Different Today

She's different today, my human. She shed her fur. Yesterday it was blonde and it flowed down her back like water from a fire hydrant and it smelled like strawberries when I nuzzled it. Today it's gone. I shed mine too sometimes, like when the weather gets too hot outside, or when I've gone too many days without being walked. Sometimes it just happens on its own. Maybe that's true for her too, my human. Maybe she woke up today and her fur spilled out over her pillow and left her with the too-short table scraps she has now. Maybe it just happened.

She's different today, my human. She's wearing new clothes. They don't quite fit, and I can't see any of her legs anymore—not the ones she stands on and not the ones she uses to carry things. Her head-fur is covered and her legs are covered and her body's covered, like what's hidden beneath all those layers of clothes is some kind of secret. She looks like a piece of steak, a thin, white bone nestled in a heap of wrinkly brown. "What do you think, Buster?" she asks, spinning around and around in the bathroom mirror until I get dizzy. She smiles when I thump my tail in response—I've never been smart, but I can always get her to smile like that. "You can get some good deals, if you go to the right thrift store," she says. "And you know what the best part is? There aren't as many people in there watching you the whole time."

She's different today, my human. Her voice is deeper. It used to sound like the chew toy she bought me last year: high-pitched and squeaky, capable of busting if you bit into it too hard. A voice like trying to walk on your hind legs. Now it sounds angry, the kind of voice you'd expect a rolled-up newspaper to have. It shakes me worse than thunder and lightning sometimes. Worse than fireworks popping outside the window. Even worse than the suck of the vacuum. It's the kind of voice that makes "Dinner time!" sound like a command instead of an invitation, and "Who's a good boy?" sound like a question where there's more than one right answer.

She's different today, my human. She's got these big bumps on her face. One between her eyes. Three on her forehead that look like a bird's wing. I could lick her cheek and probably hit five more of them. Her skin is shiny and slick as a raw bone. She calls it oil. I have to blink a few times just to keep looking at her. "Don't worry, Buster," she says. "It's just acne. It'll go away eventually. Tomorrow is a new day." But that doesn't stop her from spending another night in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing her face with slobbery liquids and creams, trying to make her problems vanish right now. It doesn't stop her from trying to turn "eventually" into "tomorrow."

She's different today, my human. She doesn't smell like fruit and flowers. Today she smells like sweat. The kind of sweat you get after chasing a ball twenty times on a hot summer's day. Or when your human tells you you're going for a car ride to the park but then you're sitting in that room again and there's that lady again in her white coat holding that cold silver disc against your chest. The aroma of sweat doggy-paddles through the house, pawing at the carpet and the walls and the windows. She doesn't mind the scent, so I don't mind either. But I wonder where that other smell went.

She's different today, my human. She changed her name. It used to be Tina. I know she changed it because I was asleep on the floor when she came home, and right when she walked through the door, her phone woke me up. It sounded like a squirrel, like something annoying you just want to chase until it goes away. She looked at the phone for a long time, my human. Then she cleared her throat, pressed a button, and said, "This is Samuel." Only she said it like she wasn't sure, like she was trying to figure out whether the whole thing was actually true or whether she was about to take a trip to the white coat lady's office instead.

She's different today, my human. Her fur is back, but this time it's on her face. A bunch of it, brown and bushy. It's going past her lip and down both sides of her mouth like it's trying to chase its own tail. I don't understand it. And the first problem here is: I've never been smart. The other problem is: I didn't recognize her just now when I heard the noises coming from the bathroom, not with all that fur suddenly unshed but put back in the wrong places, and not with her four equally furry limbs on display for the first time in months. I didn't recognize her, my own human, so I couldn't stop myself. Not from growling at the intruder, and not from barking, and not even from lunging forward and catching her pants leg between my teeth. Not until that newspaper-deep voice broke through the silence as she cried, "Buster, stop it! Buster, it's me!" and she grabbed the fur on her face and yanked and tugged until it came loose, and her face was her face again, only with a dark indent in place of the fur. "It's not real. It's just taped on, you dumb dog! I was only trying to see how it looked on me, in case I decided later on," she said, and her words, booming and unfinished in the cramped bathroom, made me whimper and flinch. By the time I released my bite, she was already getting up. And by the time I went to nuzzle the brown face-fur by way of apology, she had already tossed it in the trash can. And by the time I thumped my tail to get her to smile, just once, she was already out the door.

She's different today, my human. I know that much, even if I've never been smart. But maybe tomorrow she won't be different. Maybe then she'll be the same. After all, tomorrow is a new day. She said so herself.