Chapter 1: Shelter

A dog with no name limped into the alley and pressed his injured body against the cold stone foundation of a small house.  He tried to disappear into the safety of the shadows, hoping he was alone as he examined his left flank.  The slice in his hide had stopped bleeding, the fur caked with congealed blood and dirt from the road.    The dog tried to put weight onto his left hind leg then yelped in pain.  It throbbed but he summoned up the courage not to whimper.

The dog was confused by the recent increase in the numbers of people entering this little town. He became nocturnal so to avoid them.  But this evening as he tried to cross the street to a dependable source of food he could not dodge the horse's hooves quickly enough and he got clipped and tumbled between the horse and the cart it was pulling.

The dog needed to find shelter closer than where he normally hid during the daylight hours.    He limped to the end of the alley.  To his left was a large mound of rubble, he would not be able to cross that, not with his injured leg.   To his right was a small stone fence, setting the boundaries of the yard for the small stone house that edged the alley.  He sniffed and limped along this wall.  He could not jump over it in his condition, so hoped he could locate an opening.  He could smell a current wafting from further along the fence.  This smell was different than the alley or the street, and it was at a low level, so probably not coming from over the wall...it was hopefully indicating an opening in the fence, an opening he hoped he would be able to squeeze through.

As the dog limped along the fence line, the smell became stronger....goats!   And where there are goats, there is shelter, bedding and water.  He felt his luck turning as he saw a gap in the fencing where it met a large rock face.   He sniffed cautiously through the opening to be sure there was only goats on the other side.  He did not want to meet up with a herding dog, or worse, a human.   But all he could smell was goat.  He crawled through the opening and stumbled onto the packed earth ground below it.  He held in a yelp, not wanting to alert any humans that something strange was in their goat's paddock.

The dog surveyed the paddock.  He did not see any goats.  But his nose knew they were nearby.  He could also smell that a human--a male--had walked through recently.  The dog hoped this meant a final check on the goats and that the man would not be back until the break of dawn.  He did not smell another dog, another good sign for him.  

The smell of the goats grew stronger as the dog with no name limped towards the back of the paddock and towards the rock face.  There was a dark opening in the rock face.  It appeared at first, a cave.  But as the dog got closer, and the smell of goats stronger, the dog realized this was the shelter for the goats, and for him.  The shelter was small, in human terms.  Even a short human would easily hit his head on its roof.  It appeared that it was made by a human, probably rocks scratched out of the rock wall were the same ones used for the fencing....at least they smelled the same.

There were three goats in the cave.  Two were bedded down, chewing their cud,  the third was pulling at the hay left by the human.  There was coarse straw on the floor.  There was no watering trough per se, but the dog with no name could here a dripping sound near the back of the cave.  There must be a spring behind those walls, the dog thought, smelling the coolness of the water.  The drippings from the rock were collecting into a basin placed on the floor.  That is what he needed.  Water.  The goats paid no attention to the dog as he lapped at the water.  It was as if the goats were used to dogs....not a good sign.  But the dog was tired and would deal with other dogs in the morning if he needed to.  The dog found a dark corner, a bit of a deeper recess in the back wall of the cave.  Some straw was pushed against it and the dog, limping, made several circles on the straw creating a bit of a nest.  This would help to hold in his warmth.  Then, the dog with no name quickly fell asleep.