On Gain

     He had acquired a dog. For now, anyway. It was the neighbors. They left it behind, or so it seemed, when they sold and moved from the trailer on the hill above him. He didn’t mind. It was a fine dog: loving, well behaved, clean. It surprised him how ideal a pet the animal was after living where it had, in the squalor and drugs of that trailer. He refused to give his neighbors any benefit of doubt, credit for the dog's good nature, guessing instead that they couldn’t beat the kindness out it.

     The dog was a male of mixed breeding, red with a hint of black saddle. It had the knot of a bloodhound on the top of its skull and the manipulative eyes of a Labrador. It slept on his bed as he wrote, snoring softly at times and bear-like at others, but soundly and contented.

     He had acquired a dog. For now anyway. And he didn’t mind at all.