Jane and Towser - Rewards and Punishments

Chapter 4

It was late afternoon when Towser rose to his feet. He sniffed her head, then began to walk slowly away across the paddock. Jane scrambled to her feet and followed him. He paused to urinate on the fence, and she squatted and followed suit before they passed through the gate into the yard. There Towser led the way to the kitchen porch where Bravo already lay panting in the shade. The big dog raised his head alertly at the sight of Jane, but when she walked up to him, turned around, and lay by his side, he relaxed, not even bothering to put a paw on the loop of her trailing leash.

Lying there in the hot, still air between the dogs, patiently waiting to be fed, Jane felt strangely, lazily content. She was vaguely aware of her condition, and of the strange sight the group presented of a naked, collared, dirty and smelly woman lying in the dirt flanked by two large dogs, but she didn't care. Like them, she ignored the flies that buzzed around their heads and crawled on their bodies, though she envied them their tails, which every now and then disturbed the flies on her own haunches as the dogs occasionally twitched them .

As if at some invisible signal the dogs rose and sat before their feeding bowl, staring at the mouth of the chute down which their food would come . After a few seconds Jane joined them, sitting on her haunches a little way further off. The food plopped into the bowl, and the dogs lowered their muzzles into it eagerly. But Jane made no move. Her stomach roiling in hunger, she waited patiently until they'd finished eating and drunk from their water bowl. Then she gave a little whine of enquiry, looking from one dog to the other in mute appeal. Bravo stared at her dismissively before lowering his head between his paws, and Tower merely spared her a glance before walking slowly away around the corner of the house.

Taking this for permission, Jane slowly went to the bowls and, after a further glance at Bravo, she lowered her head and ate. Then she lapped from the water bowl before going back to Bravo and lying by his side again. He turned his head to look at her, but once again he made no move to trap her leash.

When the evening sky began to darken Bravo rose abruptly. Seizing her leash, he led the passive Jane slowly across the yard and into the small shed in which they spent their nights. Towser was already there, and the barred door closed behind them as Bravo thrust the loop on Jane's short leash onto its securing pole. Jane lay down and wriggled her body into the damp, smelly straw. Closing her eyes, she prepared to sleep.

She dozed and woke all through the interminable night, as patient as the dogs she lay with, waiting to be released. Once she had to rise to empty her bladder, turning to face the wall she sqatted to urinate, and when she lay down again her hips lay in the wet straw so short was her tether.

When the first, faint light of dawn relieved the pitch darkness of their prison, the dogs rose to lift their legs against the wall, then went and sat in front of the bars to wait for the door to swing open.

The first rays of sunlight illuminated the stable yard, and the whirr of the electric motor announced the opening of the door. The dogs rose to depart. Jane uttered a frantic whimper, and Bravo stopped, turned, and looked back at her. Seeming to come to a sudden decision, he trotted across the straw and released her. Then he walked out of the shed. He hadn't bothered to grab her leash in his jaws as he always had before, but Jane lost no time in scrambling after him, and she tried to keep pace with him as he trotted away. She was a long way behind him when she came into the big farm yard, but, apart from an occasional glance behind him, Bravo didn't seem perturbed, and he and Towser were already eating when she arrived panting to join them.

When they'd finished she was permitted to eat and drink without incident, then she lay down at Bravo's side and joined him in what seemed to be his favourite activity of staring drowsily into space. She was getting used to this mindless pastime; it was becoming quite pleasant to lie there motionless, all her mental activities switched off. And the time seemed to pass much quicker too. It was getting hard to remember how long she'd been like this – was this the third or the fourth morning of her ordeal? But it wasn't important, and she laid her head on the dog's thick left fore-leg and closed her eyes.

It was mid-morning when Bravo stirred at last. Getting to his feet, he yawned and stretched. Then he turned to look at her. Divining his intention, Jane picked the end of her leash just below its loop in her mouth and rose to her feet, offering the loop to him. He stared at her curiously for a moment before taking the loop and leading away. When he'd secured the end of her tether in the usual place, he licked her shoulder and trotted away. Jane stood and watched him out of sight, absurdly glad that she'd won the dog's approval. Then she lay down again, ignoring the flies and the smells of the immediate area, now being used by the dogs to urinate in, and with the turds she'd there deposited a day or so earlier now drying and crusted.

Once again it was Towser who rescued her in mid-afternoon. He paused to cock a leg against the wall while Jane squatted and emptied her bowels as unselfconsciously as if she'd been alone and sceened from any observation. There was a certain freedom, she decided, in no longer being forced to obey human social restrictions, and she compounded her lack of inhibitions by wriggling her haunches before her dog's eyes as she led the way to the water bowl. He seemed to lack interest, but she kept a wary eye on him as she lapped.

As on the day before, he led her to the cool grove in the paddock. There, Jane experimented with the limits of his trust in her by running around him in ever-widening circles. To her vast delight she found she could run quite quickly on the tips of her toes and the tips of her mitted hands – though with little forward vision. Further and further away she got, always keeping an anxious eye on the dog's reactions, until at a distance of thirty feet from where he lay watching her he gave a low growl and made to rise. Jane instantly changed course to become nearer to him, at which he visibly relaxed.

Tired and panting, Jane lay down by her dog, her head near his rump to take advantage of the occasional flicks of his tail to ward off the flies.

Shortly after he rose, and stared fixedly across the paddock, and Jane tensed, fearing she'd be led back and tethered, but whatever had attracted the dog's attention had vanished – if it had ever existed – and he made to lie down again. But Jane, in relief mixed with gratitude, plus a generous dash of sheer mischief, had risen to all-fours and gone down on her elbows, her head low to observe him between the arch of her spread thighs. She felt again the warm moistness well from her genitals, and saw Towser, intrigued both by her smell and her inviting posture, approach her from the rear. Seconds later she felt the cool dampness of his nose, and then the warm, wet roughness of his tongue. Then he withdrew a little, and Jane steeled herself for what she knew he would attempt to do.

He was astonishingly quick. One moment she could see him standing a foot or so behind her; the next his paws skidded across her shoulder blade to dangle around her neck, and his hairy chest and belly lay heavily on her back. The front of his hairy thighs pressed hard against the back of hers, and she experienced once again the sick the horrror of his member urgently probing her vagina for access. As before, she flung herself violently forward to escape, but it was more difficult this time as Towser had distributed his weight on her back more evenly. She succeeded in falling flat on her face in the cool grass, and lay there panting at the nearness of her escape. Towser had withdrawn; he sat on his haunches, his spine bent and his head lowered to his groin. licking his genitals as if in consolation.

Then he lay down on his belly,and stared at her philosophically. Jane, recovering her poise, turned on her side and faced him, giggling as she imagined the doggy thoughts running though his shaggy head. But another dog would have known them. His shapeless, slow thoughts – if that was how they could be described – were that this oddly-shaped, hairless bitch, with her intriguing mixture of smells, was fast coming on heat, and he meant to be there when she did. Some of the half-wild dogs of the neighbouring farms had been as difficult to mate with, but he'd always succeeded in the end. He paused to stare jealously around for competitors, discounting Bravo, whom he sensed was now too old. Finding none, either in view or within scenting range of his sensitive nose, he relaxed.

They dozed away the hot afternoon, and when the shadows lengthened Towser led the way back to the kitchen porch where Bravo already lay waiting to be fed. Food! At the very thought Jane's belly rumbled loudly and her mouth filled with saliva. She lay down at Bravo's side and hoped devoutly that the dogs would leave her enough of their meal.

The dogs rose to sit at their feeding bowl, their eyes fixed on the chute. When their rations slithered into the bowl, their noses thrust in to it together, and the only sounds were of their noisy eating.

Towser finished first. Giving Jane an absent glance as he passed, he trotted away into the evening. Jane debated whether to join Bravo at the bowl, but decided against it. As pack leader, he should not be disturbed while he ate, and she waited patiently for him to finish.

Bravo raised his huge head from the bowl, and licked his lips and muzzle. Then he walked slowly away without sparing Jane a glance. She waited a few moments then moved to the bowl. As usual, the dogs had eaten very little of the vegetarian dog food, except that they'd pushed it around in their search for the meat, and there was quite a lot of the coarse cereal mixer uneaten. Lowering her head, she snuffled up the remains of their meal. When it had all gone, she wiped her face with her forearm and licked the smears of food from her skin.

Sitting, she realised with surprise that she was alone. Bravo had gone, and for the first time Jane was left untethered and unsupervised by a dog. It felt strange not to have to wait for one of them to take her where they wanted her to go, and she wondered what to do with her new freedom.

In the end, she lay down where she was, and when Bravo poked his head around the corner on the other side of the yard, she obeyed his short bark and scurried over to him, the loop of her leash in her mouth. Later, tethered on the stinking straw, she drowsily wondered at her unthinking subservience.

She was aware that Bravo, in his dim, doggy fashion, was pleased with her. The bitch he'd been charged with caring for was obedient. He licked her flank affectionately; she was coming on heat, he noted, but he wasn't too interested. He was old, and there was something about her smell that put him off, somehow. Towser, on her other side, slept with his left foreleg flung over her waist, his nose buried between her breasts.

Huddled together for warmth, the three slept on.