Gift-Fic: She's A Dog Person Too
by: Flaming Trails

“So…does he just keep going in circles like this forever?”

Victor snorted and shook his head. “No no. Sometimes he does figure eights, or tries to jump on things. He gets tired eventually.” He looked again at his new pet, zipping around the kitchen on his stout little legs, thrilled with the simple act of running. “Very eventually.”

Lisa giggled. “I can see why you named him Lightning.”

“Well, technically I named him that because he has a zig-zaggy white patch on his forehead,” Victor explained. Lightning, seemingly sensing he was the topic of conversation, ran under his chair, barking. “I wasn’t expecting him to live up to it so – enthusiastically.”

“Well, he’s still a cutie,” Lisa declared, leaning over and patting her leg. “Come on, Lightning, here boy!”

Lightning responded immediately to the summons, bouncing up on hind legs to put his paws on her knee. Lisa scooped him up and held him in her lap as he tried to sniff every bit of her his nose could reach. “How come it took you so long to get a dog in the first place?” she added, scratching him between the ears and getting his stubby tail wagging even faster. “You’re always going on about how Scraps was your best friend growing up. What was the hold-up?”

“Well – ”

Ruff! Ruff!

Victor looked up to see Ferdinand bound past the window, his wide blue wings sending leaves and flower petals swirling through the air in mini-tornadoes. He turned back to Lisa with a grin. “Exhibit A.”

Lisa blushed and fiddled with her glasses as Lightning yapped in Ferdinand’s general direction. “Right,” she said, shaking her head. “You know, you’d think I’d be the last person to forget that Ferdy’s technically half-dog.”

“It’s understandable,” Victor assured her. “Doc still jumps sometimes if Ferdy surprises him with a bark. Goodness, he even startles me sometimes…” He glanced fondly out the window. “But yes, Ferdinand was more than enough when Alice and I first moved in. Honestly, if Alice hadn’t seen ‘Corgi Puppies For Sale, Babbage Heights Apartments’ in the paper and thought one might be a nice gift for me…I don’t know if I ever would have gotten a ‘traditional’ dog at all.”

“Mmmm.” Lisa gave Lightning one last scratch around the ears, then put him back down on the floor. “Happy that things turned out the way they did?”

Victor watched as Lightning promptly resumed his speedy circuit around the kitchen, tongue hanging out and perfectly content with life. He smiled brightly. “Very.”

The End