That night we made pancakes

The night before we didn’t sleep. I remember. She tossed and turned all night, tense next to me. The winds were strong, pushing leaves and sticks and the fence against our house never ceased. My sensitive ears heard it all but to her it was all just noise. I got up and nuzzled next to her, pushing my nose into her arm with a reassuring lick. “It sounds like someone’s breaking in Chance.” She said to me in the dark giving me a reassuring pat and small scratch behind the ears. “Its ok, Ill protect you.” I tried to tell her. But since we don’t get to use the same language as the rest of you all I could do was comfort her, snuggling against her through the evening. We snoozed.
The next morning was like every other morning. A woman came and washed the clothes that had been in a glorious pile on the floor available for me to roll and play in for the last week. I watched, more than a little forlorn to see the pile disappearing so quickly. When she had gone the house was back to just the two of us again and we sat in the backyard watching the wet clothing flapping in the breeze. She walked back into the house and I followed, as I always do, hoping for food to appear in her hand. It didn’t. Instead she returned with her hot water machine and plugged it in before grabbing her little key for the closet in the back yard. I walked her there too, but stayed at a distance. Sometimes humans must be luckier than dogs. Our sensitive noses pick up the subtle and not so subtle notes in every situation, including the kabone. Vicious, foul smelling things. I sat waiting for her to return, right as she had closed the door I smelled it. Something was wrong. Something was wrong in our house! The smell, it was like something I had never smelled before and it was in our house. No wait, I had smelled it before. When they burned the beautiful trash piles I would dig through in the back of the schoolyard. I started barking, snarling, snarling at the doorway of our home. My fur behind my neck raised up, my body tense and ready for battle. Where was she? Couldn’t she hear me yelling my warning? She came out of the door and saw me, we locked eyes and I barked again, my voice reaching a new frenzy as I leaped to the door and backed back down. “Hurry!” I yelled, “hurry hurry something’s in there!” She caught my urgency and ran to me then heard the sound. I couldn’t believe she didn’t smell it But her urgency caught up to mine when she heard the sound. She raced into the house, me right on her heels. But there wasn’t a person, there was a thing. A bright orange thing raced up our wall, right next to our bed, reaching and eating its way up to the ceiling. The plastic of the chord had melted off to the floor. I could do nothing but sit and wait just in case. I growled warning to the monster. “If you so much as touch her I will kill you myself.” I sat and watched as she blew as hard as she could on the flames climbing the wall. For a moment it looked like she had won but it came back again, just as strong as before. I was ready to repond as back up, teeth bared and fur bristling but she reacted just as fast, grabbing her towel off the bed and putting it on top of the orange heat, smoothering it in seconds. The monster was gone, we had won. But the smell was intolerable. We both left, sitting back outside where we had been moments earlier, before the the attack. She walked back into the house and pulled the rest of the plastic away from the wall, tossing it outside where we couldn’t smell it anymore. We had won! “Good girl,” she cooed to me, rubbing me face and nose with soft touches and affection. “That was so good. You saved us. You saved us today.” I rested my face on her leg and could feel her hands shaking as she rested next to me. “Ill always protect you,” I wanted to tell her. I pressed my shoulder against her, pushed my nose back into her hand and looked up with my most affectionate look. We spent the rest of the day eyeing the wall warily, waiting for the creature to reappear, but it never did.
That night for dinner she presented me with a plate of the best food humans have ever created. Banana pancakes. After dinner we curled up again in the bed, ready to finish the very long day. I stood guard, she slept. The way its supposed to be.