#dogs/coyotes/wolves just feel different from one another
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Coyotes and wolves are hostile competitors in the wild, generally, even going out of their way to kill one another's offspring.
Though I'm sure this is more learned than genetic (neophobia and competition are genetic but lupus-latrans rivalry isn't), were you ever concerned that your coydog and your wolfdog wouldn't get along for that reason?
How did they get along when you first did introductions, and what kinds of safety measures did you take when introducing them?
How do coydogs differ from wolfdogs in your experience?
Do you feel any differently about coydog ethics than you do wolfdog ethics-- ethics of owning, handling, breeding, and selling?
Have you ever encountered a coywolfdog? What do you think they're like (or what would they be like) by comparison to coydogs and wolfdogs?
I may have met one at a wolf habitat, I think, but it may have just been a coywolf without the "dog" component. I forgor
I've been traditionally anti-wolfdogs for concerns about unpredictability -- thinking it best to place them in wildlife rehab centers and not to deliberately breed them -- but I've been poking around dogblr and hearing about more nuanced takes like those on your blog. I am learning ^^'
I grew up as a total wolfaboo from age 10, my oldest special interest being canines in general. Everything about them -- dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, culpeos and the "Fuegian dog," Aenocyon dirus, other woofers like maned wolves and bush dogs, domestication and evolution processes -- fascinates me and I always want to know everything about them lmao
Howdy! This is a *great* series of questions and I'll do my best to answer in depth!
In the wild, wolves and coyotes aren't always direct competitors, as they often have different prey types, but they are territorial towards eachother and interbreeding/cohabitation is uncommon unless in an area where both species are under high outside pressure (ie, hunting derbies, bounties, etc) that reduce the number of available mates within their species. But wolfdogs at least benefit from a mellowing of instincts from the 40-60 years of captive breeding behind them and aren't going to be as sharply inclined towards behaviors their wild counterparts might exhibit.
Zephyr, my wolfdog, and Basil, my coydog, come from *very* different backgrounds. Zephyr is a purposfully bred dog from many decades of selective breeding for mild and sociable nature, whereas Basil was from an oops breeding between a wild male coyote and a female farm dog. However, both were raised with a lot of interaction with other canines and developed excellent canine social skills even when there's a difference in "dialect".
Basil's owner brought him into my yard on a leash. Zephyr is not a territorial dog, and was excited to see a new friend. We had them both on leash and hung out near eachother and let them both settle and relax and observe eachother without being able to directly interact, for about an hour, as we talked and went over what his routine looked like and how we were going to approach building trust and establishing a good relationship. We then took them out on a walk together, allowing them to have short interactions on loose leashes and then redirect back to us for a treat. Basil was a little unsure at first, since most of his dog friends were small dogs, but Zephyr was happy to back off if he got tense, and her respect of his space helped him open up to eventually offering play and greeting behavior towards her.
Ending that walk on a positive note, I set Basil up in his crate and his owners left. Basil got to see how my dogs interacted with me over the coming days, and would get supervised playtime within the secure dog run with her. They had moments of disagreement but seeing how good they both were at de-escalation of conflict using body language, I eventually allowed them to spend time together loose in the house with less supervision (ie I was home but not right there) and together in the enclosure when I wasn't home.
To be honest, a lot of it is knowing your animal and how they respond. I knew that even if a fight *did* break out, Zephyr is extremely conflict avoidant and would end it by either disengaging and diffusing, or pinning him and then disengaging if he wouldn't let up. My biggest concern was him being a pediatric neutered male, if she would tolerate him being around during breeding season, but that didn't end up being an issue at all, she adored him all during winter and he was even the first dog she wanted to introduce to her puppies <3
I think coydogs benefit from being less popular than wolfdogs, since they can be particularly sensitive to poor handling, but it would be nice to see at least one breeder approaching it responsibly, especially for animal filmwork roles, rather than the handful of litters produced each year being random crosses between a pet coyote and a random dog they get along with.
I know of a couple wolfdogs who also have coyote in the mix and vice versa. They seem to not be a great blend for the most part. Quite a few of these coywolfdog crosses came from Tim Stark (recently infamous via Tiger King).
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"Universal" Monsters: The Update
After the last post went over so well, I figured you all would like to see the 'results' of your input and further research.
The original idea was the focus on mythology, folklore, occult, and religious beings. Truthfully, I don't think categorically, anything can really be added to this list even if we include modern monsters. But feel free to mention things you think I missed or should be expanded upon into their own categories.
Humans Who Have Passed On - This is a broad category of undead beings. Notable Subtypes include:
Blessed/Damned - People who've gone to an afterlife and come back from that.
Ghosts - Your standard spirit of those who've passed on. A subtype of this is the Haunt, which is a location so full of death that it's not so much one ghost, but a gestalt entity of horror.
Revenants - Undead that are physical. This can be a zombie, a slasher, or any other physical being that's come back from death.
The Border of Life and Death - Women who die in childbirth and the children who die similarly tend to take on special significance in cultures and tend to come back as some of the most horrifying monsters in many cultures.
Spirits - Incorporeal beings that often embody a concept. Subtypes include:
Elemental Embodiments.
Spirits of Intellect - less in religion and more in occult circles, these are plied for information since they just 'know' things.
Larva - another occult concept, basically the magical equivalent of decomposers. They eat leftover magical and emotional effluvia.
Magical Assistants - Many magical traditions invoke different spirits to perform different tasks. Sometimes, it's gods, but lesser more direct spirits are also invoked.
Patrons - Spirits of Places, Buildings, Homes, or even crafts. Humans have a special relationship with the latter spirits, and they are often invoked to aid in tasks related to the home or work.
Fae/The People Who Are Not People - A common group of supernatural beings that are like people but have both powers and limits that make them more and less than people. Often tied to the natural world.
The High Fae/The Arch Fae - Sometimes conflated with the Nordics of UFO Lore (Yeah, UFO lore has racist connotations to it). These are the High Elves, the Court Faeries, and similar beings.
Communal Fae - These are the "Common" fae, shorter in stature and often seen in groups. The "Greys" of UFO lore. Also, the common short-statured Elves, Dwarves, Svartalves, Goblins, and possibly Huldrafolk).
House Fae - A specific variety of Fae similar to the Patron spirits, but more corporeal. Brownie, Domovoi, Knockers, Gremlines -- all beings tied to the home and hearth, but distinctly 'other'.
"The Little People" - Liliputian Humanoid beings, from "pixies" to Abatwas.
Merfolk - This one is pretty clear. They are like the above Fae varieites, but tied to the oceans.
The Unreal Being - A lot of fae creatures can be just... weird. Not full hybrids, but often hybrid as a base before weirder things are put down. Weird is the key for such beings to show that they are "Others".
Giants - They're like humans, but bigger and more 'primal'. But mostly, they are big.
Giant - This is the basic giant, a person who is bigger.
Ogre - Like a giant, but usually not as big, and less human in appearance. Trolls also fit in here via the popular conception (thou Troll is like the words Faerie and Yokai, as a general catch-all term for supernaturals not infernal or divine).
Wildman/Bigfoot - A big person, covered in hair.
Animal-Like - Animals! But Magical.
Animal Bride/Animal Shifter - An animal who turns into a person, or a person who turns into an animal. These include: Wolves, Bears, Boars, Cats, Hares, Owls, Crocodiles, Lions, Hyena, Jaguars, Leopards, Coyotes, Tigers, Seal/Sea Lion, Frog, Swan, Peahen, Cow/Bull/Ox/Cape Buffalo, Shark, Hedgehog, Fox, Dog, Jackal, River Dolphin, Dove, and Cranes. I'm sure there are more.
Ancient/Sacred Animal - Often greater in size or with magical powers, but still an animal. Probably can talk, but not always.
Yaogwai - An animal that has lived for so long and gained so much wisdom that it's become a magical being. Often taking human form. The age part is more important than the shifting part.
Chimeras - Mixtures of multiple animals or impossible combinations (like Mothman)
"The Foreigner" - Like Chimera but for people. These range from people with a face in their chest and no head to those with a giant foot they use for shade, to just normal-looking people with strange habits. A product of xenophobia.
Sea Monsters - Monsters of the ocean depths. Often hybridized with land animals or otherwise of 'abnormal' proportions.
Demons - Demons are negative spirits, beings that cause maladies, calamities, and other things. They are dangers, warnings, and cultrual tools to explain away problems or to guide culture.
Hag - Fears of aging and death manifest in these evil magical old women who do all sorts of evils to the world. Sometimes just referred to as "Witches" in those cultures, but more specifically when a full dehumanizing aspect is applied to them rather than just having them be malicious spellcasters. Yes, it is often found in cultures with rampant misogyny.
Fiends/Lesser Demons - Your "Generic" Demon/Malicious spirit.
Devils - Tempters and smooth talkers. Bargaining beings.
Disease Spirit - Spirits used to explain away various illnesses.
Boogiemen - Spirits used to warn children away from activities or locations that often have mundane dangers they won't take seriously.
Vampire - A variation of the Disease Spirit, specifically accounting sickness/pestilence with a being literally 'draining the life' from others. Often given a lot of powers, but also the word itself is bandied about to describe so many monsters that it loses a bit of its meaning.
The Beautiful Lure - Succubus/Incubus/Temptresses of the Road. It's something between a Devil and a Boogiemen, but because the archetype is so common, I placed it here.
Dragons - Big, Scaley, Dangerous. Sometimes exhales a dangerous substance.
Wyrm - Dragons without limbs
Horned Water Serpent - Dragons of North America, associated with the earth and poison/disease.
Lindworm - Dragons with two limbs (legs).
Wyvern - Dragons with four limbs (wings and legs).
Classical Dragon - Dragons with six limbs (wings, arms, and legs)
Naga - Shapeshifting Serpents of India and Indonesia
Amphiptere - Dragons with wings
Asiatic Dragon - Ryu, Lung, Rong, etc. Serpentine, magical, 4 limbs, fly via magic.
Feathered Serpent/Wadjet/Quetzalcoatl/Seraphim(?) - Sometimes winged, sometimes not winged.
Celestials - Spirits and beings associated with the skies/divine realms
Standard Celestials (Angels, and so on)
Personal Guardian Being - "Guardian Angels" or "Aspects of the Soul", it depends on the culture.
Celestial Animals - Animals associated with the divine realms (often Chimerical)
Hellhounds/Black Dogs - Dogs of darkness and the night. Sometimes demonic, sometimes not. A lot of folklore around these beings. Often they are guards.
Automata - Rare, they are inanimate objects brought to life as a psuedo-living thing either by gods or humans. Includes Golems, Karakuri, Automata (IE: the Greek Talos). More common in modern times.
Plant Monsters - Plant monsters are actually very rare in folklore. Most early ones simply expelled poisonous vapors/gases. By the 1800s, they began to move and invade locations (a dark inversion of colonialism) or used to enhance the exoticism of a location. When insectivorous plants were discovered in 1875, they got nastier, and 'reports' of such things as man-eaters began to appear. By 1889, the monsters became truly mobile. And in 1907, we get our first Fungal Infection/Takeover Plant monster.
Guardians - Spirits and beings which are designed to guard locations or even concepts. Often associated with justice or retribution as well. These can range from Tengu, Fu Dog/Shisha, and Otoroshi, to Dakini, Harpy, Furies, Sphinxes, and Gorgons.
Yes, Gorgon's heads were used like a "Mr. Yuk" face in Ancient Greece.
#Monsters#Folklore#Mythology#Monster#Demon#Creature#Fae#Dragon#Vampire#Devil#Black Dog#Hellhound#Giant#Plant Monster#Guardian#Automata#Spirits#Triffid#Werewolf#Therianthropy#Animal Spirit#Djinn#Yokai#Merfolk#Mermaid#Ghost#Revenant#Saint#Damned#Elemental
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Blue Eyes
I’ve always been passionate about animals, even when I was a very young girl. I used to beg my parents repeatedly almost every week to take me to the zoo, and the family television was practically always tuned to Animal Planet, much to the chagrin of my video game obsessed older brother. I wanted to go into veterinary medicine as a career, but the cost of schooling, amount of time it would take to get my degree, and frankly grueling work hours eventually made it clear to me that that wouldn’t be an option.
Still, I made the best of the hand I was dealt, choosing to work at various animal shelters, non-profits, and other organizations associated with animals. I even had a short stint working as a janitor at the zoo I used to be so excited to visit as a child, though the commute was Hell. I had to quit that last job because it turned out that behind the scenes the zoo administration was taking far worse care of their animals than I would have liked, and I didn’t feel comfortable being complicit in their mistreatment.
In any event, this path in life eventually led me to work at a small wildlife rescue. It wasn’t an especially glamorous position, and I will freely admit the pay was abysmal, but I had a chance to make a genuine difference in the world, and that made me happy. For every sick deer or injured goose we nursed back to health, I felt like I had a real purpose.
It wasn’t always a particularly pleasant gig, if I'm being entirely honest. Even the most ardent nature lover will soon find that the task of saving wild animals begins to lose its luster after week after week of squirrel bites and diseased bird shit. Nonetheless, I genuinely did enjoy my job. At least until that final night. The night that made me never want to work with animals ever again.
See, while we didn’t have the staff to do this every night, when we had a chance to we would have a skeleton crew run the graveyard shift, since a lot of the time we’d come in the next morning to find a half-dozen missed calls from people who wanted help with some nocturnal critter or another. I was happy for the extra pay, and most of the time things were fairly quiet, so I had a chance to put up my feet and read a book or mess about on my phone in between having frantic callers ask if they could bring in a bat that had flown into their home.
That particular evening I was pacing between social media apps on my phone out of boredom when we got a call from what sounded like a very distressed middle aged man.
“This is the _____ Wildlife Rescue, how can I help you?”
“Hi uh. Well. I don’t know how to put this exactly, I know it sounds crazy, but there’s a wolf in my front yard.”
He was right. It did sound crazy. From what I was aware, there were no wolves in this state outside of zoo animals, and I highly doubted one had managed to escape captivity at my former place of employment and find its way over to this relatively isolated area. The place I lived in was not a large town by any means, little more than a couple streets full of shops surrounded by a vestigial suburb and some farmland.
“Sir, are you absolutely sure it’s a wolf? We don’t really have those around here, it’s significantly more likely it might just be a stray dog, maybe a coyote at worst.”
“I don’t- I don’t know for sure but… it’s big. Real big. If it’s a dog it’s certainly the biggest one I’ve ever seen. And there’s something wrong with how it moves, like it’s got a limp or something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think it might only have three legs.”
I got the man’s address and thanked him for his time before getting up to go grab the other member of the skeleton crew, let’s call him Jake. Jake had been there a little bit longer than me, and we generally got along pretty well. He used to be studying to become a veterinary technician but the stress got to him and he decided to take a job here instead. His experience with at least some veterinary medicine made him a great asset, though he did sometimes make some very stupid decisions. I once had to stop him trying to grab a rattlesnake with his bare hands just because he was so excited for an opportunity to catch a snake. However, the main reason I wanted him to accompany me was that he was quite a large man, and there was something about the whole situation which from the get-go made me very nervous. I felt a lot more comfortable bringing along someone who looked like he could bench press 400 lbs if he had to.
The farmhouse that the man had called from was only a quick drive away, maybe 15 minutes at most. At the time I thought this was quite fortunate. While the full moon was shining bright enough for us to see the road fairly well, I never liked driving long distances on these country roads after dark. I always worried a deer or something might jump out in front of the Wildlife Rescue’s crappy old van or that’d I’d take a wrong turn or something like that.
Unfortunately for Jake and I, we arrived without any difficulties at the farmhouse, and the animal was still there. I can’t quite bring myself to say it was a wolf, not after what I experienced.
It certainly looked like one though, which was quite the shock. Both Jake and I let out a near simultaneous murmur of “Holy shit” as we caught our first glimpse of the thing. Something people often forget is that wolves are big, up to 180 lbs at the largest. For comparison, huskies only get up to about 60 lbs at the most. This thing was enormous.
“That has to be a wolf. No way in Hell is this thing just a stray dog”, mused Jake.
“It might be a wolfdog,” I suggested, “it doesn’t quite look like a wolf does it? There’s something off about the proportions.”
Something about the thing’s physiology bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It just wasn’t moving the way it should have. I was reminded of a video I’d seen a couple months ago of an extremely realistic animatronic, something made for an amusement park I think. It was quite well-crafted to be sure, it didn’t even tick off the usual “uncanny valley” alarm bells when I looked at its face, but the movements weren’t quite right. I felt the same way looking at that thing in front of the farmhouse.
The animal was looking at us now, staring towards the van, its eyes glowing in the reflected beam from our headlights. It didn’t run though, it just continued to pace, looking at us. Jake and I were stepping out of the van at this point, not sure what our next course of action would be, but determined to do our best regardless.
I found myself fiddling with my necklace as we approached; a gift from my grandfather. It’s a makeshift medallion fashioned out of an old silver dollar and suspended on a leather cord. He’d had a little hobby of making jewelry from old knick knacks, and at home I had a small collection of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and the like, all made from various random objects. He’d unfortunately passed away a few years back, and I tried to wear at least something he’d made every day as a way to keep his memory alive. I recall him telling me after he gave me the medallion, “Now you’ll be safe in a gunfight, so long as you wear this over your heart” with a grandfatherly wink, as if I was at any risk of being a victim of old west banditry in the 21st century.
I was snapped out of my idle remembering by the sound of Jake’s voice, though I didn’t quite catch what he said. “Hm?” I muttered, indicating that he should repeat himself.
“I said it’s gotta be someone’s pet. Some rich guy bought himself a three legged wolfdog and it got out of the house maybe?” he said. Now that we were a little closer, it was clear that the animal was only walking on three legs, though it moved about with quite a degree of dexterity, as though it had long grown used to the condition.
It kept pacing back and forth, back and forth, just looking at us. Its eyes were a brilliant blue, which was a definite tip off that whatever this thing was, it wasn’t a proper wolf. When it comes to canines, blue eyes are strictly a trait of dogs. There was something else I noticed though, its tail wasn’t quite right. It seemed too stiff, and a bit too long. Suddenly it clicked in my brain what was wrong with it.
“It’s not missing a leg. Look,” I said, pointing, “it’s just sticking out one of its hind legs. Maybe it’s wounded or something like that?”
As if in response to my words, the “wolfdog” stopped pacing, looking directly at me specifically. I could feel when it made eye contact with me, those blue eyes boring into my own. I could have sworn I saw its lips turn up slightly at the edges, forming a mischievous grin. It lowered its previously extended hind leg to the ground slowly, deliberately. It didn’t have a tail at all. I doubt that it ever did. Then it began to limp towards us, whimpering softly.
How to describe what it sounded like? It’s a little difficult. I’d heard an anecdote once from an online acquaintance who worked with birds regarding an old crow they were taking care of. Crows are excellent mimics of sounds, and will often repeat noises that they frequently hear. Well, evidently, this particular crow had taken to mockingly “cawing” in a human voice. Someone must have been trying to “talk” to the bird by crudely imitating the crow’s own cries, to which the wily corvid had mirrored back their own mimicry, like a language’s native speaker mocking someone with a foreign accent by repeating a particularly egregious mispronunciation.
The “wolfdog” sounded like something copying a human copying a dog, its whimpers were artificial, stilted, almost campy. It sent shivers up my spine immediately, but Jake didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re right, he’s definitely hurt and judging from how he’s reacting to us, I’d certainly wager he’s somebody’s lost pet. I vote we take him back to the rescue and try and contact a domestic animal shelter in the morning, I’m sure we can find a cage that will fit him just for one night,” said Jake, sounding almost enthusiastic. I noticed how quickly the animal had changed from an “it” to a “he”. Humans will start bonding with anything if it seems pitiful. Jake held out a hand for the thing to sniff.
“Jake, don’t-” I started to say, about to warn him that it was equally likely the thing was so seemingly friendly due to rabies, but before the words could leave my lips, the animal was already licking his hand meekly.
“Come on boy,” Jake said in a playful tone, “let’s get you in the van, then we’ll get you some treats when we get back to the rescue.”
Jake led the animal back to the van, talking to it in a goofy sing-song tone of voice as though it were his beloved childhood dog while it made faux-whines and pretended to limp. I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t tell that something was wrong with it. From behind, I could see very clearly there was no sign of docking or anything else that could have resulted in the “wolfdog’s” tail being removed. It was as though it was born without one. There was something else too, something I couldn’t put my finger on, about its legs. It felt like I was missing something obvious, like when a word is at the tip of your tongue but you can’t remember it. The whole thing was frankly making me sick to my stomach.
The drive back to the rescue was uneventful, aside from Jake gushing about how adorable his newfound friend was. It’s not that I’m not a dog person, I have no issues with them at all, I love animals of all sorts. But this thing wasn’t a dog, nor was it a wolf, nor anything in between. I kept catching the reflection of its eyes in the rear view mirror, staring at me through the caged off back of the van. I didn’t like its eyes, piercing blue like those a human being’s. I could have sworn that once, just once, it winked at me.
One might wonder why I didn’t voice my concerns to Jake, but the simple truth is this; what was I supposed to say? It’s not like there was anything concrete I could point to beyond “bad vibes”, and I could hardly tell him to stop the van and kick the animal out onto the side of the road, could I? So, ultimately, I swallowed down my fear and tried very hard to convince myself there was nothing at all the matter.
We reached the wildlife rescue without incident, and Jake opened the back doors to the van, patting at his legs to direct the “wolfdog” to come out. The thing made a pathetic scene, whimpering as though afraid that jumping down the foot or two out of the van’s back would hurt its supposedly wounded leg, though from what I could see there didn’t look to be any injuries whatsoever. Ultimately Jake wound up assisting the thing out of the van, lifting it gently down while it whined and yelped in that terrible, mocking voice.
Jake begrudgingly put a collar and leash around the animal’s neck only at my insistence, complaining that it was obviously tame and that he was sure it would behave itself, but I wouldn’t hear of it. If he wanted to adopt the damn thing that was his own business, he still needed to follow basic safety precautions.
We guided the thing into the kennels, where we nudged it inside the largest one, a cage usually reserved for injured deer. It whined more at this perceived injustice, staring up in over-the-top performative sadness at Jake as he turned the key to lock it inside.
“Poor thing. I’m gonna get him some water and food, you wait here and keep an eye on him,” Jake said, not giving me time to respond before leaving the kennels to acquire the supplies for our “guest”. As soon as Jake left the room, the animal stopped its whining nearly instantly. I think it could tell I wasn’t falling for its act. It just stared at me, and once again I could see that faint, terrible smile on its face.
The “wolfdog” wasn’t the only occupant of the kennels that evening, there was a raccoon, a bobcat, and a goose. All of them seemed terrified of the thing. The bobcat and goose were hissing, and the raccoon’s tail was waving back and forth wildly. I’d always been told I had more empathy for animals than people, and as I stood there, being stared at by this not-wolf, I wondered if maybe that was why I instinctively was repelled by it in the same way the other patients of the wildlife rescue were. It didn’t feel like an animal.
It felt like ages, just standing there, looking at this smiling, mocking, thing shaped in a parody of a canine. In the bright light of the kennel, I could see it much clearer, and the longer I looked, the more queasy I felt.
I won't go over all of the hideous quirks of proportion that made the thing look so uncanny, because frankly most people wouldn't notice. Dogs come in all shapes and sizes, and it would take someone with a particular eye for this sort of thing to understand what I would even be talking about. To this day I still don't understand how Jake couldn't see it for what it truly was, with his education he ought to have been able to notice.
I will mention one thing though, something which especially made my skin crawl. Beneath the fluorescent light I could finally tell what had been bothering me about its legs. Wolves, dogs, and other canines all have digitigrade legs, that is to say that they walk upon their toes. It basically means that their limbs have an extra joint on which to bend, which is generally more useful for quadrupedal motion. In contrast, humans have plantigrade legs; we walk on the soles of our feet.
This animal's legs were plantigrade.
This can happen sometimes in dogs, it is a deformity which is known to occur, but this thing didn't look deformed. It didn't seem to have any trouble walking, despite its act with Jake. It just moved as though it were a human being crawling about on all fours.
It was around the same time as I had this realization that Jake entered the room with the food and water for our "guest", and I excused myself to go sit at the reception desk and try to convince myself everything was fine. It's just a weird dog, there's nothing to worry about, you're probably just tired, your mind is playing tricks on you, I kept thinking to myself, my internal monologue working overtime to wash away my discomfort while I fiddled with the medallion my grandfather made.
The terrible thing is, it was so close to the end of our shift when it happened. The sun was due to start rising in half an hour, and we would have been replaced by the morning crew. We were almost done, we were almost safe.
Jake and I had been finishing up our last remaining tasks before we had to head off for the morning when we heard an awful racket coming from the kennels. It was a terrible feline yowling, mixed with the frantic honking of a goose, followed shortly afterwards by the smashing of glass. Jake immediately began sprinting towards the sound, while I called out for him to wait.
I grabbed some bite proof gloves and a heavy apron, swearing all the while about having to deal with the stupid bobcat right before the end of my shift. While I was putting them on, I heard an awful, strangled scream. I recognized its owner at once. Something had happened to Jake.
My first instinct was to sigh in annoyance. Obviously the idiot got himself bitten, I thought to myself as I stomped my way to the kennels, grumbling all the while.
"I told you to wait you moro-" I started to say as I opened the door.
It was dark in the kennels. The only illumination came from the window, the pale moonlight glinting against the shattered glass of the fluorescent bulb strewn across the blood soaked floor. Silhouetted against the window was a tall figure, facing away from me. It was holding something. I could hear the terrified chatter of a raccoon.
"Jake?" I asked, timidly, as I walked into the room. My foot collided with something lying on the floor. I looked down to see a human body, face down upon the ground, blood dripping from its torn out throat. Laying next to Jake's corpse were the similarly mangled bodies of a bobcat and a goose.
There was a pained screeching followed by a snap of bones, and then a moment of utter stillness. I stared in petrified horror at the thing standing upright in the moonlight, its dog-like head turning to look at me with an awful smile etched unnaturally across its inhuman face. The silence was interrupted with the wet thump of the raccoon's body joining the other corpses on the gore smeared linoleum.
I don't want to think about its voice. Its real voice, not the wretched, terrible mockery of a wolfdog that it made to gain Jake's trust. Its laughter was vicious, mocking, evil. In all my life I've never heard anything sound so deeply cruel.
The thing began to walk towards me, and I tried to back away, but I slipped on the blood, falling in a heap as I started to hyperventilate. It got closer, close enough that the light from the corridor let me see the look of hunger and contempt in its monstrously human eyes. It reached a gore soaked claw towards me, chuckling darkly as it prepared to reduce me to nothing but meat.
But as the thing was just about to touch me, inches away from tearing into my jugular, it let out a surprised yelp of pain. It recoiled from me, eyeing the medallion around my neck with frustration and hatred. My mind flashed back to when my grandfather gave it to me, and what I said to him in response;
"A gunfight, papa, really? I'll probably get more use out of it fighting off werewolves."
The monster huffed and growled before leaping over me and tearing down the hallway in a blur of bloodstained fur. I heard the smashing of wood and glass when it crashed through the front door of the wildlife rescue, letting out a mocking imitation of a wolf's howl as it fled into the waning darkness of the rapidly fading night.
When my coworkers found me in the kennel, paralyzed with fear and covered in Jake's blood, they immediately called the police. Based on all the evidence they found at the scene, coupled with my admittedly somewhat hysterical account of the thing that did it, the put the whole affair down to being the work of a rabid wolfdog. They informed animal control, but of course nobody ever found anything.
I never bothered showing up to work at the wildlife rescue again after that, and I've been working a shitty retail job ever since. The pay is awful, the hours are lousy, and the work is demeaning, but that doesn't matter. All that's important is that the schedule is flexible enough that I never have to keep working after sunset whenever there is a full moon. I spend those nights at home with the door locked and bolted, clutching my grandfather's silver dollar medallion and praying I don't hear that mocking voice pretending to whimper outside the door to my apartment.
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@naamahdarling Wolves have very dense and heavy feeling bones compared to dogs and that density is also present in high content wolf hybrids or animals with recent wolf genetics in their lineage (wolfdog skulls and some eastern coyote/coywolf skulls). Dogs also tend to have a rougher texture overall to their skulls than coyotes/wolves. It’s almost like the texture difference between like 80g sandpaper and 100g, it’s subtle but it’s there. I’ve felt that texture crossover on the wolfdog and coydog skulls I have, especially on the cranium and around the gumline. It’s just something I’ve noticed while messing with in my own collection. I can’t say for sure if it’s like a legitimate method for identification, but the hybrids to me do feel like combinations of the textures/densities of the animals that make them up.
#replies#it's easier to explain when you can actually handle the skulls#dogs/coyotes/wolves just feel different from one another
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D&D Races Headcanons/Worldbuilding, Part II
Howdy folks. My last one of these got some attention, so I thought I would throw out a few more ideas regarding how the different Races/Monsterfolk work in the world(s) I run.
This is just my musings, so don’t take them as gospel or how you “should” run your games and build your worlds. On a similar note, feel free to steal these ideas, no credit needed.
- Due to the relationship between “Draconic Humanoids” (Dragonborn, Kobolds, maybe Lizardfolk) and Dragons, and Dragon’s natural ability to shape the world around them (E.g., Regional Effects, Lair Actions, etc.) the presence of dragons can potentially shape how developing “scalefolk/dragonkin” look. For example, lets say there is a dragon who keeps a clan of kobolds as servants in their lair (Think the classic symbiotic relationship of “You protect my lair with traps and tunnels, I’ll eat anything that tries to eat you all” in a lot of fantasy settings). If a rival dragon arrives and ousts the original dragon from their and spares the Kobolds to serve them, the scales of the next batch of Kobold Hatchlings may match the Dragon in coloration. Another example would be if a tyrannical dragon took over a city, the dragonborn children hatched under their occupation may bear partial scale-colorations of the wyrm. Even if the dragon is driven away or slain, these individuals may still bear the mark of the time period on them ( good stuff for ✨character angst ✨). It’s somewhat inspired by the different reptiles who are tempurature-dependent for their sexes, but for coloration instead.
- Cities have a natural form of ambient magic. Many scholars of the arcane and theologians debate whether or not this is a blessing from the gods of the world, or if its created by the gestalt-magical-background-radiation given off by so many humanoids. Either way, this magic typically comes in the form of dampening what would be destructive natural disasters, bringing forth bountiful harvests, or aiding in the calming and domestication of livestock. A strange side effect of this, however, is the changing of the appearance of differing beastfolk. Outside of metropolitan settlements or cities that house a variety of humanoids (Think Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, Sharn, Stormreach, etc.), most bestfolk resemble anthropomorphic versions of wild animals they are associated with (I.e., Tabaxi and Wildcats, Leonin and “Big Cats”, Dog-folk and Wolves/Coyotes). Sometimes these wonderful folk immigrate into these metropolitan areas. For a couple generations they may still retain their wild characteristics (E.g., Tabaxi looking like Leopards, Leonin looking like Tigers), but eventually a cub/pup could be born resembling a domesticated animal (E.g., A Tabaxi being born without fur, resembling a Sphynx cat; A Dog-Folk born resembling a Herding-Dog instead of their Wolven-esque parents). Reactions to this vary a lot, with some accepting these changes with open arms (Resembling a golden retriever has it’s perks; “I love my poodle son”), and others considering it a curse (Some tabaxi might restrict themselves to the outskirts of the city, fearing that this transformation is a sign of them “losing their ways”. The reverse is also true, where a few generations of Pig-Folk might resemble Boars after being a few generations out in the countryside. This is mainly to give an option for players to flavor beastfolk as either their “wild” versions or something more akin to a pet they like (That’s right folks; You can RP as Bingus™)
That’s all the ones I have for now. If you wonderful Lads/Lasses/Lassoes have some great ideas, feel free to add your own!! I’d love to hear them
#Dungeons and Dragons#dnd#dnd 5th edition#dragonborn#kobold#tabaxi#dnd stuff#dnd ideas#musings#i dont know how to tag
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Little Vixen Pt. 2
Part 1, Part 3
A/N: Thank you for being so patient. It’s hard being a teacher these days, life is getting so busy that I can barely find time to sit down and write. I should mention that this timeline is a bit jumbled together. The Cullens recently left but the wolves have all turned except for the littles (Colin and Brady). Anyway, I hope you like it!
Wolf Pack POV
The pack followed the fox and german shepherd to a small spot with boulders and overgrown bushes. They looked like they were just exploring their new surroundings.
“I didn't know there were other shifters." Leah said watching as the fox ducked in and out of the bushes.
"The elders never said there were others. I always thought we were the only ones." Sam said.
"She probably heard the leaches left and came to look for new hunting grounds. We should kill her." Paul added casually.
"She's literally playing in the bushes with her dog. How does that look like a killer?" Jared asked.
"I'm just saying we should kill her before we find out." Paul said body ready to lung into the small clearing.
“Why do you always want to kill. Are you secretly a serial killer or something?” Embry joked.
“Yeah you’re always so violent.” Quil added.
Caught up in their own conversation they didn't notice when they lost sight of the fox.
"Where did she go?" Jared asked. They looked around trying to catch a glimpse of red fur. All they could see was the dog laying down by the boulders trying to take a nap.
They were about to approach the clearing to start looking for the fox when a noise behind them raised their hackles. Just as they turned to face the noise a flash of red and white fur jumped at the nearest wolf.
Sam was too stunned to know what to do. She wasn't attacking him so biting her didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Looking back at his pack he could tell they were just as surprised. Seeing their alpha, a giant black wolf, laying on his side confused as a fox pounced around him. They looked like they weren't sure if they should intervene or laugh.
Finally, Leah broke the silence with her laughter. The fox looked over to her and with the same excitement as before jumped around her. Leah didn't mind, instead she played along pawing at the fox.
"What the fuck is happening." Paul asked.
"I think Leah made a new friend." Embry replied. He looked just as delighted as the fox.
"Enough," Sam's voice rang out. "Who are you?"
The fox stepped away from Leah turning to face Sam. They all expected to hear a reply but a small yipping sound was all they could hear. Clearly confused Sam tried again.
"What are you doing here?"
Again, they got high pitched barks in reply.
"Can you even understand what we're saying." Jared asked instead.
The fox, looking just as confused, nodded her head.
"What, are you mute?" Paul mumbled.
"Dude, how would that even make sense? We listen to each other's thoughts." Jacob said.
"Then maybe she doesn't have any." Paul added.
A small growl emitted from the fox before she jumped at Paul, barking in his face. He growled in return, his muscles winding up ready to attack. Both pair of eyes locked and focused on their target, but before anything could happen a wall of fur got in the way.
"I'm going to take her to my place and see is we can talk after shifting back. I'll see you idiot's later." Leah said nudging the fox back into the clearing.
"Are you sure you can handle it Leah?" Sam asked.
"Please, what's there to handle." Leah looked down at the fox who wasn't much smaller than her. "You coming?"
The fox yipped up at her and ran towards the german shepherd. The dog sleepily opened its eyes he wasn't even the slightest bit worried to see the giant wolves.
"Can I come?" Seth asked sitting next to Leah.
"No."
"Why?" He almost whined.
"I don't think she'd feel comfortable talking to a boy who saw her strip in the woods." Leah replied.
A surprised bark came from the fox. The rest of the pack burst into laughter as they dragged a stammering Seth away.
“We’ll be waiting at Emily’s.” Sam said before following the boys.
"I swear I wasn't looking!" Seth tried defending himself.
"Please, it's all you've been thinking about." Jared chuckled.
"But you saw her too!" Seth’s voice rang out as they got further away.
Leah rolled her eyes and looked back at the fox. This was an interesting turn of events that she was sure would lead to more surprises.
~~~~
Reader POV
It was the last thing you expected to find in this damp old town. A pack of wolf shifters. Back in California you had met different types of paranormal creatures that would stumble their way into the state. Coyote shifters from the south, mountain lions from the Grand Canyon, even a humanoid wolf from the north east.
You didn’t know you were walking through a packs territory until you heard their thoughts slowly creeping up on you. It was obvious they were stalking you through the woods even if you couldn’t hear them. They were careless in concealing their massive size behind trees and bushes.
Coming to a clearing with boulders to one side and berry bushes on the other you decided you wanted to meet them. Moose could sense the wolves nearby and looked like he wanted to investigate. Not wanting to give away that you knew they were watching you; you started jumping around the bushes trying to get Moose’s attention. It’s not long before Moose gets tired from playing along. Having him lay down next to the boulders he instantly starts to snore.
With Moose sleeping your able to sneak off into the woods and around behind the wolf pack. You can hear their confusion and decision to go out and look for you. Before they get a chance to wake Moose up you jump out of the bushes and crash into the nearest wolf. It was all too exciting finding another pack that you pounced around while the giant black wolf laid on his side stunned.
“Hi, I’m [Y/N], what’s your name?” You asked the wolf.
Guessing he was still shocked you waited for his reply but were interrupted by a laugh to your side. You noticed the gray wolf laughing in a feminine voice. There were few female shifters so finding one was always a happy sight.
“Hi!” You said greeting her. She seemed happy too by the way she laughed along and played with you.
The other wolves started talking amongst themselves before you heard a deep voice behind you.
“Who are you?” He asked.
“Uh, [Y/N] I already told you.” You snickered thinking he had already forgotten.
“What are you doing here?” He asked with a bit of uncertainty in his voice.
“My mom and I just moved here.”
"Can you even understand what we're saying." The dark brown one said.
Now it was your turn to be confused. You nodded your head to signal that you could hear them. Were they really not able to hear you? This hadn’t happened when you met other shifters.
You are too busy trying to come up with an answer to the communication issue that you aren’t paying close attention to the conversation between two of the wolves. That is until you caught the part where one of them basically said you were braindead.
You growled jumping in his direction. “Are you saying I’m stupid?” You barked in his face.
It was obvious now that they couldn’t hear you. Instead of a reply you got a growl in return. He looked ready to attack and you weren’t about to give in just because he was bigger than you.
Before anything happened, another wolf got in the way nudging you away. It was the female suggesting taking you to her place to talk as humans. It was a good idea, not only to understand what’s going on but also getting to know someone in this town.
As you went to wake up Moose you heard them talking behind you. It almost made you laugh when they asked her if she could handle the situation. Then you heard her mention that one of them had seen you strip before shifting.
An embarrassed yelp escaped you before you could stop it. You honestly thought you were alone when you did that. It was a waste of time and money buying new clothes that you decided a long time ago that taking them off was much more efficient. Now it didn’t seem like such a good decision.
You watched as they dragged the young wolf away who seemed just as embarrassed as you were. After they disappeared into the woods the female turned to you and nudged her head in the opposite direction. You followed her with Moose trailing after you.
“My place isn’t far from here. I’m Leah by the way.” She said.
@oopsiedoopsie23 @callie-bear15 @buckysjuicyplums @smileygirl08 @r-rose08
#twilight#twilight imagine#new moon#new moon imagine#twilight saga imagine#paul lahote#paul lahote x reader#paul lahote x you#paul lahote imagine#little vixen
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1,18, and 22!
1. Show us three of your favorite animals!
ONE. WEIRD OLD FISH. OBVIOUSLY
TWO. ive just been thinking about dogs all day this is an anatolian shepherd and i just think theyre neat. and huge
they were bred to be livestock guardians, which is a slightly different Dog Niche to like, regular guard dogs or herding dogs. they live almost exclusively within their flocks and deter various predators just by being present, which is a way more ethical and environmentally sound than just like. eliminating every wolf from an entire ecosystem. while also protecting the needs of farmers who, uh, benefit from their animals not being dead. also anatolians are now being used to help protect cheetahs in namibia with the same method; farmers who had issues with cheetahs would kill them to protect their livelihood, but after they added anatolians to their flocks livestock deaths went way, way, way down, meaning there was basically no need to kill the cheetahs anymore.
also to be clear anatolians aren’t the Only livestock guardian breed there’s a handful but i just like anatolians the most aesthetically for basically completely arbitrary reasons. here’s an example of another breed of livestock guardian:
the komondor. the mop. the fucking mop. these things were bred to protect sheep from fucking wolves and bears. the mop-
THREE. UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH im kind of out of animals ive just had dog brainrot all day. OH uH HERE’S A BIRD I LIKE
IT’S CALLED THE VARIED THRUSH AND IVE NEVER FOUND A RECORDING THAT GETS ACROSS HOW ETHEREAL THEY SOUND IRL. their song is just one long whistley note and when youre walking at dusk by yourself from the library to your apartment in late fall/early winter it makes you feel like youre in a video game cutscene. i can’t explain it at all. also they’re really pretty
18. What’s your favorite example of of mutualism in the animal kingdom?
aOOH THIS IS A GOOD ONE... ITS HARD TO CHOOSE... for some reason my first impulse (after remembering that it is technically mutualism) was like, literally any gutflora? though i don’t think i could even begin explaining why because microbiology and health aren’t really areas of interest for me in any other way. i just kind of think its cool that i’m not just one isolated solitary Thing, but kind of a colony of many other things all working in tandem at once i guess
22. If you could get a Warriorcats-style book series about any species, which would you pick?
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GOD THIS IS SO HARDDDDD my gut says Literally Any Fish and i know id probably be right that there’s some fish out there with some cool social structures that could be worked into a warriors-style series but. that thing about coyotes and badgers working together could make a cool YA series
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Hello! I know that it is not actually a pokemon type so to speak but I'm staring down an essay deadline with less than half the word count. Would you mind talking about your favourite pokemon that is a dog or canine? Like the pokemons that are also dogs? Does that make sense? Sorry I'm very sleep deprived right now. Thank you so much for always being such a lovely presence on my dash and I hope you have a brilliant day!
Thank you for the compliments, and I would be glad to talk about some of my favorite PokéCanines! I’ll talk about all of my favorite canine pokémon, though please do note that I am leaving out the Ecruteak Trio because it is hotly debated whether they are canines or not and I do not feel like getting into that tonight. (For the record, I feel that Entei is definitely canine, Raikou is feline, and Suicune is too hard to tell, but still, I don’t want to get into it, so I will leave it at that.)
Growlithe / Arcanine — Probably my favorite of the canines for personal, sentimental reasons. When I imagined my previous dog in the Pokémon world, I imagined her as a Growlithe who would evolve into an Arcanine, because the PokéWorld doesn’t have a sheltie pokémon and I felt that the fluff and warmth of Growlithe fit her best, along with the ‘Dex descriptions of them being very loyal and willing to do anything to protect their trainer. My previous dog was exactly like that. But I also feel that Arcanine would be just such a wonderful pokémon to be companions with because they are gigantic, fire-breathing fluffy puppies, and riding them across the countryside would be AMAZING. (Not that I live in the countryside, but I do live in the midwest, so the plains are everywhere and not hard to find.) They’re just so good.
Smeargle — Okay, I will admit, Smeargle loses some points for being bipedal. HOWEVER. They gain those points back by virtue of how cool they are! While they’re not very useful in battle, sadly, due to low stats and the like, Smeargle are cool because each Smeargle has a different color paint (it’s not really paint, more a bodily fluid they use like paint, but close enough), and that as they grow up they let other Smeargle that they are close put their pawprints on their back. (So in other words, Smeargle A let’s Smeargle B use Smeargle B’s ink to put Smeargle B’s pawprints on Smeargle A’s back.) The ‘Dex always says “comrades,” but listen . . . we know what it means when two Smeargle have each other’s pawprints on their back. They are in love.
Houndour / Houndoom — ACTUAL HELLHOUNDS, THEY ARE GREAT. True, the fact that their breath smells like sulfur is kind of gross, but their design and concept are so incredibly cool, and I also just absolutely love the mental image of a Houndour puppy having gigantic paws they have yet to grow into. It’s just the absolute cutest. I also like to imagine that my current dog would be a mixed-breed Houndour and Poochyena in the PokéWorld, so there’s that, too.
Flareon & Umbreon — Listen, some of the Eeveelutions look like felines, some of them look like canines, and others (such as Jolteon) make it really hard to tell. But I’m convinced that Flareon and Umbreon are both canines, and I love them both. FIRST of all, Flareon DOES NOT deserve the hate it gets. It is small and soft and so incredibly warm, it CAN be useful in battle, and most importantly, FLAREON WAS NOT THE FALSE PROPHET AND DID NOTHING WRONG, EVERYONE WHO HATED FLAREON DURING TPP SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. If you don’t know what I’m talking about there, you don’t need to know about it, but just know that Flareon had a lot of libel posted about it and it was completely unacceptable. As for Umbreon, Umbreon is the Eeveelution I connect with the most given that I am naturally nocturnal, and I love how its rings grow stronger depending on what phase the moon is in. Shiny Umbreon is also choice. They’re definitely the best two Eeveelutions (though Espeon is also up there, sorry Espeon, although Espeon is also one of the feline ones and so shouldn’t be discussed here anyway).
Poochyena / Mightyena — As discussed in another ask, technically hyenas are not canines (or felines), but I’m still going to include them here because the localization team at the very least thought that Poochyena looked like a puppy (“pooch”), hence its name. I LOVE these two. Although my Mightyena ended up underperforming in AlphaSapphire, I’ve always loved the scruffy look contrasted with how loving and puppylike they can be. Also, again, I like to think of my current dog as a mixed breed Houndour/Poochyena, so there’s that, too.
Absol — Absol is another contested one, but I always thought Absol looked canine to me, so I’m going to count it. Absol is wonderful because it not only has a super cool design (though could also benefit from a dual typing, I feel), but also because this is another poor baby who has had so much unfortunate slander spread about it. Absol just wants to help! Absol wants to warn people! And people decide that instead of being grateful, they want to blame the messenger!! Absol does not deserve this at all, and the world likewise does not deserve Absol. That is a fact.
Lillipup / Herdier / Stoutland — Before anyone says anything, NO, these are not shelties. Lillipup is more like a yorkshire terrier, and while Herdier and Stoutland seem like they could be herding dogs of some kind (it’s even in Herdier’s name), I can assure you they do not resemble shelties. More like they resemble oversized yorkies. REGARDLESS, I loved them. Lillipup is adorable, so is Herdier, and while Stoutland is less cute and more gruff, it is also an absolute BEAST. BW confused me because I always took Cheren down easily, but Bianca regularly fucked up my shit with her Stoutland. (And yet they tried to make Stoutland Cheren’s ace in the sequels, smh . . .) My Stoutland was also very reliable. Very good doggos, 10/10
Rockruff / Lycanroc — WOLVES!!! FINALLY WOLVES!!! oh my GOD I waited SEVEN GENERATIONS for this!! To be fair, when I was a child I mistook MIghtyena for a wolf because of the coloring and the fact that it looked like a canine, but as I got older I learned the truth and was back to being disappointed. And while the fact that this line is pure rock (which has a million weaknesses) is disappointing, and while I’m also not fond of Midnight Form being bipedal, I can forgive it because we finally have wolves AND ALSO Rockruff is adorable and perfect AND ALSO because so is Midday Form. Plus, despite rock-type having so many weaknesses, my Midday Lycanroc is pretty strong, so. It works out.
Yamper / Boltund — Okay, I will level with you: a corgi evolving into a greyhound is kind of weird. Also, I do question why they used yorkshire terriers in Unova when they should have saved them for Galar, and instead maybe had like, American bull terriers (a.k.a. pitbulls) in Unova instead (although I guess some could argue that Snubbul / Granbull are pitbulls, but I disagree, I think they look more like English bulldogs than pitbulls). Regardless though, anyone who says that Yamper is anything other than adorable does not have eyes (the puppy has a heart on its butt), and also they are the GOODEST of puppers in how they bring your pokéballs back to you. And while it took me a bit to get used to Boltund, my Boltund, Poppy, is AMAZING and love her very, very much. This line is great and I love them. ♥
Zacian & Zamazenta — FINALLY, SOME LEGENDARY WOLVES!! And not only are they legendary wolves, but one has a tuft of fur it can turn into a shield around its neck and the other CARRIES A SWORD IN ITS MOUTH, HOW BADASS IS THAT. I do get a little annoyed when people call them doggos when they are actually wolfos, but that doesn’t change how excited I was to have some legendary wolves at last, particularly ones dedicated to beating up hellspawn from space. I love them, they are beautiful, 10/10.
So those are my favorite canine pokémon!! If anyone disagrees with any of these pokémon being canines, I do not care and I do not want to fight about it, please do not send discourse my way. And as a final note, here are two lists of future canines / dog breeds I hope to see in future gens:
Dog Breeds: SHELTIES, miniature schnauzers, Italian greyhounds, German shepherds, Siberian huskies, dachshunds, shiba inu, some kind of spaniel, chihuahua (and it HAS to be fighting-type, it HAS to), and many others. You can never have too many doggos.
I also have to have one more final grievance at the fact that we didn’t get shelties in Galar either considering that sheltie is a nickname for shetland sheepdog, and this breed of dog ORIGINATED IN SCOTLAND, which at least part of Galar (particularly the Crown Tundra) was inspired by, ffs Game Freak why did you miss this opportunity.
Wild Canines: Maned wolves, African wolf, African wild dog, dingos, coyotes, and just more wolves in general, honestly. I would say more foxes too, but we already have several fox lines, and while I wouldn’t say no to them, I want to see more wolves get attention first.
Anyway, thanks for asking!! I love Pokémon and I love canines, so this was a fun ask!
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In order to manage dogs, it should go without saying that some form of pressure is required. Whether it is intentional or not, all trainers rely on pressure and release to some extent in behavioral modification. Tools that are commonly advertised by force-free training regiments (such as halters, martingales & no pull harnesses) operate according to the same basic rules of pressure and release as “balanced” tools (such as slip leads, prong collars and e-collars). The only way to train without any pressure at all would be to eliminate all ropes from training. This is both unrealistic and extremely unsafe. Trainers should be focused on gauging the amount of pressure their dog needs (and thus, the appropriate tool) instead of avoiding it.
Inevitably, people will argue that certain tools are “kinder” than others and thus they must be inherently best for all dogs, or that no dog NEEDS any higher form of pressure like a prong, slip or e-collar. This entirely ignores individualism among dogs. What feels like a pat on the back to one, may feel like a stab in the back to another. Likewise, every dog is an individual and will have different thresholds for what is just pressure and for what is truly pain. While a martingale may be perfect for one dog, the next may hardly feel it. That same dog may be very happy in a prong (indicated by body language), while the former may shut down. Now, consider every training tool that exists. Does one tool fit all? Instead of hiding from pressure, tailor it to the dog in front of you and use it with finesse.
A common sentiment used by force-free trainers is that because the skin of a dogs is thinner than a humans, testing a tool on yourself is going to feel like a fraction of what the dog feels. However, this is a very inaccurate generalization. The amount of cells in the epidermis (specifically the stratum spinosum layer) varies across the different regions of the body. And which area of the dogs body is one of the thickest? The neck.
^How is this abusive and painful..
^When this is just play and fun?
Wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs have all been observed to frequently bite each other’s necks in play. How, then, are all tools that apply pressure to the neck barbaric and painful? It defies logic. Once you understand both the behavioral aspects of canines and the anatomy of the neck, it is clear the argument of “but dogs are more sensitive” is based in generalization only and ignores the fact that the skin of any organism varies in thickness from region to region. The region in which we correct dogs is far from sensitive.
There are two basic ways to eliminate behaviors according to operant conditioning: positive punishment and negative punishment whereby an undesirable stimulus is added or a pleasant stimulus is removed, respectively. Purely positive trainers feel the latter is kinder. In order to execute this method, these trainers will ignore the dog in order to punish them (removing any positive attention). This may work for certain dogs in certain circumstances, but with others a dilemma occurs involving self reinforcing behaviors.
Some examples are:
-Running: A high energy dog will enjoy running as it expends their boundless energy. Ignoring the dog as punishment will not work, since running is fun, the behavior reinforces itself.
-Barking: Dogs vocalize for many reasons, and a lot of it is instinctual. Likewise, ignoring a dog for barking will not stop them from barking, since that action satiates an innate desire to protect, alert or relieve boredom.
Aside from negative punishment, positive trainers may bring in something called differential reinforcement. This is where you teach a dog a new behavior that is incompatible with the bad one. For many dogs, this works great. For others, it will not. For some dogs, the pleasure that comes with self reinforcing behaviors overrides the reward associated with the alternate behavior. Therefore, a correction is not a bad choice for these dogs.
A common argument against training tools and balanced training is that the dogs are a lot more “shut down and scared” than dogs trained with “science-based” methods, yet, during proper use, behavioral science and research on canine body language reveals that there are very happy dogs taught with balanced training methods.
This below is truly fearful body language. Does it match the dogs above?
#dogs#animals#doggo#veganism#positivereinforcement#dogtraining#prong collar#e collar#vegan#adoptdontshop
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wolves
I. OVERVIEW
therians gifted with the form of a wolf are known as wolf therians, werewolves, or, more commonly, just wolves. they have the ability to turn into wolves of slightly abnormal size, and with it many other abilities to go alongside this form.
wolves are known for having a pack mentality, of sticking close to one another and more easily clumping together. they are almost always social beings due to their wolf forms, though this can be limited strictly to their packs. for them, a "lone wolf" is less a rugged individualist, uncompromising and independent trying to forge their own path and more a wolf in search of something, typically other wolves that fit to their own ideals and ideologies. wolves form deeply emotional bonds and are known for being collaborative and communicative - though, again, this can often be limited strictly to their packs.
II. GOVERNANCE
therians typically govern themselves the same way their animals forms would. wolves have a hierarchy consisting of different positions within each pack, much like their wolf counterparts. this includes leaders called alphas, second-in-commands called betas, messengers known as deltas, guardians known as epsilons, and much more. a full list of positions within packs will be available on site once we open.
III. ALLIANCES
therians have a connection to those who also know what it's like to walk in another form, to have feet in two worlds.
shifters shifters and therians are branches of similar species and as such when it comes to their hatred against vampires, they can ally with one another. however, this is only under dire circumstances as normally the two species hate one another.
familiars familiars and therians both have animal forms, something that breeds a sense of understanding between the two.
merfolk merfolk and therians both can communicate with their respective animals and have two separate forms, something that breeds a sense of understanding between the two.
IV. FOES
therians have natural foes in any who stand against them, as they are typically fiercely protective and have enhanced survival instincts naturally.
shifters as the cursed version of shifters, therians are seen as lesser than. as such, therians rightfully take offense to this and the two species have been at odds since therians were created.
vampires for as long as anyone knows, vampires and shifters have been at war. one being around the other has always made them both uncomfortable, as if their very being is at war with the other. when therians were cursed and their species created from that of shifters, this behavior stayed as well.
V. PHYSIOLOGY
BEGINNER
- THERIAN PHYSIOLOGY therian physiology gives them enhanced features, such as strength, durability, speed, agility, etc, as well as allows them to transform into their therian form, a dire beast version of their animal spirit, something that occurs with the lunar cycle due to their curse. this also allows a therian to convert another being into a therian. therians can not turn to and from their animal form at will until mastering this at a higher level and they must transform under periods of extreme mental or physical stress, such as illness or exhaustion. additionally, they can sense directions like a compass, knowing where a specific direction is.
- REGENERATIVE HEALING this ability allows a therian to heal in half the time it might take a human. minor wounds such as cuts, bruises and light burns heal faster than normal and therians are easily able to recover from minor to moderate blood loss. critical wounds such as lost limbs, damaged nerves, and internal organs cannot be regenerated, as wounds would simply close up faster and lost organs remain lost, and cells that are fatally damaged, such as by burning, cannot be regenerated, resulting in permanent scarring.
- MIND LINK RECEPTION this is the power to link minds with other living being, sharing thoughts, memories, emotions or feelings. this is a pack or therian family connection. at this level, the therian is receptive of the mind link created by others within their pack if allowed but they cannot create that link on their own until a higher level.
NOVICE
- CANINE PHYSIOLOGY this power creates a link between the wolf therian and canines, such as wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and domestic dogs. this can be used to calm these animals, to handle these animals, and can call these animals to them, something that can be scary when first encountered. it does not, however, allow the user to communicate with these animals.
- ENHANCED SMELL this power allows the therian to detect specific persons, objects, substances or even places, locate their origin, and track targets with nothing but their nose.
- TEMPERATURE REGULATION wolf therians have the power to maintain a certain body temperature for extended periods of time, allowing them to stay cool when in hot temperatures and warm in cold temperatures to a point.
- ENHANCED ROAR therians with this ability are able to shout so loud that the user can blow away objects or break objects with their ferocious vocal cords, if at an expert level and using this ability. this is most commonly used to alert someone of the user's location. for wolf therians, the roar comes in the form of a howl.
COMPETENT
- PREDATOR INSTINCT the user possesses predatory instincts, allowing them to become masters of hunting and tracking. one with this ability can discern numerous factors of a situation that make them a master of pursuit and capture, just like their animal spirit.
- FERAL MIND user can tap into primal, unstoppable rage that allows them to perform in vastly increased capacity, taking and inflicting damage that they wouldn't in their normal state. in some cases, the user's mind descends so far into the feral rage that, mentally, they are little more than animals. typically, this is saved for rare occasions when it is life or death.
PROFICIENT
- ENHANCED BITE the user has particularly strong bite, because of sharp teeth and strong jaw-muscles. their bite is like that of a wolf, easily piercing and tearing flesh and typically causing harm the same way their animal form would. this is especially powerful if when in animal form. they can also use this bite to infect others and turn them into therian, something also specifically powerful while in their animal form.
- MIND LINK CREATION this is the power to link minds with other living being, sharing thoughts, memories, emotions or feelings. this is a pack or therian family connection. at this level, the therian is can create a link on their own with any and all members of their pack that are receptive, including one on one conversations.
EXPERT
- PARTIAL TRANSFORMATION the user can partially transform their body, either by transforming certain parts of their body independently of the rest of it or into a "half-state" between two forms. in the case of therians, this is largely due to increased control over the transformation as well as having experience to get used to the pain that goes with their transformations.
- CONTROLLED TRANSFORMATION at this level a therian can control their transformation, regardless of emotions or nearness to the full moon. therians still need to transform with the full moon but can now transform at will in the time between and can keep from transforming when of high emotion.
VI. WEAKNESSES
therians are harder to kill than humans, but not as hard as the vampires. each have their own weaknesses and advantages, but all are supernatural and gifted in the power to transform, something that can make them dangerous opponents against any who do not suspect their true species.
the reality of silver's effect on shifters and therians has been lost to the pages of history, but for generations, packs have passed down similar stories. it goes that judas, the follower of jesus of nazareth, was turned into a shifter in retribution to the lord's suffering. as penitence for betraying the son of man judas' bloodline was cursed with a dire weakness to silver, the very element for which he betrayed jesus, and those very same bloodlines are what make up the earth's modern population of both shifters and therians.
it is known that silver is a lethal conductor of the magic that turns one away from their human form, but the siphoning of said magic is extremely painful, so much so that it has been known to bring the even the strongest of either species to a crashing halt irrespective of age or ability. while brief exposure is painful enough to momentarily cripple an opponent, if silver were to enter their bloodstream they would experience the sensation of being set ablaze. as their body temperature rose, the heat they give off would be enough to boil their main organs, until eventually, they would be met with death.
(note: we would like to note that we do allow the use of creative weaknesses in play, such as a witch and human coming up with their own decision on how their abilities counteract one another, but we urge you to remember that we are trusting you to keep this balanced and fair. as such, the weaknesses we list will be minimal but are by and far not a full list of possible weaknesses. should we notice a character who seems too powerful, you will be asked to bump that character back down or be denied continued play here on unholy for the sake of creative freedom for all members. this includes the knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the species that your character would have here on unholy.)
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Hale Royal Family AU - Part 5
Based on @shey-elizabeth‘s post:
”Me reading the Prince Harry-Meghan Markel royal family drama:
Wait… I think I read this fic already. (Starts scrolling through my AO3 history)
#random #royalty au #someone write me a steter fic #reading the news before coffee”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
September 2019
“Lady Danu’s is the largest adoption service for non-human children in the state. Which, as you can see, isn’t saying much,” Dot, the facility director, explained. She made a sweeping motion with her hand to indicate the relatively petite size of the facility. It was a large estate house, but certainly not large enough to hold more than a couple dozen children at a time. “Placements, of course, can be tricky for our kind, but we place exclusively with non-human or mixed families, and we have nearly unheard of retention rates for family placement.”
As they made their way through the front hall, Peter peeked into an empty room, which looked to be some sort of study room. There was a chalkboard on one wall, bookshelves on the opposite. The tables and chairs in the middle had bits of paint and marker stains.
Peter thought about all of the obscenely expensive furniture in their home and found himself horrified almost to the point of delight at the thought of little finger paint hand prints marring the wood.
Stiles squeezed his hand as he tugged him along to keep up. “What age ranges do you have?” he asked.
“We have a couple of teenagers at the moment, brother and sister, but that’s not typical,” Dot answered. She started up the wide wooden staircase. Teenage wolves would typically stay with their packs if any remained. Either they weren’t wolves or they had lost absolutely everyone. “They’ve taken over part of the basement so they can have their own space.”
Peter found himself wanting to ask about the teenagers, see if they needed some help. Maybe he could make arrangements for them. But that wasn’t what they were here for. This was the compromise: instead of surrogacy, they could adopt, so long as it was a werewolf baby.
“Eight through twelve are on that end of the hall,” Dot said, pointing toward a large set of French doors. “Four through eight next to them. Babies and toddlers have the largest space, over here.”
Lady Danu’s was partly funded by the druid’s council, Talia had explained as she gave him the pamphlet for the facility, but the majority of their funding came directly from the royal family. Their doors would be open to Peter and Stiles. There would be no wait list, no agony of false hope. One visit, and they could walk out with a bundle of joy that would satisfy both the family and the press.
Well, she hadn’t said it like that, but she may as well have.
----
She had brought up the subject over brunch, just the two of them. Peter had known something unpleasant would come up – the last time they’d had brunch, just the two of them, had been after Stiles’s infamous leather rant.
“I heard you and Stiles have decided not to pursue surrogacy,” Talia had said over the soft scrape of her knife against porcelain. She lifted a bit of egg to her lips, staring him down while she chewed.
Peter nodded, resigned to let this argument happen. He reached for his wolfsbane mimosa, knowing he would need at least a bit of a buzz to get through. “We discussed it and decided it wasn’t for us,” he explained. “It doesn’t seem right, going to all of that trouble and expense to bring a child into the world when there are children already here, needing homes.”
“Adoption, then?”
“That’s the idea.”
She sighed, and Peter felt a vein in his temple throb in irritation.
“I don’t see why it should matter to you or anyone else,” he snapped.
Talia set her fork down and fixed him with a tired expression. “Of course it matters, Peter. Our bloodline -”
Peter barked a laugh. “Our bloodline? Dear sister, I don’t know if you’ve gotten a good look at our family tree lately, but it’s practically overgrown. I’ve lost track of how many nieces and nephews I have these days.”
“You’ll adopt a werewolf, then?” she pressed.
Then it was Peter’s turn to set down his fork, letting it slam noisily against the table. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but my husband is a human. We may very well adopt a human.”
“Peter,” she practically growled.
He raised his voice, couldn’t help it. “How are you talking to me like I’m being unreasonable when you’ve practically ordered me, as my alpha, to acquire a baby by any means necessary?”
Talia, stubbornly, infuriatingly, kept her voice calm, though condescending. “I know you’ve made it your personal brand to challenge tradition at every turn. And might I remind you, I have been extremely accommodating to it thus far -”
Peter flashed his eyes at her. “Oh, yes,” he shouted, “you didn’t excommunicate me from the family for marrying a man! Have they put you up for sainthood yet, Your Majesty?”
She stood abruptly, her chair clattering to the ground as her eyes flared bright red.
As he felt himself involuntarily cower in response, Peter felt his rage boil down into a quiet resentment. Talia was his alpha and his monarch, but she was supposed to be his sister first. That she would pull this sort of tactic on him stung in a way he hadn’t been prepared for. “Really?” he asked, voice softer than he wanted it to be. “Over how Stiles and I start a family? That’s what you pull rank for?”
Talia softened, her eyes fading back to human. A servant hurried in and righted her chair for her. She sat. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It should just be about you and Stiles – I know that – but it’s not. This world we live in, our position is more tentative than it seems. Peter, our traditions are more than media grabs and money. Humans fear us, instinctively. We are predators. We are stronger than them. We’re a threat.” Her words came gently. Practiced, but honest. “By all logical strategy, they should hunt us, eradicate us, as they did for centuries.”
“Like they still do in many parts of the world,” Peter conceded.
“Exactly.” She offered a weak smile. “And do you know why they don’t, here in this country?” He did, but ducked his head, signaling for her to continue. “Because our structure of monarchy gives us an appearance of structure, of stability. It makes our kind seem integrated and like less of a threat. We let them see into every corner of our lives, poke and prod and evaluate. We show them that we have nothing to hide, and they transfer that sense of trust to every member of our species.”
Peter had received lectures of similar flavor from their parents, but they hadn’t been so brutally honest. He lifted his eyes to meet Talia’s. “And you think that the species of mine and Stiles’s child will make so much difference to that balance?”
“No,” Talia admitted. She reached for her coffee. “But a member of the royal family that challenges our traditions at every turn? That might.”
----
So he and Stiles found themselves in the babies and toddlers wing of Lady Danu’s Home for Children. A caretaker sat in a rocking chair in the corner, bottle feeding an infant. Another stood by the cribs, a baby in each arm, rocking and humming. It felt strange to Peter – no, downright bizarre – to come here and pick out a baby like one picked out a pair of shoes at a clothing store.
“I’ll leave you two to discuss for a little while,” Dot said. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I’ll be just down the hall – anyone here can come fetch me for you.”
Once she was out of the room, Stiles stepped in front of Peter with a slightly panicked expression. “I have no idea how to do this,” he whispered.
“Do I look like I know?”
“Are we just supposed to… pick one? It feels weird.”
One of the caretakers glanced up at them, clearly listening in, and Peter huffed a sigh, glancing around the room. “Let’s just… try to settle in for a few minutes?”
This wing of the home was rather large. They had come into the section for the youngest babies. Another set of doors lead through to a play room for the toddlers where a handful of drooling, chubby little were-tots sat around a kitchen play set, gnawing at plastic fake fruit and miming cooking with a sauce pan.
Peter wandered over to them, giving a wave. One little boy stared up at him with wide eyes, most of his own fist crammed into his mouth. It was refreshing, at least, to not be greeted with a bow.
He glanced around to see where Stiles had ended up and found him sitting on a play mat where an older girl with poorly brushed hair sat with a baby girl, maybe a year old, propped up on a pillow. The older one wore overalls and had a toy dinosaur in her hand. “Who?” she asked Stiles, a bit rudely.
“I’m Stiles. Is it okay if I sit with you?” Stiles had already sat down, but seemed to be second-guessing it under the girl’s intense scrutiny. When she didn’t answer, Stiles asked, “What’s your name?”
She turned back to the baby, ignoring Stiles. “So T-Rex can eat this guy,” she explained to the baby, holding up a smaller dinosaur toy, “but dog is too big.” Peter’s eyes settled on a big stuffed dog next to her and smiled.
“That’s Malia.”
Peter jumped a little, not having noticed the caretaker coming up behind him. He turned and smiled at her. “Isn’t she a little old to be in here?”
“She’s five,” the woman agreed, “but she’s been having some trouble fitting in with the kids in her age group. She’s great with the babies, though.”
“Rawr! I am hungry!” Malia said, rocking the T-Rex back and forth.
Stiles stretched and grabbed another toy off the floor and offered it up. “Can he eat this?”
Malia stared at him suspiciously for a moment, then broke into a bright smile. “Yeah!” She snatched the toy out of his hand and fed it to the tyrannosaurus with delighted violence.
Laughing softly, Peter watched as she slowly accepted Stiles into her game. “How long has she been here?”
“A couple of months.” The caretaker hesitated. “She’s not a wolf,” she told him. “She’s a were-coyote. There were some… safety concerns. With the mother. She was removed from her custody.”
The mother-child dynamic for coyotes was a troubled one, Peter knew. Their powers were passed down during pregnancy. He frowned. “Thank you for explaining,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Tracy. And I know who you are, of course.”
Peter ducked his head and smiled. “Of course.”
He made his way over to Stiles, watching the way his face lit up as Malia’s game devolved into a toy massacre. The baby seemed just as fascinated with her, taking toys as Malia handed them to her, then sucking on them.
Talia would think this was just more of his defiance, more of his stubborn desire to fight tradition. But maybe this could be a compromise on a compromise. Not a baby, no, but young enough. Not a werewolf, no, but not human.
Peter crouched besides Stiles and nudged his shoulder. “What do you think?”
Stiles glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Really?” He glanced at Malia, then back to Peter. “She’s not...” Not a baby, he meant. He didn’t even know about her being a were-coyote.
“I don’t care,” Peter assured him.
Stiles reached over and brushed his fingers against the nape of Peter’s neck, scenting him. He bit his lip, then turned back to the Malia. “This is my husband Peter,” he told her. “Can he play, too?”
Peter waved at her. “Hi, Malia.”
Malia sniffed at him very obviously, her little nose scrunching as she did so. “You have to bring a food for T-Rex,” she told him, her brow furrowing and eyes flashing blue. He knew already that she would be an absolute terror. Forget finger paint on the nice furniture – she would rip it to shreds.
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
----
In one of her less thoughtful attempts at reassuring Peter and Stiles about fatherhood, Laura had told them, “You know, a lot of what people talk about when they talk about being ‘ready’ for parenthood, it just doesn’t apply in our world.”
They had been playing bocce in Laura’s garden, Marco lining up his bowl.
Stiles huffed a laugh. “Why, because we don’t have a choice?”
“No, you absolutely have a choice,” Laura said, and Peter had wondered if she really believed it. “But a lot of the things new parents struggle with – the late nights, the feedings, the expense – we don’t have to worry about that. You would have a wet nurse and a couple of nannies. You already have staff for meals and laundry.”
Peter knew she didn’t mean it to sound as callous as she did. As much as she had inherited her mother’s leadership skills, her poise and ferocity, she had inherited that emotionally tone-deaf streak as well.
Stiles had watched Marco bowl his shot and shoved his hands in his pockets. “That doesn’t sound much like parenting to me,” he had admitted.
A few short months later found Stiles in their daughter’s room, calling for their morning nanny, yelling, “Oh my god, where is Hayden?” while Malia wailed like an air raid siren, shrill and with a truly spectacular lung span.
Peter rushed down the hall to find Stiles kneeling in front of their daughter, frantically trying to extricate a hair brush from the back of her head while she writhed and screamed.
“Malia, please hold still!” he pleaded. “Pulling is just going to make it hurt more!”
“HURTS!” she shrieked.
“I know, I know, I just -”
“We gave Hayden the day off, remember?” Peter knelt down on the other side of Malia. He reached for her and, though she flinched back at first, managed to press his fingers to her cheek. One tiny, barely-there tendril of black crept up his fingertip. “Now, Malia, that barely hurts at all,” Peter chided. “What are you throwing a fuss about?”
She sobbed loudly and thrashed away from them both. Stiles finally gave up and let go, letting her run away with the hairbrush dangling from the back of her head. Malia threw herself onto her bed to sob into her arms like a distressed Jane Austin heroin.
Stiles held his hands out helplessly, looking to Peter for confirmation that, yes, this was the most absurd show of melodrama this house had ever seen. It was saying something, seeing as Stiles lived there.
They both got up and approached the bed. Peter sat on the edge, not reaching for her just yet, since she was still heaving angry sobs against her comforter. “Malia, sweetheart,” he cooed. “You’ve gotten yourself all worked up. Can you take some deep breaths for me?”
It took a moment, but she sucked in one long, shuddering breath. Peter smiled and reached over to rub a hand over her back. Instead of settling, though, she fucking growled at him.
“Malia,” Stiles started to chide, because they had talked about the growling.
But then her whole body started to tremble uncontrollably. In a blink, Peter found a coyote pup curled up on the bed where his daughter had been, her dress pooled around her. The hairbrush, liberated for lack of hair, fell off to the side.
Peter looked up at Stiles and smirked, shaking his head. She did have quite the flair for the dramatic. “That bad, hm?” he asked, teasing a little.
She growled again.
They were supposed to take her to Talia’s today. His sister had come over to meet Malia a few days after she moved in, but the poor girl had still been reeling from the change, too shy, and they let her retreat up to her room to play before more than a few minutes had passed.
Today, she would finally be meeting the rest of the family.
Peter slid down the zip on the back of the dress, and Malia immediately began to wriggle free of it. Her little dress shoes had dropped to the floor at the edge of the bed. He had to help tug her hind legs free of the tights, though. “Alright, come on, then,” he said, scooping her up off the bed. She growled again and he pressed a finger to the top of her nose. “None of that, now.”
Her eyes shone blue at him, but she settled. Peter passed her off to Stiles, who carefully folded her tail down to hold her against his chest with her front paws curled over his shoulder. “You know, you’re much more snuggly like this,” Stiles commented. “We’ll just have to work on human cuddles, okay?”
“What are the chances we convince her to shift back before we have to leave?” Peter asked doubtfully.
Stiles shook his head. “Hey, if anyone can appreciate a full shift, it’s Talia, right?”
----
“Princess Malia Bit The Queen!”
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. The tablet was balanced on his knees. Beneath the headline, a photo of Malia waving at the camera. Beside it, a stock photo of a coyote. A real coyote. An animal.
“Who leaked this?” he growled.
Stiles shifted closer to him on the bed, nudging their shoulders together. “Come on, Peter. She’s five – who’s actually going to care? It’s a little funny, isn’t it?”
“It’s not,” Peter gritted out. His mind flashed back to the talk Talia had given him before they went to the children’s home, about the games of public perception they were playing. He sighed and looked over at Stiles. “Malia’s species is nearly extinct outside of Mexico, and they’re still hunted like animals in parts of Mexico. Most humans in the US and Canada have never met a were-coyote.” He tapped the screen. “This is the impression they’ll form of them. That they’re wild, violent, dangerous. Uncivilized. They’ll take this one little girl, and they’ll extrapolate it to every were-coyote. Or they’ll say that clearly she was abused – that were-coyotes must be unfit parents.”
Horror overtook Stiles’s expression, his eyes moving back to the article as if seeing it for the first time. “Fuck. They can’t – she’s a little kid. They can’t put that on her.”
“They will.” Peter rubbed at the back of his neck. He felt wrung-out. It was only ten o’clock. He and Stiles had been getting to bed earlier, so they would have time to start their day before Malia woke up. “God, what were we thinking?” he muttered.
Stiles slipped his hand up the back of Peter’s neck, fingers sliding through the curls on the back of his head to scratch his scalp. “We had no way of knowing it would get leaked,” he reassured. “It happened in Talia’s house, for god’s sake.”
“Not that,” Peter sighed, leaning into the touch. “I mean, what were we thinking, bringing a child into this life at all?”
The scratches stopped. “Peter,” Stiles breathed. “You’re not saying...”
Oh, god. Peter pulled away so he could look Stiles in the eye, wanting to be very clear on this. “No,” he said firmly. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t even think about...” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t say, returning her, like Malia was an ill-fitting jacket and not their family.
“Okay, good,” Stiles said, still looking panicked by the idea.
“But I still wonder,” Peter explained, “what gave us the right, you know? To put her in all of this mess? She never asked for any of this. She never asked to grow up endlessly scrutinized by these vultures.”
Stiles’s expression softened. He reached out and cupped Peter’s cheek. “Neither did you.”
“It’s different,” Peter insisted.
“Why, because you’re Hale blood?” Stiles challenged, though his tone stayed gentle. “Because you’re over it? You’re clearly not.”
His husband’s ability to call him on his bullshit was one of the reasons Peter had fallen in love with him. It was also deeply, deeply annoying. “I just...” He closed his eyes, trying to get his anxieties into some form coherent enough to be voiced. He settled on: “I don’t want her to grow up resenting me for bringing her into this world.”
“Don’t you mean ‘resenting us’?” Stiles cocked his head to the side.
“I brought you into it, too.”
Stiles glared at him. “Peter Hale,” he scolded.
“I know, I know, you chose this,” Peter agreed.
“And, again, I’m the only one in this household that did,” Stiles reminded him. With a sigh, Stiles caught him around the shoulders and reeled him in until Peter was snuggled against his side, head on Stiles’s shoulder. He was quiet a moment before he asked, “Did you resent your parents?”
Peter didn’t talk much about them, and Stiles respected that, understood that Peter had never felt close with them, that they hadn’t been warm people. The press brought them up sometimes, usually around the anniversary of the accident. A helicopter crash in the Rockies. Conspiracy theories had flown about for months, most insisting that militant anti-were hunters had shot the helicopter down. When they finally found the black box, it revealed nothing but a simple engine malfunction.
Peter had been just shy of his thirteenth birthday. He remembered how numb he felt, walking down the street in the funeral procession with a stiff expression as the public wailed in mourning around him. He remembered thinking that these people, these strangers, had been allowed more emotional closeness with his parents than he had. They had owned his parents in a way Peter had never been allowed.
“I did,” Peter admitted quietly. “Sometimes I think I still do.”
Stiles pressed two fingers under his chin to tip his head up, and kissed his lips, soft. “We’ll protect her, okay?” he said. “Whatever it takes. We’ll make sure it isn’t so bad for her.”
Letting out a breath, Peter leaned up and kissed him again, then again until he was pressed flat on his back on the bed. Hovering over him, Peter took in the soft flush on Stiles’s cheeks, the sweet adoration in his eyes, the gentle curve of his mouth. “I love you,” he murmured. “More than I can ever say.”
#hale royal family au#royals au#tumblr fic#Steter#stiles stilinski#Peter Hale#talia hale#malia hale#teen wolf#teen wolf fanfiction#teen wolf au#part 5 of 6#because I have no self control#I wrote this really fast because BABY MALIA#the angstiest lil coyote
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My dog was lost for three days. What came back wasn't my dog.
As a kid, I was raised in a small fishing community on the Eastern side of Canada, surrounded by the gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Boreal Forest. The entirety of the land was close to 4000 foot square with an even smaller number of residents sprawled out over "main street", the main road running straight through our little town, and farming houses spread widely between areas of trees that were changed to domestic residential homes when agriculture stopped being profitable. In total, our community is surrounded by a vast expanse of ocean, and a seemingly endless barrage of trees that's spread over 55% of Canada's entire country. I spent most of my life hunting in those woods, so you can imagine my joy when my parents got me a "hunting dog".
Sandy was a Shetland Sheepdog, and while they were more fit to be herding and tracking sheep over grassy plains rather than rabbits and deer through dense forest, it didn't stop me from taking him with me on every excursion I possibly could. Sandy had been by my side for enough hunting trips that he'd grown accustomed to waking up just before breaking daylight, and on a few occasions helped track down small game like squirrels and rabbits through considerably large areas of forest.
Sandy wasn't my property, and wasn't treated like he "belonged" to me. Sandy was a member of the family, my best companion, and my truest friend. I think fondly back on all the times he'd sit in the front seat of the truck without being told, ready to go for a walk in whatever part of the forest I took him to. I can honestly say that there will never be a dog that will fill the void Sandy left in my life. I find that dog lovers relate to that sentiment more than others.
It was October 30th, the first day of deer hunting season. I had been talking with my family about taking Sandy, my hunting gear, and some essentials to one of the cabins my Grandfather owned in his heyday off an unmarked road a few hundred miles into the wilderness for a few days. This was met with a lot of protesting, but nothing could stop me from getting in some time looking for wild game in an area that wasn't already picked clean by illegal hunters earlier on in the month. Everything was packed into the old blue ford, Sandy included, and a few hours of driving later we were setting up camp in one of my Grandfather's secluded old cabins.
Here's where things got fucked up. Sandy, I'm so, so sorry.
I had spent most of the time of my life being in the wilderness. There were only a handful of times that things had gotten weird for me, but usually everything can be explained with scientific reason. That's why I brushed off Sandy's weirdness on the first few nights, chalking it up to the nervousness of a dog that's capable of hearing the far off noises of various coyotes, wolves, bears, and moose. This was untouched territory, of course. There had been plenty of time for wildlife to set up camp here, too.
The first night was fairly normal. I had set up Sandy's bed in the corner of the living room, next to the T.V. that looked like it came out of the early 90's. I figured I'd give Sandy the option to have someplace to lay down for a while, despite the fact that he slept curled up with me nine times out of ten. Close to 10 at night, Sandy looked straight at the wooden door and whined. I figured he needed to piss, and opened the door to let him out, not worried about having my best friend stray too far from me. Instead he sat just inside the door, looking out at the forests edge beyond the path. I too stood and looked for a few minutes before deciding he had just heard an errant critter close to the cabin. The rest of the night was fairly normal, and Sandy slept with me fine.
The second night, I chalked the weirdness up to Sandy's stress. Earlier in the day, we had been walking a few miles through the woods beyond the house, and I thought I heard the sound of twigs cracking under something heavy. I hoped it wasn't a moose, because my shotgun wouldn't have stood a chance, but something changed in Sandy that I didn't pay close attention to at the time. He hunched himself on his hind legs, his front pressed close to the ground. His mouth pulled up over his teeth, and he growled towards nothingness. I figured we'd try hunting again later, if whatever it was had left and should he be feeling up to it, but once we were inside he didn't want to move. Even when I tried to get him to go outside and do his business, he sat at the door and cried, wailing at me to let me know he didn't want to go out there. I didn't pressure him. If he pissed on the floor, so be it. Sandy never acted up before. I could excuse an accident or two, if he really didn't want to be out there. It must've been a bear, I thought, before locking the door and calling it a night.
The third night is where things went to hell, /nosleep/, and I still don't fully understand what happened.
Sandy didn't eat all day. I managed to shoot a rabbit in the early morning, when Sandy decided he didn't want to be outside any longer than he had to, and retired inside for the day. I cooked it up, threw a little gravy on it, and gave it to my dog. I didn't do this all the time, but I figured now was a special occasion, and maybe a treat would put him in a better mood for another walk the next day.
Sandy didn't touch it. He didn't so much as sniff it. Instead, he sat at my side on the couch, watching the doorway intently. I tucked him under one of my arms, and he laid his head on my lap, eyes still locked on that door. Close to three hours of watching grainy VHS tapes on an outdated television set, Sandy started crying, hugging himself close to my body. This is where my judgement took me down the wrong path for the first time of many.
It must sound silly, being my dogs protector rather than my dog being mine, but this was my family. I figured if there was something out there that was scaring Sandy so bad, then it was my job to do something about it. I loaded my 4.10, opened the door, stood in the doorway and waited.
I must've waited at least a half hour, staring into nothing. There was barely any sound, save for the faint buzz of insects and leaves rustling in the cold autumn wind. Moose aren't elegant creatures, and if it were a moose, I would've heard it coming. Around the 40 minute mark, Sandy took off like a shot, into the darkness of the trees beyond the path, barking wildly. I started to get worried, despite my knowledge that my dog isn't entirely helpless in the wilderness. There were still bigger animals that would've liked to take a bite out of him if there wasn't a lot of food for the winter.
I heard Sandy's bark fade away in the distance, and then stop altogether.
I waited hours standing in the doorway with my shotgun cocked and ready to put down whatever it was that was waiting in the woods. I waited hours for Sandy to come back to the house. I waited until the sun was cracking through the trees, and then I waited until that night, sitting on my porch step, feigning off sleep deprivation to see my dog come back.
Sandy did come back, but not for another three days.
Fog had rolled in at that point, and it was getting darker, the night painting the sky a navy blue. Tracking over the last few days proved futile, and I started to get worried that I'd need to leave and find more provisions to last me the next few nights. I couldn't leave Sandy up there, lost in the woods, cold and probably hungry. The thought that he might be waiting out there for me to find him and bring him back home was distressing enough. I was packing the bag that hung on the coat rack next to the door with what I'd need for the next day's trip. I figured tomorrow would be the last day before I'd go into town and see if my Father would help me find Sandy. He was a retired, graying man, but I was sure if I brought up Sandy's name he'd be more than willing to help me search for him. Thankfully, Sandy came back before I'd even finished that train of thought.
I saw him from the window, on the path that lead down to the main road, a few dozen feet away from the house. Normally I'd hear him scamper to the doorway and paw at the door a few times, eager to come in, but this was different. I could see the reflection of his eyes as green pearls in the murky fog that had swamped the house. For a moment I thought it might be an animal, but the outline of his body in the wisps of thick low-lying clouds was unmistakable. Still, despite myself, I hesitated. There was something different about his body language. I stared out the window for a few more moments before reason overcame my gut instinct. Sandy could be hurt, I thought. Or worse.
I flung the doorway open, but he didn't come right away. Instead he stood there, watching me intently, and when he didn't move I whistled to him. "Here, Sandy," I coaxed him towards the house. "here, boy".
The way he moved was... different. It was as though his hips had been dislocated, and the angle of his paws changed direction with every step, as though he'd forgotten how to walk properly. His head was bowed to the ground, but his teeth weren't bared. He didn't seem aggressive. The only way I could describe the look he gave me was "sheepish", like he'd just gotten into something he wasn't supposed to and I yelled at him for it.
I thought he might hurt himself hopping up onto the elevated step if he'd dislocated his hips, but he did just fine. His back half swung a little, oddly enough, and his paws almost folded underneath himself, but he didn't go sprawling. He sat on the step and didn't take his look off me. It wasn't until I had moved from the doorway completely, opened the door wide and waited for him to walk in that he moved.
Straight to his bed. He didn't stop at my hand and sniff at me. He didn't wait for pets or jump up on me like used to. It was straight to his bed, where he sat and watched me for quite some time afterwards.
I returned to the movie at hand. I called to him a few times, but he didn't respond. His ears didn't so much as raise to the sound of his voice, or the pat of my hand on the worn out couch beside me. I had missed my buddy, but I wasn't about to move him physically towards me. There was something about him that said I shouldn't have let him in, but I chalked it up to silliness, and a few hours later I went to bed. The more I think back on it, I don't recall him blinking once. He sat there like a statue, and when I turned off the light, I could still see the reflection of jade green following me as I went into my room and shut the door.
I could have sworn I heard him walk in the night, the sound of nails clicking against the wooden floor coming up to the door of my room, but they were slow and deliberate. They weren't like the quickness of Sandy realizing I'd gone to bed and coming to curl up. I heard the noises stop outside of my bedroom, but I didn't hear his whine. I thought nothing of it and fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke in the morning, I figured it must've been a dream. Sandy was still sitting in the upright position I left him in when I went to bed. It was as though he didn't move a muscle the entire night, and when I said good morning, he didn't so much as wag his tail.
He did follow me into the kitchen, but he paused at the doorway when I put his bowl down on the floor and filled it up with supermarket dog food. Once again, his back half moved weirdly as he slowly made his way towards me. There was a nagging feeling that something was off putting about the way he looked that day. It was like he had gotten a little longer overnight.
Sandy hunched down again, like when he was walking to the door the night before. He didn't come into the kitchen. I figured he must've been hungry being out in the wild for so long, but he eyed me like he was waiting for me to come a little closer rather than touch the food. It goes without saying, but after a few moments of a staring contest between me and my unblinking dog, I called off that foolishness and called his name out loudly. Not even a flinch. I didn't want to move closer to my dog to leave the kitchen door, but this was my Sandy, and the most damage he'd ever done was eat flies. Sure enough, as I passed him, he turned and his body swayed unnaturally, but he didn't move towards me.
When I left that day, I couldn't find anything. The deer tracks in the mud were made a few days prior and went cold off naturally made trails through the woods. I couldn't hear bugs, or birds, or even the howl of a nearby coyote. The only sounds for miles away from the campsite were my own breathing, and the sound of crunching leaves underneath my feet. When the sun started to set, I started making my way back, but I should've just packed my shit and left.
Just behind a cluster of trees, with the house just visible beyond the rise, I figured I found out the reason why the animals had abandoned this place.
Generally, when there are mass animal deaths, that usually means that something is wrong in the area of the slaughter, and wildlife are usually smart enough to get the hell out of dodge. Even cats are bred instinctively not to like drinking from water that is close to where their food is, because if you saw a dead animal close to a stream, you'd figure the stream was tainted and find another source of water.
Hundreds of squirrels were disemboweled and strewn across the grass in an almost perfect circle. Most of them were skinned alive, but when I turned to heave up all the contents in my stomach, there were a few dozen that were inside out. I couldn't help but vomit repeatedly as I tried my best to walk around the circle of tiny organs and mashed up bodies, not just over the sight, but because the smell was ungodly. I don't know how long they'd been out there, but if I'd stumbled across this sooner, I'd have left with Sandy in tow immediately after. Gradually, the bodies stopped, and delved off into a random dead squirrel here and there. The biggest thing I managed to find, just a few feet off the unholy feeding ground, was a deer.
It looked as though something had decided to skin it alive from hide to neck, and draped some of the skin over a branch like someone was tanning the hide. I don't know how long it had been there, but it smelled like it had been dead for quite some time, despite the fact that there wasn't a single fucking fly. The head had been cut off clean just above the shoulders, and when I realized the organs had been removed, I moved from a walking pace through the forest to a jog. Thankfully the cabin wasn't too far off. I heaved one final time, wiped my mouth off on the back of my sleeve, and looked up to the house to see Sandy watching me from the window.
I tried to reason with myself, and tell myself Sandy's odd behavior could've been trauma. I know it's stupid to think of it now, but at the time, it was the only reasonable explanation I had to keep myself from going insane. The elongating body could've just been the loneliness getting to me. Sandy had realized there was something up with this place, and the second he noticed it I should've taken this warning and taken off back into town.
Once the door was shut behind me, I started packing the food and essentials back into boxes, moving quickly to try and get my things into the truck before night came. It'd be dangerous to try and maneuver my way through the trails at night, as the hills off Kelly's Mountain were steep, and in pitch darkness with my only companion being my headlights, it would've been easy to slide off a ravine and never be heard from again. I didn't want to stay one more night, but I had no choice. I had gotten back to the house just moments before the sun finally receded past the horizon, and we were bathed in a navy blue sky once again. I didn't pay attention to Sandy. He just sat at his bed and watched me pack. I figured no harm no foul, I'd throw his stuff in the truck in the morning and we'd be back in town before night the next day. Glancing at him for just a moment, it was a passing thought that he was looking a little longer today, and when I went to bed, it was a hard time getting to sleep for the next few hours.
It must've been close to 4 or 5 in the morning when I heard it.
The sound of whistling. The same whistle I used to call my dog. I broke out into a cold sweat when I realized that whoever slaughtered those squirrels, hung the skin up, left what he didn't need, could've very well broken into my house.
The door to my room didn't make a sound as I opened it slowly, thankfully. I waited a moment, listening to someone call my dog for a few more seconds before I dared poke my head out from the door frame to get a good look and whoever it was that could've hurt Sandy.
The outside door was open. All I saw was the back half of Sandy, too long and lanky, almost coiled around the back of the door. His front half was outside. Whatever it was that had impersonated my dog, it was whistling slowly, calling for Sandy.
When I could've sworn that it had hunched down to the ground again, and said "Saaaannn-deeee" in the most ungodly voice I'd ever fucking heard, I closed the door just as softly as I'd opened it.
I don't know how long I waited with my back pressed up against the door. I knew I left my gun in the bag on the coat rack. I know I didn't sleep. I waited until I saw the sun break over the horizon, and then I waited some more, until it must've been mid-day and I finally got the balls to open the door again and make a break for the truck. I wouldn't die in that place.
"Sandy" was gone, and the door was open. His food was untouched, but the fridge was open, and all the meat was gone. I didn't bother packing his stuff. I just threw my bag over my shoulder, made my way to the ford as fast as I could, and turned on the ignition. I can't describe the feeling that overcame me as I realized that I'd have to leave Sandy in this place. The thought that he could be dead was never a thought in my mind. I don't think I could cope with the knowledge that whatever I allowed in my house, whatever disemboweled those animals, could've done the same with him.
I made my way down the winding paths and roads as fast as I possibly could without veering off the cliffs. I felt like I was turning in circles down this labyrinth that would take me back to that house, but when I reached the pavement on the stretch of road back to town, I felt relief wash over me, thinking I was safe.
Just as I was pulling off onto the cement, I felt something hard hit the back windshield, sending broken glass into the passengers seat. I only got a glimpse of the deer's decapitated head catching on unbroken glass and tumbling into the back seat. I cried for most of the way home, hands clenching the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were white.
I wish I could leave this off with a positive note, /nosleep/. I wish I could tell you that I found Sandy at home, waiting for me. I wish I could tell you that was the end of it, a traumatizing experience in the woods that I'll get over with time.
Last night, I found it hard to sleep. I kept replaying the entirety of my trip to Kelly's Mountain in my head. I figured I wouldn't be sleeping for a while, and laid there, listening to the wind through my open window.
I could've sworn I heard the whistle I used to call my dog with, coming from the forests edge.
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Inktober #4: Freeze
Based on Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” and “Feline Wizards” series. It was mentioned there are dog wizards, but I don’t recall ever getting to meet any. (If any did turn up and the canon contradicts me, I apologize. I didn’t read all the later books.)
Faro padded gingerly out onto the ice. It held her weight at first, but six body-lengths and it was starting to creak dangerously. “This is bad, Ilya,” she said. “It’s taking my weight for the moment, but I feel like it could crack any minute.” The ice was supposed to be solid and firm out a mile or more from shore.
“Be careful, Faro!” her partner, Ilya, shouted to her.
He was speaking his own language, which Faro referred to as Ruhhyi, and Faro was speaking her own – which Ilya’s kind called Kyonsky, or Kyonish when he was speaking with the Americans they worked with sometimes, but Faro just referred to it as what it was – Pack-speech. She often felt that she was one of the luckiest rawuu’uhff, Pack-people, on the planet; most Pack-people couldn’t make themselves understood to their huun packmates, and had to study and work incredibly hard just to make sense of a handful of commands in huun-speech. But Faro and Ilya were both wizards, both capable of the Speech – the language of magic, of the universe’s creation – and as such, could understand any other language spoken to them.
“I’m always careful!” Faro barked back. In her mind she assembled, and then whispered, a phrase to the ice, reminding it of when it had been solid and thick, easily able to hold a Pack-person’s weight. The ice, so reminded, obliged her by bearing her out as far as it existed. She jumped from floe to floe, digging thick claws into the ice when she landed to avoid skidding, until the ice layer that floated atop the seawater was so thin, it might as well be water and she’d have needed an entirely different spell to be able to walk on it.
Less than a quarter mile. Faro turned around and bounded back. “We’ve lost 75% of the ice in this area,” she whined to Ilya, tail between her legs and her head down, not as an expression of guilt or shame – the beings who’d wreaked this devastation were Ilya’s species, not hers, and besides, Faro didn’t believe in blaming people for something done by an entirely different pack – but intense sorrow. “We’re going to see a species die-off that rivals the dinosaurs.”
“That might be overstating it just a little bit,” Ilya said, but his smile was wan. He sat down on the ice – well, technically on his backpack, which he’d dropped onto the ice – and Faro trotted over to him, accepting the comfort of gloved huun fingers rubbing her scruff through her thick fur. It was nicer when Ilya’s fingernails weren’t covered, but even if it had been unpleasant she’d have let Ilya do it, because huun liked to pet Pack-people as much as Pack-people liked to be petted. “But you’re right. Siberia, Norway, Alaska, now we’ve confirmed Canada is just as bad. I don’t think we need to do a spot check in Greenland, do we?”
“It’s the same sun and the same sky everywhere on Earth.” Faro looked up at Ilya. “Are we going to intervene?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s thousands of living things.”
“Probably millions, actually, but—”
��And if you don’t think we have enough power, I agree the working would be too much for the two of us, but we could recruit some assistance. I know a wizard wolf pack around here—”
“Really? Wolves get to be wizards too?”
Faro chuffed. “All Pack-people are covered by the same Choice. We made it a long, long time ago, before even you huun did. So yes, there are wolf wizards, and coyote wizards, and I even heard there’s a dingo pack in Australia—”
“It’s not about the power, Faro.” Ilya stared at the ice below him, his scent profoundly sad. “My kind are the ones who’re doing this.”
“No one blames you for what the other huun are doing, Ilya. They’re not your pack.”
“That’s not my point.” He stood up and flung his arms out. “This isn’t being done by magic. We humans are doing this by accident, a side effect of technology we’re refusing to give up.”
“Yeah, the Packless One loves to trick life into destroying itself. It doesn’t even need to resort to magic to do it. So what? We don’t have to limit ourselves to interventions only when magic is involved, not on this scale. We’re talking about an entire biome potentially being destroyed.” Faro ran a short distance, barked, ran another short distance and barked, then turned on her paws and raced back to Ilya – a gesture that a huun could have accomplished with an outward swing of arms, a gesture that meant “all this territory is what I’m talking about.” “We need to freeze it, Ilya! We need to save them! I admit that freezing the entire coastline around the Arctic Circle is a little much, but we could get a lot of other wizards—”
“Faro! Just listen to me!”
Faro shut up.
“I know humans. If we freeze the Arctic with wizardry, we’ll save an entire biome, right. For a while. But it’s the fact that the ice is melting that’s making my people finally realize how badly we’re screwing up the planet. You know humans don’t know about wizards, in general—”
“Yeah, I’ve never understood that. Why don’t you just tell the other humans?”
Ilya rolled his eyes. “For the same reason we’re destroying the Arctic in the first place. Because there are a lot of corrupt and idiotic humans who’d misuse the existence of wizardry the way we’ve misused everything else. My point is. If everything freezes back over, they won’t know wizards did it. They’ll think it’s natural. And if it’s natural, then the warming was natural too, because the scientists’ predictions of the Arctic melting will be proven wrong. So all the people who are just now starting to think that maybe, possibly, they might have to change their lifestyles or do something inconvenient to protect the planet… they’ll all think ‘Oh, false alarm!’ And nothing will change.” He sat down on the knapsack again. “It’s the entire planet warming, not just the Arctic. Wizardry can’t fix that. Humans need to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere or the entire planet will keep heating up, and it’s here in the Arctic that it’s most obvious.”
His logic made too much sense. Faro whined. “But isn’t there anything we can do?”
“We can do what we’re been doing. We can track down enough animals and send them to the future that there’ll be a breeding population even if they go extinct in the here and now. We can do small local fixes. We can identify anything that’s so endangered it risks dying out right now and transport its members further inland to save their lives immediately. But magic isn’t what’s destroying the Arctic, or the rest of the planet, and if we try to use wizardry to fix it, we’ll be stuck using wizardry to fix it over and over again, because humans won’t learn. We won’t change unless we think we’ll die if we don’t.”
Faro wanted to howl. The Great Pack Mother and Her Pups had granted her all of this power, power to change the lives of huun and Pack-people alike, and she couldn’t use it to save the world. She couldn’t use it to freeze her home back over and save the bears and the delicious fish and the huun who needed to hunt those things to live.
She managed to keep the howl back, but she whimpered, and couldn’t stop whimpering, occasionally breaking into small yips of distress. Ilya ruffled her fur again. “I know. I know, girl,” he said, his own voice rough with the effort of keeping back tears, smelling of despair and resignation. “Let’s go back home. We’re done here for the day. We can come back tomorrow and try to save some animals, but right now, you need a steak and I need a hot buttered rum and cherry vareniki.”
“That sounds good,” Faro choked out, getting her whimpers under control. “Maybe after we eat we’ll think of something we can do.”
“Maybe,” Ilya said, but he didn’t sound or smell like he believed it.
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That “domesticated coyotes” anon has been bouncing around in my head all day. One thing people forget is there are specific requirements that need to be met for domestication and, if I remember correctly, we can meet those for very few animals. It’s why we’d never be able to ACTUALLY domestic moose, there’s no way we could provide the amount of food for them.
It also ties into the exotic pet trade industry as well. What a lot of people don’t realize is the exotic pet trade is that they don’t prevent animals from going to into extinction. From what I’ve seen cheetahs are struggling massively because people in these businesses yank them from the wild, some dumbass who doesn’t realize what all goes into taking care of a wild animal like that buys it, maybe even declaws it, then dumps it at an already max capacity sanctuary because they realize how much it costs to own one. Insects are another creature that are quickly losing numbers because of the pet trade and it’s sad no one talks about it.
I’m so sorry for this massive ramble, but it’s something I get overly passionate about and it’s upsetting that people don’t realize that these animals rarely survive when rereleased into the wild and it’s stuff that feels like isn’t talked about enough. People just need to realize some things just aren’t meant to be.
I agree! There's no reason or benefit for humans to domesticate coyotes when we already have dog breeds that can do most of what coyotes can (and often better then they can in some aspects). Why don't we domesticate coyotes like we did with dogs? It's because they're two completely different species. The process of domesticating them wouldn't be the same as with dogs to begin with, and no one here has another 40,000+ years to figure that out. There's also research being done that the original lineages of canines that lead to the modern domestic dogs aren't the same as modern gray wolves. So we may have domesticated an entirely different wolf species that was closely related to what become modern gray wolves, but were much more susceptible to the domestication process then other canids. If the species had to be THAT specific, then what makes anyone logically think coyotes (that diverged from a different wolf-like canid nearly 2 million years ago) can all of a sudden be domesticated via isolated incidents of animal abuse over a few generations?
Insect, bird, amphibian, and reptile populations are suffering from the exotic pet trade so severely! Many are just plucked straight out of the wild and then sold to the person with the most money and the least amount of resources to care for those animals. It ruins those local ecosystems, decimates those wild populations, and most don't even make it to a buyer because they end up dying due to stress or neglect before even being sold. It's a big issue that really needs to be discussed more. But fools on social media don't want the facts. They just want bite-sized consumable abusive animal content without having to feel guilty, or worse, want to exploit an exotic animal for clout and narcissistic purposes.
It's all good, I definitely understand your passion and frustration. It's a very irritating seeing people so ready to defend thinly veiled animal abuse and deny the facts.
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5 Books that Got Me Interested in Werewolves
I like werewolves. Both of my current book series, Heaven's Heathens MC and the Dawn Series include werewolves. And if you've read any of my previous blog posts, you'll know that The Lone Prospect (Heaven's Heathens MC #1) was inspired after watching the Expendables 2 during a binge watching of Sons of Anarchy.
My interest in doing werewolves instead of say vampires came from reading a lot of books about werewolves, where in the series werewolves weren't the main focus. I wanted a series of books that wasn't expressly romance that focused on werewolves and werewolf dynamics and adventures and being a werewolf was more an accepted part of life than "woe is me, I am a monster."
Monsters more often than not have human faces. See Frankenstein.
These are not necessarily recommendations. But if you like werewolf books and aren't picky, you may like these.
1. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
Elena Michaels is the only female werewolf that has ever survived the change. A journalist good at investigating, she used her skills to track down rogue werewolves and kill them. Until she got tired of the violence the life required no matter how much she loved the male members of her pack. She's been trying to live like a human, but an old enemy is about to resurface threatening the pack she loves. Now, she's being drawn back into that world.
This was Kelley Armstrong's first novel. I liked the original cover and that's why I bought it. It focused completely on werewolves and was an interesting start to a new series. Book 2 started introducing other races and after a while I gave up on it when it focused exclusively on the young witch that was also introduced in book 2, Stolen. Bitten doesn't really hold up to any sort of in depth critical thinking when it comes to werewolves. Why is Elena the only female werewolf? She's also an orphan who has been sexually abused and then her boyfriend changed her without permission. I can see why she left the guy. I don't care how hot he's supposed to be. My last gripe for this book was Elena really felt like a stand in for the author. They are both Canadian and the politics commentary was really heavy handed. Maybe it was supposed to make the book feel relevant in 2001. It just made me grimace a bit.
2. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
Business has been slow, no dead, for Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional Wizard. Until Karen Murphy comes with a case of brutal murder. Mutilated corpse, strange paw prints and a full moon. It's going to take all of Harry's knowledge and skill to get to the bottom of which werewolf group is performing the murders. And the answer may be closer than he thought.
Fool Moon was Jim Butcher's second Harry Dresden Case File. He hadn't quite hit his writing stride yet. (That didn't happen until book 3.) In the book, Jim Butcher went through and used about every single type of werewolf he could think of to blow the readers off the scent (see what I did there) of who the real murders were. He used a lot of "classic" Universal studios werewolf lore and lore from other werewolf, lycanthropy, berserker type werewolves as well. And then he pretty much dropped the whole werewolf thing like hot potatoes in the books after this in order to pursue his Black Council and Winter Court Fae big story lines. And the times he does end up using the werewolves, it can be rather offensive, such as werewolves going into heat and the general way he describes the female werewolves. (He also has this problem with most of his female characters. I digress.) It was a good starting point for me at least to look at the different werewolf types and go research more on my own.
3. A Fistful of Charms by Kim Harrison
Rachel Morgan's love life has never been that great. Now, Nick, a former boyfriend who cut and run needs Rachel's particular skills as a runner. A thief, he's stolen an artifact that could give the werewolves more power over the vampires and now he's been caught. It's up to Rachel to find the artifact and free him from the werewolves. The problem is, he's not in Cincinnati, but up in Michigan and on an island in the middle of one of the Great Lakes. And it's going to take more than a few magical spells and wishful thinking to get him out alive.
This was book 4 of Kim Harrison's Hollows Series. In one of the previous books, she'd made a one off character, an insurance adjuster, who was a werewolf. Kim Harrison is not someone who really outlines her books in advance, so this insurance adjuster suddenly became a lot more important and so did werewolves for this fourth book. Because Rachel Morgan is so caught up in vampire, demon and fae politics, other than some consequences of what happened because of this book and her joining the insurance adjuster's pack for ... insurance... purposes, after this, werewolves were dropped. So, this book was the best look at the way werewolf packs worked in her world. I liked it because there was one part of the book where it was clear that the lead female of the pack had as much power as the male leader. And in other books, there were female pack leaders as well. But the series became very much about Rachel Morgan, her love life and how she was so special. I read until the last book, but left feeling very unsatisfied as a reader. But this wasn't that bad of an adventure! I especially loved Jenks in this book. Jenks is one of my favorite characters in the entire series. This was "his" book so to speak.
4. Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Mercedes Thompson is part Native American, part mechanic and all coyote shifter. When a scruffy werewolf teen ends up at her auto shop looking for a quick job and a place to sleep, she helps him because of the werewolves that raised her. When his dead body ends up on her doorstep. She goes looking for who killed him and ends up getting entangled again with the man she thought she loved and had to leave them to get away from it all.
Moon Called was a promising first book, some Native American anachronisms aside. (Becca did a better review of this than I ever could.) As far as the series went, since Mercy lived right next door to a werewolf and later ended up dating him (and I won't spoil whether that worked out or not) the books had plenty of werewolf story lines. And if you like your werewolves to be OCD barely controlled anger management monsters controlled by the patriarchy then sure, this is the series for you. Sure, there were times Mercy tried/tries to address the problem of male dominant packs but that doesn't and isn't the focus of the books. Most of the books are how Mercy somehow gets involved in another species like vampire or fae's trouble despite the fact she's a relatively low powered coyote shapeshifter. There's no real reason why Mercy is "special" and everyone wants her, she just is. These werewolves have absolutely no basis in any sort of wolf science. Being the series is so werewolf focused, it started to drive me bonkers after a while. I gave up when another "bad thing" happened to Mercy after 10 books. (The Rape happens in book 3 btw. Just a warning.)
5. Master of Wolves by Angela Knight
Officer Faith Weston, head of the Clarkston PD K-9 department is still reeling from losing her previous dog. She's hoping that an all business front and a new dog will help her move on and keep the attention of her lewd boss away from her. Her new dog Rambo was big and tough and didn't give her any crap. Too bad Rambo was more than he seemed. Jim London, bounty hunter and werewolf, is certain that the murder of his friend Tony has been covered up by the Clarkston police department. There's only one way to find out and that's to go undercover and his dog form is perfect for the job. Faith Weston though is bringing out the animal in him.
Okay, yes, spoiler alert, Master of Wolves is a romance novel. I don't read a lot of these and when I do they tend to be primarily fantasy focused. I've read Terry Spears (one book and no more, no, never again, bad wolf science, BAD,) Thea Harrison and a few others, but Angela Knight was the one I picked up back in 2006 when looking for werewolf novels to read. There are a few moments of "I don't know what Angela Knight was thinking" when it comes to the scenes about Jim being a dog and... thinking like a man hound dog about Faith and later Faith seems okay with it? Maybe it was supposed to be funny but, yeah. 4 of the 9 books in Angela Knight's series focus on werewolves and for the most part they are pretty much very formulaic romance novels and the werewolf pack dynamics were once again patriarchal and based on bad wolf science. Really, it was more the fact that this book was focused on werewolves and solving a mystery and using all the forms that the werewolf had to do it that stood out to me.
Five different books, five different treatments of werewolves, though most are the same "werewolves are monsters" based on no good modern science about wolves. But they each had different facets that got me thinking about how I would write a werewolf focused novel if I ever wrote one. Then I did and it's called The Lone Prospect, available in ebook (3.99) and paperback (7.99) on Amazon.
#books#werewolf books#werewolf#werewolves#werewolf fiction#werewolf novels#fantasy#paranormal romance#urban fantasy
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hey don’t ask what this is but it might be long sorry mobile users. Short writing piece based slightly off of this ask and this ask, and the general idea that Chara came from a village a bit back in time, say, the 1800s.
Warning for implied death and abuse, and a brief mention of blood. As always, inspired by radical face’s “ All Is Well Now (It’s Only Blood)”.
They liked to hide with the cattle, at night. When they were all left to roam, free of restraints or cages. The people in the village marked them up their side, branded them and dyed their hide to designate their ownership. They had done the same to their own arms, the way they left marks to remind them that they were just like the cattle: worthless commodity.
But the cows were kind creatures, they came to find. They laid in the pasture with their children, licked their heads and see them to their health. The babies would be separated by morning, so they soaked in the night together they had between mother and child.
Sometimes, the cows would let Chara lay with them; their fur was more rough, and they were quite large animals, but sometimes Chara could rest their head against their side and hear their lungs heave and stomachs digest. They’d watch them with their big, endless eyes; their blush-pink noses, and their gently swaying tails.
An animal like the cows would never harm them. Even when the other humans rangled and strangled them, herded and branded them, yelled and lashed out did the cows still retain their kindness, their unfear of the world.
And it was always just them. Wolves were few and far between, and by night fall the dogs were asleep and the birds no longer sung. The endless meadow was a sanctuary for only them --- but there was always a slight feeling, in the back of Chara’s throat, that someone had been watching.
Or something had been.
The moon, the stars? The mountains that rolled North? Coyotes? Whatever it was, it lingered on Chara’s neck as they tempted to catch sleep in the safety of the cow’s stomach. Sometimes, even when they went back to the village before the others could wake, the watchful feeling would still linger, like eyes followed them back home.
One night in specific, when they were cradled in a small pile of the calves, they could hear feet moving through the grass --- ones that were most certainly not of the cattle.
They could hear the mothers rise and baulk, moos that woke up the babies; but Chara was too scared, and instead ducked their head into their arms and attempted to act something between asleep in dead, hoping that whatever was moving wouldn’t get to them.
They could feel it, pass over them, the shadow casting from the moon taking over their whole body. What sounds like --- fabric, shifting and moving as it seemed to get closer down to them, Chara’s breathing now becoming labored.
Something touched their head, and they nearly jumped. They could hear their heart in their eyes, and their arms almost began to shake in fear; but then the figure moved again, rose, and trailed off. Too scared to even look, even when the cows hunkered back down, Chara fell asleep terrified.
When the morning came, a commotion was found at the center of the village, with one of the cattle ranchers holding a goat on a long, thick rope around it’s neck. They hollered and gloated about how they found this animal to the rest of the village, all the while gagging the goat with harsh jerks of the rope in excitement.
Chara caught a glimpse in it’s eyes as it’s stare seemed to follow Chara back to their house. It was nothing like the cow’s; piercing, singular, directed at them with a gaze of determination, nothing like the safe emptiness of the cattle. Something felt wrong.
Not long after, Chara once again fled their house with new branding on their arms. Through the blur of their tears and rage they were able to make out the center of their village where some golden flowers lay, and that the village goat was seated in them, staring.
But it stared like nothing else. It was as if, for a moment, Chara was staring at someone, and they were staring back, a presence looming inside them. The goat did not move, and did not blink, but it’s posture was almost inanimalistic and more.... human. It enraptured Chara for a moment, before they sped off into the fields.
Another few days, and the goat was there again. This time Chara was braver, and carefully sat in the buttercups with them.
“ I’m surprised they haven’t offed you yet.” Chara whispered to it, thinking they were speaking to nothing. But it’s head moved to look at Chara, slightly tilted, eyes... soft. Like the look of a mother reassuring her children. Chara backed up and jumped out of the flowers.
Another night, another set of bruises to soothe as they laid in the fields of calves and cattle. As Chara was wiping away a stale tear, the cattle that was around about seemed to part and baulk --- for the goat.
It trotted to where Chara was sitting, and while the mothers stood worried the calves laid docile around Chara, undisturbed by the presence of the animal. For a moment Chara was shocked to see the animal so far out, but it was almost understanding; there were no other animals in the village. The goat didn’t even seem to have any of it’s own come along from... wherever it came from.
Animals must get lonely.
Another night, and the goat followed again. This time, Chara was brave enough to lay with it instead.
Goat hair felt different than cows, and their bodies more sturdy. They lay with their head on the animal’s shoulder, eyes closed. As Chara drifted to sleep in the field, they could’ve sworn they felt the goat watch down at them, just like their mother would do when they were young.
It almost felt like it wanted to say something.
One day, the goat was gone. Someone accused Chara of having something to do with it, and by evening the man who owned the goat had tracked them down in their corner of the village.
Their parents believed the man. Everybody believed him. Nobody believed Chara.
They were worth no more than the cattle, after all.
There, they cried and wailed in the field of the calves and cattle. It startled them up, but instead they formed a group around Chara as if they were protecting them.
Even the cattle considered Chara one of them. So it was true.
But it was the sound of hooves stomping, of mooing into the night that tore Chara away from their sobbing. They could hear it again, the sound of the footsteps like the night they lay scared, the rustling of fabric. They looked up, but couldn’t see anything from the wall of cowbacks blocking them from even seeing the sky.
They shuffled to get up, thinking maybe it was someone from the village coming to get them, too scared to run away anymore; but as they managed up and cleared their eyes of the foggy tears, a different set of eyes met with them.
Piercing, singular, directed at them.
A hand that was neither a human’s or an animal’s rested on one of the cows, the stain of blood against their softwhite fur. The beast stood tall, with horns that curled behind their ears, shoulders broad like the horizon behind them. They stood with the posture of a human, with the face of a goat, the voice of something neither this or that. It spoke to Chara in the softest tone they had ever been spoken to.
“ All is well now.”
They weren’t scared.
The calves slept soundly beneath them.
The night was calm, cold, and so bittersweet.
The creature lent out a hand, which Chara accepted.
All is well now.
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