Story Sample

[stickmaker]

Excerpt from the next Masks story:



 

"I sell Newfoundland Border Crossings," said the man, proudly.

 

"The which?" said Vic, obviously confused. 

 

"I breed, raise, train and sell dogs which are half Newfoundland and half Border Collie," he elaborated. "Very intelligent, with strong instincts. Fantastic working dogs as well as great pets. Just be aware that if you don't keep them busy, they'll _find_ something to do. Like disassemble your couch."

 

Comments

[kengr]

If they *can* disassemble a couch (as opposed to tearing it apart) they are obviously more than your average dogs. :-)

and that reminded me of a story idea I have....


A guy in some sort of vest gets the attention of the school secretary, "New transfer student. Rusty Johnson?"

"You don't look like a student."

"I'm not, I'm just his disability aid."

A large dog (wolf?) puts his paws on the counter and says "Hi, I'm Rusty. I need him 'cause I don't have hands."

Rusty has an odd accent, but he's fairly understandable.

[stickmaker]

The "disassemble your couch" comment was inspired by reading about someone who came home and discovered that their border collie had stripped all the vinyl siding off the back of their house for as high as he could reach. There just wasn't enough in the fenced-in back yard to keep him occupied.

The "Newfoundland Border Crossing" comes from a magazine article I read about an experiment with just such crossbreeds.

Heh. Your idea is like a more civilized version of a story I read many years ago, in reprint of a Fifties horror anthology comic. In one of the stories, two criminals plan to rob a blind man who goes for a walk with his guide dog every night, at the same time on the same path. The idea is that he won't be able to describe them to the police.

The robbers jump out in front of the man and his large dog, and demand his money. The man says "There's two of them; one directly ahead and the other a bit to the left."

Turns out he's the guide human for a blind werewolf.

It also reminds me of the online comic _Freefall_: http://freefall.purrsia.com/

If you aren't familiar, it's about Sam Freefall and Florence. The latter is a Bowman's Wolf, a biological AI based on a genetically engineered wolf.

[kengr]

Oh yeah, I've been following Freefall for years. Sam is quite a character. So is Florence. But I loved Sam's account of how his species got fire.

Rusty isn't a were. He's a teenage boy who got turned into a dog (more likely wolf, but he goes with dog because it causes less trouble.

after a lot of thought, I'm probably going with a curse as the reason why.

Physically he's a canid. but he's got color vision as well as any advantages wolf vision might give (low light stuff probably). And he's got the canine nose, which is a pain at times.

Obviously, the lack of hands is a big problem. So was the canine vocal tract until he learned how to speak understandably.

He does have a gizmo that helps a lot. It's a web of sensors (possibly implanted under his scalp) that picks up neural activity well enough to type and mouse with it (bluetooth, natch)

So he isn't as handicapped as he might be. Just not able to pick stuff up or the like.

PE will be "interesting". So will art class.

Bullies (and possible bigots) will be fun too.

[sraun]

Oh, my. I've heard about, and met, Border Collies! I knew about a Newfoundland when I was growing up - one of my brother's fellow student's family owned a Newfie and a Pyrenees. The Newfie was actually pretty lazy - the Pyrenees liked to follow the daughter to school.

We'd drive by their house occasionally and our chihuahua would go crazy barking at them. The Newfie would come bounding up to take a look, put his front paws on the door just below the window, and the early-60's station wagon would rock!

The description of that cross sounds totally accurate to me!