

It was one he taught me. It was one Duke was familiar with. Duke let out a howl in reply.

"Oh my gosh, Bullet, you've come home!" the man shouted. "Come here boy."

He pulled me into the boat, like he had when we went duck hunting. I shook the water off me.

"Good boy, I know you're cold," he said, wrapping a blanket around me.

"Just a couple of more hours of fishing boy, then we'll go home," he said.

I took my place between the other two dogs. He slipped into his pocket and gave me a dog biscuit and petted my head. I turned over to my stomach and let him play with me with his feet for a second.

"I never thought you'd come home, boy," he said. "But I missed you. So have the other boys."

I followed the other two dogs up to the truck. The man commanded me to sit. As he did, Duke walked up and froze into a pose, which I knew very well. He was the head dog. I sniffed his ass. It was like a sweet fragrance.

"Good boy," the man said with a laugh as he went to the truck.

He pulled my old collar out of the glove box.

"I had been saving it," the man said. "I don't know why."

He put it around my neck. I licked his hands and his face in appreciation.

I hopped into the back of the truck as he commanded. He slipped the chain onto my collar.

"I guess I won't need locks this time," he said.

I barked with excitement.

A smile came on my face as we pulled up to the back of the house. The dog house, the pen were there, as were the other dogs.

I was home.