Jane and Towser - Rewards and Punishments

Chapter 7

One day around noon she heard a faint, once familiar sound. She raised her head and frowned; it was a noise that she seemed to remember; it had some significance but she was much too hot and tired to recall it. Instead, she closed her eyes and slept, waiting for Towser to return and lead her to water, and the price he would exact for it.

It was earlier than usual when the dog trotted to drink, this time accompanied by the older and larger Bravo. His thirst satisfied, Towser walked up to her and freed her from the pole. By now he was so convinced of her submissiveness that he no longer bothered to hold her by her leash and she turned her back on the dogs, lowering her head into the water bowl more intent on slaking her terrible thirst than anything the dogs might do to her.

They left her to drink unmolested, but once she raised her dripping face and hair from the bowl, Towser uttered an impatient and minatory little bark. Jane listlessly went down upon her elbows and spread her knees apart. Her dog took her at once in his usual frenzy, but she stayed passive standing under his attentions, and, when he'd withdrawn, she stayed where she was in case Bravo required servicing - for that was how she'd come to think of it - too. In the event, the bigger dog didn't follow the new pack-leader's example; instead he probed Jane's distended vagina with his nose before licking the mixture of her's and her dog's fluids from between her thighs.

Towser led her back to the post and secured her. They stood for several moments regarding each other, Jane with weary indifference, he with the pride of ownership. Dog though he was, Towser knew that the hard, thin, flexible thing with the loop at one end and her collar at the other would keep her from wandering off. He had never even approached the degree of sexual satisfaction he'd been getting from this bitch, despite her odd shape; and he'd become used to her subtly off-putting smell, so often had he covered her. She was quite docile, not snapping at him as another bitch might, nor plumping down on her haunches to deny him access and obliging him to snarl and snap at her. Now that he had gained the unrestricted use of her body when ever he pleased, he had no intention of allowing her to wander off.

Jane lay on the filthy ground, drearily considering her wretched existence; continually chained up, her dirt-caked, stinking body a sexual toy for her own dog. Weeping to herself quietly and despairingly at the knowledge of what she'd become, she sobbed herself to sleep.

She woke reluctantly; at least in her sleep she wasn't constantly confronted with her degradation, and stared vacantly out across the yard. It was late afternoon, and her stomach rumbled in anticipation of the few scraps the dogs would leave for her after they'd eaten. But it was yet too early, and neither dog was in sight when she rose to all-fours and emptied her bladder. She lay down again, her right paw supporting her head, and her left outflung upon the ground. Focussing idly upon her left mitt, she pondered once more on how restricted the mitts made her human hands; wearing them, she was no more than an animal. A fly landed upon her wrist-cuff and she stared at absently. The memory of the sound she'd heard that morning surfaced in her mind. She frowned once more, idly watching the fly probe a hairline crack between the leather-cover steel surrounding her wrist. Then she stiffened in shock as the significance of combination of the crack and the faint clicks of the morning fully struck home. Scarcely daring to hope, she wriggled her wrist inside its imprisoning cuff. Did she deceive herself, or was there more play around her wrist. Slowly she rose and sat on her haunches. Bringing her left wrist up to her eyes, she examined it closely. It was true, the mitt was open - she was free at last!

She carefully placed her left paw on the ground by the side of her right, and sat for long minutes in a daze, entirely unable to believe that her ordeal might be at an end. Eventually she lifted her paw again, tucked it between her upper right arm and her ribs, and pulled hard. Her left mitt came off with a faint - perhaps imaginary - whoosh and she held her freed hand up and examined it unbelievingly.

Finally she summoned up her courage. After glancing furtively around for any sight of her gaolers, and without even bothering to remove her right-hand cuff, she lifted her leash over the post and scurried to the kitchen door on all-fours. With an effort she stood upright for the first time for more than a month. Grasping dizzily at the door frame for support, she took down the key she'd hung up so many days ago and unlocked the kitchen door. Stumbling through into the stale-smelling kitchen, she hurriedly closed and locked the door behind her in delirious, ludicrous terror that, even at this moment, the dogs might come running up to herd her out into the yard and tether her to the post again. Dropping to all-fours, she scrambled over the hard, tiled floor and butted her head against the half-open door of her downstairs bathroom. She had to stand, clinging to the wall, to turn on the shower, but she reverted to all-fours once more as the warm, clean water battered her body. Pulling off her remaining mitt in one frantic gesture, she hurled it from her into a corner of the room. There was a full bottle of shampoo on a tiny stand near the floor, and she poured it all over herself, rubbing it well into the dirt on her body. She had used it all before the water gurgling down the drain had begun to run clear, and she was obliged to crawl, dripping wet and shivering, out into the kitchen where she took a plastic bottle of liquid soap from the cupboard below the sink and returned to the shower. By now she was able to stand again, though the muscles and small bones of her spine were protesting against having to carry the weight of her upper body after so long on all-fours.Finally she towelled herself dry, and steeled herself to look into the huge wall-mirror. She was surprised to see herself so little altered by her experience; though her face was tired and drawn, and her ribs were more prominent than before, and she found from the bathroom scales that she had lost twelve pounds in weight.

Slipping on sandals, she peered out of the window before venturing outside. But it was well past eight o'clock, and the dogs had long gone to their shed. Still supporting herself with a hand against the wall against a fall, she made her slow way along the porch to the stinking corner where she'd spent so many daylight hours. Her collar was still around her neck and her leash still dangled fom it so used was she to their presence, and she shivered with terror as she looked down at the post where it stood among the filth covering the ground. For one mad moment she imagined herself placing the loop of her leash over the post again, and refitting her mitts in order to volountarily re-enter her captivity. She shivered in the suddenly cool air; so long had she been without clothing that she hadn't even realised she was still naked.

Returning to the kitchen, she locked the door firmly behind her and put on the kettle for tea. She sat long over it, taking it milkless for she had no fresh provisions in the house. After injecting herself with the antidate to the peculiar body odour which had so successfully disguised her own, she felt totally drained. Despite her hunger, she went to bed. After only a few minutes of trying to get comfortable under the covers on the soft mattress, she climbed out of her bed and lay naked on the floor. There she fell asleep, still wearing her collar and leash.

She slept the sleep of the dead, and it was only her hunger which drove her downstairs in the mid-morning of the next day. She drank milkless tea, then heated a tin of soup and ate it with cheese and crackers. The air in the kitchen was warm and close, and, once more, she didn't realise that she was naked. Previously, except for her ventures into Self-Bondage, Jane had hardly ever been naked except in the privacy of her own bathroom, even putting on a bathrobe to walk the few feet into her bedroom to dress. She showered again, this time standing upright, and, when she felt brave enough, she peeped out the kitchen window into the yard to catch sight of the dogs. Bravo was lying in his usual position near the feeding and water bowls; of Towser there was no sign. Jane shivered; sooner or later she'd have to face them both and hope that they remembered her only as a human being and their Mistress. But not yet; she just lacked the moral courage to look them in the eye.

For three days she moped around the house, at last summoning up the will-power to remove her collar but unwilling to venture outside. Finally she pulled herself together, telling herself sharply that this wouldn't do at all; she needed fresh food, and she couldn't stay in here for ever - for one thing she had to return Bravo to his owner.

The next day she rose early, showered, and dressed for the first time since she'd slipped out of her nightdress on that fateful morning in her kitchen. She chose her clothing carefully, electing to wear her oldest dress and sandals on the grounds that they would the deepest imbued with her unique personal scents. No pains must be spared to assure the dogs that their Mistress was indeed returned. She practised speaking, at first not realising that the little plastic gag was still in her mouth, she who had been dumb for so long, until she could snap out the words of command with authority, for she knew that self-assurance was essential when dealing with the dogs.

She went out into the yard just as the dogs finished eating from the still functioning automatic feeder. They spotted her at once and bounded towards her from thirty feet away, delighted to see their pack leader again. Bravo was the first to reach her. At her feet he paused to look up at her, dim puzzlement in his brown eyes. He bent his head and sniffed her feet thoroughly before raising his nose to sniff the hem of her dress. Jane leaned down a little and scratched his head roughly, all the time talking softly to him. He seemed satisfied with her identity for the moment, and Jane put down his confusion to her long absence. She raised her eyes to see Towser stationary a few yards away. He was coming to her from downwind, and he, too, seemed confused and uncertain; so much so that she distinctly saw the look of joy and devotion in his eyes change to puzzled suspicion. Carefully, Towser came to his feet and walked stiff-legged towards her. "Here, boy!" snapped Jane, and she was relieved to see the dog's head come up automatically in response to her familiar voice.

He came doubtfully to her feet and imitated the larger dog in investigating her various scents. Her went further,and, while Jane stood patiently still, her dog sniffed her crotch through the thin cloth of her sole garment both at her front and rear before withdrawing a few feet to sit and look at her thoughtfully. Jane watched him in fascination, wondering what thoughts were going through his doggy mind. Whatever his thoughts, he seemed to conclude them after a few minutes, for he sat upright and stared his Mistress full in the eyes. Jane met his stare steadily before shame and guilt made her drop her gaze. "He knows!" she thought wretchedly. "He knows that I'm the same creature he was keeping on tethered for his sexual pleasure just a few days ago. HE KNOWS!"

Towser gave a little shake of his head, looking vaguely pleased with himself as if he'd won a small victory, before trotting back to Jane where he allowed her to fondle his ears just as he normally would, but Jane had the feeling that something had subtly changed in their relationship.

After a doubtful glance at her dog, she stripped naked as she usually did to wash the dogs, washing them over and over again, until they were quite clean. When they were quite dried off, she dusted them with flea-powder, working it well into their coats, nor she neglect this precaution for herself. She'd been put more at ease by Towser's behaviour throughout this procedure; he'd been quite as normal, and when she'd ushered Bravo into the barred-off rear of her Land Rover, she called out to Towser to come to her. Confining him any longer in the filthy shed where he and Bravo had been forced to sleep was not necessary now, and she decided to shut him up in his old kennel while she went to take Bravo home to his owner. He would enjoy it, she thought; the kennel was large, warm and weather-proof, with thick layers of old carpet for him to lie on. Best of all, it had a chain and an electrically operated sliding door of thick steel bars which she'd taught him to operate - well, he could open the door from outside by pressing a large floor-mounted button with a front paw, but was then unable to reach it to let himself out. Pleased with her notion, for she was secretly a little worried by his new attitude and she would feel a lot easier in her mind if he was safely confined, she led the way to where the kennel stood in a sunny corner of the inner yard facing East.

Towser accompanied her readily enough, or so she thought, but when she stooped and picked up the end of his chain he was no longer with her. She turned and saw him sitting watching her from ten feet away. She called him to her again and again, but he merely stared back at her defiantly. Angrily, Jane strode over to him and bent to grasp him by his collar. He growled and bared his teeth, and she straightened up in astonishment tinged with fear. Looking down at him, she saw a yellow glare die in his eyes before he stood deliberately and walked away from her. Tentatively, she called him back, but he seemed to ignore her, and, apart turning for a moment to favour her with a dismissive stare, he walked off into the small field and out across the moor.

At a loss, and with a certain fear, his Mistress stared after him for several moments. Then she remembered Bravo, and got into her Land Rover to drive away.

Such was the novelty of seeing and talking to other people after so long, and of being welcomed and thanked by Bravo's owner, that she quite forgot her own dog's odd behaviour. It was only after she'd finished shopping for fresh food in the neighbouring village, and arranged for her usual weekly order, along with her post, to be delivered every week as usual, that she began to consider her options on the six-mile drive home. She was becoming more and more concerned with what she recalled of his manner as he'd walked away from her. He'd disobeyed such orders in the past - as all dogs did occasionally - and, like them, he had slunk off guiltily trying hard to give her the impression that he'd not heard her orders. But not this time; this time he'd shown deliberate defiance of her. Still wondering how to deal with him, she drove into the barn and locked the big doors behind her.

To her surprise, when she came from the barn with her shopping, Towser was waiting for her across the yard by the kitchen door. He followed her into the kitchen as he usually did, and all seemed normal as she began to put away her provisions, but, looking back on events later, she recognised that it was when she bent to put the fresh milk in her refrigerator that the new regime could be said to have begun.

From behind her she felt Towser's nose prodding her violently between her buttocks. She gave a little squeal of shock and outrage and rounded on him angrily. "You bad, bad dog!" she shouted at him, raising a hand to cuff him on the head. The dog's response to her threat was immediate. Jane shrank back as he growled menacingly and bared his teeth, the yellow light flaring in his eyes. Stiff-legged, he moved slowly towards her, his growl deepening and becoming louder. She stumbled back into a corner of the room, her own eyes wide with surprise and fear. With his Mistress trapped in the corner, Towser sat and stared up at her for a moment. Then, with a loud growl, he sprang at her waist, seized her dress in his teeth, and snatched at it violently. The thin shoulder-straps dug painfully into Jane's flesh before they parted and the flimsy fabric fell about her bare ankles. Shocked beyond measure by this incident, she automatically reached down to pull on her torn dress. Towser growled again, following it by a deafening bark of menace and warning. Jane straightened and looked at her angry dog in terror, but, after only a few seconds, he turned away and went to lie on his old blanket by the Aga from where he stared steadily at her.

Jane stood in indecision. She dared not pick up her dress to cover her nakedness, and she had no notion of what behaviour the dog - in his apparent madness, would tolerate from her. Raising her head, she glanced at his reclining figure with apprehension. He looked exactly as normal. He wasn't frothing at the mouth or anything of the sort, and when her gaze met his, he looked at her quite sanely before she dropped her eyes. She sensed rather than saw a self-satisfied little shake of his head following this exchange of looks, as if he'd proved something to himself. This was the second time she'd felt obliged to avoid his steady gaze, and he seemed to be drawing certain conclusions from the events.

Tired of standing motionless in her corner, she took a tentative step out of the crumpled dress at her feet and away from the wall. At once Towser rose to sit before the Aga and watch her attentively. She froze, but when the dog remained still, she came a few feet further towards the centre of the room.

Towser leapt at her without warning, knocking her from her feet. She landed heavily on the tiled floor of the kitchen, banging her head painfully against the wall in her fall. She lay there semi-stunned, bright lights floating before her closed eyes. Groaning, she raised her lids to see Towser standing over her. Seemingly relieved at these signs of continuing life, the dog withdrew a few feet to lie down on its belly and regard her, his powerful hindlegs coiled ready for instant action.

Jane repeated her groan, then lifted a hand to gingerly feel her aching head. Her side where she'd landed hurt too, and she rolled over to massage it. Finally she made to get up to her feet, keeping an anxious eye on the dog as she did so. She came to all-fours without incident, but when she attempted to rise further Towser growled at her and bared his long, sharp teeth in warning. This was a nightmare, Jane thought, when tentative experiments had discovered those postures the dog would allow her and those he would not. She was allowed to lie down, to stand on all fours, and to sit upright in the best approximation of a dog she could manage, but any other configuration of her body was forbidden her, especially rising to her feet. By the end of her 'training' by her dog; when he was finally satisfied that the limits of permitted postures had been learnt by her, she was standing on all-fours by where he lay on his blanket.

Jane was at a loss what to do. The tiles were uncomfortably hard under her knees, and she looked with longing at the comfortable, padded kitchen chair a few feet away. In the end, she crawled slowly and fearfully on to Towser's blanket, halting every few inches to test his reactions. Much to her relief, he seemed to have no objection to sharing his blanket with her; he even seemed to expect it, for he obligingly moved to make room for her at his side when she ventured to lie down.

It was much more comfortable with the thick, smelly blanket between her skin and the tiled floor, and, in the quiet companionship of her dog, Jane could even imagine that they were together in her living room before the fire in the evening as they so often had been in the past. She considered her position carefully. Escape from her dog's presence seemed impossible. Of the three doors out of the room, only the one to the outside was a little ajar, while the other two, entrances to the ground-floor bathroom and the to the rest of her house were firmly closed, and she already suspected that Towser would forcibly prevent her from trying to open them and get out of his reach. She was bruised from her fall, but the ache in her head had subsided. Worst of all, she was hungry - for she'd eaten nothing that day except a slice of cake offered by Bravo's owner. And she was terribly thirsty! With that thought came a ray of hope which grew in intensity as she fully grasped the simple solution to her present problem. Sooner or later Towser would be thirsty too. He was still being fed and watered automatically, and he would have to go outside to drink. Then she would be alone; then she could rise to her feet, open the door to the interior, and close it safely behind her. A few minutes on the telephone, and men with guns would take care of Towser for good. Before that time, he may even need to leave to relieve himself; thinking of which reminded her that her own bladder was growing uncomfortably full. Waiting for her chance, she mused on what had triggered Towser's strange behaviour since her release. She began to suspect that the antidote to the body-scent which she'd injected while she'd trained the dogs to treat her as an animal had not worked properly. Recalling Towser's, and, to a lesser extent, Bravo's, ambivalent attitude towards her earlier that day turned supicion into certainty. Towser, she now clearly realised, had firmly decided that she was still the odd-looking bitch whose body he'd enjoyed so much when he'd had her at his disposal, and he meant to repeat the experience. He was used to her naked and on all-fours, and that was why he'd pulled her dress from her body and forbade her to rise to her feet. But she'd forgotten that Towser was accustomed to something more about her appearance, and that was to be the cause of her continuing degradation. Her dog had not forgotten. Rising suddenly, he bent his head and nipped Jane painfully on her upper arm before walking off a few feet and turning to look back at her in peremptory summons. Blinking away tears of pain, Jane rose and followed the dog to a low cupboard. He nosed at the latch, then turned to her with a yelp of command. Obviously he wanted her to open the cupboard and she did so. Immediately he shouldered her aside and pulled out with his teeth the large plastic oddment-box in which she kept her self-bondage equipment. It scraped across the floor to a halt and the dog thrust his head inside to emerge with the old collar Jane had stolen from the Spaniel still with the short chain-leash attached to it. Dropping it next to her, he drew back and growled at her. As if in a dreadful dream, Jane picked up the collar, sat, and buckled it around her neck with trembling fingers. Then Towser sat and raised a paw to his own collar, scratching at it and growling, his eyes fixed on hers. As if under a spell, she raised shaking hands to his collar and clumsily unbuckled it. It fell from around his neck to the floor, and he bent his head, picked it up in his mouth and dropped it into the box. Jane came to all-fours, the loop on the leash dangling to the floor and Towser lost no time in darting forward and picking it up in his powerful jaws.

He tugged hard on her leash just as he'd been doing several days ago, and she followed him docilely just as she had done then. It was like a horrible repeat performance of a nightmare to Jane as she sat helplessly at the dog's side while he lapped noisily with her leash trapped under his heavy paw. He allowed her to drink when he'd finished, and while doing so she began to hope that he'd loop her leash over the low pole in the corner of the yard as he'd been used to. Then, once he'd gone out of sight, she would lift off the loop and escape to the house. It was with a feeling of hopeful anticipation that she raised her head and sent her wet hair swirling about her face to dislodge the drops of water which clung to it.

Towser seized the end of her leash and led her off, but not to the pole a few yards away, as she'd hoped. Instead, her dog trotted off across the yard and into the smaller one beyond it with Jane scrambling breathlessly at his side. They passed the evil-smelling little shed she and the dogs had slept in and stopped when Towser reached the corner where his old kennel stood. It seemed that the intention Jane had had earlier of keeping him there had jogged Towser's memory of previous captivities, and the first thing he did was to scrabble at the end of the chain lying in the dust with the obvious intention that Jane should pick it up and clip it to her collar. She obeyed with that feeling of being in a nightmare which was becoming so familiar, and Towser pulled on her leash, indicating that he wanted her to remove it. Fumbling with its spring-clip, she did so and laid it on the ground, upon which Towser placed a heavy paw on the large floor-mounted button which controlled the barred door of the kennel. It was obvious what he meant her to do, and Jane obeyed meekly as he barked at her to enter the kennel. The descending door brushed her toes as she went in, and she turned to see Towser trotting away, her leash dangling from his jaws. In a daze of incomprehension, she lay down on the floor of the kennel and, unbelievably, fell into a deep sleep.

Waking later, for a moment she wondered where she was on seeing the bars a few inches from her eyes. When her memories came back, she realised that she was trapped in the barred kennel, and for a moment she felt real fear. Then she calmed down. Towser had only put her in here to keep her from escaping while he was away; when he returned he'd know that she'd want feeding and access to water. But, she thought gloomily, he might not release her until he himself was fed, and that wouldn't be for hours yet. Worst of all, it suddenly ocurred to her that the dog might not return at all; he might be prevented by accident or sudden illness. Then, she realised in terror, she would be trapped behind the bars of the kennel to die of thirst. That possibility had concerned her previously, but then she'd had two dogs to look after her in her self-imposed helplessness. But now, if Towser was to die, or to be injured, or even simply forget about her, she would suffer a painful death. She shivered at the prospect, then resolutely turned her attention back to escaping her dog's attentions. She wondered why, if her attraction as a captive sexual partner had been the spring of Towser's behaviour, he hadn't yet taken advantage of her in that manner, but found no answer except a vague suspicion that maybe his sexual urges needed to be first triggered by the faint scent of canine females on heat somewhere on the moor. Then she realised with a dismal groan that she'd neglected the opportunity to empty her bladder when she'd been led out to drink. Now there was no help for it, and she relieved herself on her already smelly bedding in a corner of the kennel before lying down listlessly to wait for her dog to release her.

Over the next few days she slipped imperceptibly back into her old condition; the submissive and docile inferior in the little pack of two. Although she could easily have done so, she lacked the spirit to unclip her chain or take off her collar when shut up in her kennel, Just as before, when she'd been kept tethered to the pole in the yard, the dog released her only to lead her to be fed on his leavings and drink from his bowl morning and evening. A tiny flame of rebellion still flickered, but it diminished daily as her condition became to seem natural to her. In vain she told herself that she didn't have to endure this, that she was a human being with the faculty of speech and an opposable thumb, that she could do things impossible to even the brightest animal. Her dog's will controlled her own with such contemptuous ease that he no longer bothered to threaten her to enforce her obedience. So complete was his dominance over her that he tethered her to the pole in the yard, where she'd spent so many weary hours in the past, and left her within easy reach of the kitchen door and her freedom. With the pain circuits in her collar no longer active and her fingers free, she could have easily gained the house while he was away. But she didn't even attempt it, so deeply ingrained had the habit of obedience to her dog become, and so terrified she was of the minute chance of being discoved by him free from where he'd tethered her.

A few days passed, and what she'd been dreading occurred. Early one afternoon, while the noon heat still lingered, Jane was dozing behind the bars of her kennel when Towser's arrival awoke her. She lay and gazed at him blearily as he put down a determined paw on the button which controlled her kennel's door. Even before it was fully risen, the dog seized her chain in his jaws and tugged at it urgently. This was the usual prelude to her being led off to eat and drink, but it was far too early, and Towser hadn't taken down the leash he would make her wear to be led by from its hook on the nearby wall.

She obeyed the tugs on her chain, emerging from her kennel into the hot, still air. Towser, seemingly impatient with her progress, dropped her chain and sank his teeth around her collar, painfully nipping the flesh of her neck as he did so. He dragged her as far as her chain would allow before pulling her around so that she faced the entrance to her kennel. Then he let go of her collar and moved behind her to sniff urgently at her cleft. Jane knew what her dog intended, she had seen his state of sexual excitement all too often before, with his member extended and stiff and a drop of semen glistening at its tip. In response to an impatient bark from behind her, she went down obediently on her elbows. Her rump in the air, she shuffled her knees apart and waited meekly.

Towser took her swiftly and brutally. She gasped in shock and pain as his front paws landed hard on her shoulder blades before slipping around her neck to grasp it tightly. The weight of his hairy chest and belly fell upon her back, and she felt the tip of his penis probing urgently at the lips of her vagina, already slippery with her own fluids as her own body betrayed her. She gasped again when he entered her, then she responded as - shamefully - she always did, grinding the backs of her thighs against the hot, shaggy front of her dog's, frenziedly willing him to probe into her deeper and deeper. Then she felt the heat of his sperm as he ejaculated deep inside her, his deflation, and his slow, panting, withdrawal.

Towser lay for a moment, his full weight upon her back, before going up on his hindlegs and slipping off her to lie panting on the ground at her side while she slowly keeled over to lie facing him. They lay there with eyes closed, their chests rising and falling in unison, for several minutes. Towser finally stirred. Opening his eyes, he stared at Jane before licking her hot and sweaty face roughly. She opened her own eyes at this and stared upwards into those of her dog for a moment before lowering her gaze in submission. He made a little noise of satisfaction deep in his throat, then walked behind her prone body and nipped her gently on the calf of her left leg. Taking this as a signal, she pulled her knees up to her belly and rose to all-fours whereupon another, more painful nip, ordered her into her kennel. A few seconds later, she was standing at the bars watching the dog walked slowly away, complacent self-satisfaction oozing from every pore.

Jnae found herself crying, the hot tears falling straight down to splash upon the her filthy bedding. Her upper arms and shoulders ached from bearing Towser's weight, her shoulder blades stung from the scratches his growing claws had inflicted, and she could sense the slow seeping of the dog's semen from her vagina to join the mixture of their joint fluids dampening her inner thighs. She tood unmoving, weeping in helpless misery and despair, for a long time before she went down on the damp, smelly bedding and lay there staring hopelessly outwards through the bars of her prison.

In the days after this first assault, Jane, her spirit broken, reverted entirely to the submissive animal she'd been previously. Towser, as if scenting his total control over her, even allowed her to follow him to be fed holding the loop of her leash in her mouth as she'd been trained to do, and, in order to slake his sexual appetite faster, he no longer shut her in her kennel in the daylight hours, but allowed her the limited freedom of the chain she could have so easily removed, only appearing now and then as if to check up on her.

He took her twice more, on alternative days, then left her outside all kennel one morning unsupervised all day until long past her normal evening feeding time. When he returned, just before darkness fell, he had a companion.

Jane had little opportunity for observation, for Towser shut her in her kennel immediately, and she was too busy sobbing in disappointment at not being fed that she forgot to watch the two dogs disappear into the darkening evening.

At first light the dogs returned from wherever they'd spent the night. Again Jane was denied an opportunity for observation as her dog raised the door of her kennel and dragged her out by her chain. Once she was clear of the kennel, he stood by her side, holding her chain in his mouth while his companion sniffed Jan's body all over with its cold, damp nose. It withdrew at last, and Towser dropped her chain from his jaws. Jane, with some vague idea of reassuring the strange dog of her complete submission, lay down on her side and rolled over onto her back with her head turned away from it and her vulnerable genitals, belly and throat exposed to its teeth. This appeared to have been the correct reponse, for the strange dog, visibly relaxed, gave a whine of satisfaction before resuming its examination of Jane's body, concluding it with a gentle nip on Jane's thigh in token of her inferior position in the new and larger pack.

The dogs stood side by side, looking down at her where she lay at their feet on the cold, hard ground. At last Jane could see the stranger clearly. A bitch past her youth, tall and rangy, her coat long and matted with neglect, she was the usual moorland cross of sheepdog and any village dog big enough and brave enough to roam the moor in search of a mate. She wore no collar; obviously she was one of the feral dogs who lived on the moor the year around, in constant danger of being shot by the shepherds in charge of the scattered flocks of sheep.

Towser fetched her leash from the hook on the wall where he hung it and laid it before her; his signal that she was to attach it to her collar and remove her chain. When she'd done so, the dog barked softly at the strange bitch and she bent to pick up Jane's short chain-leash. She tugged at it, and Jane followed obediently in her wake as she walked with Towser back to where their food and water dishes waited.

Jane slipped easily into her position in the larger pack - that of the inferior, the last to feed. But there were changes, too. Towser, now apparently convinced of his ex-Mistress's tameness, and now with the help of the bitch to control her, gradually allowed her more and more freedom of movement. He even allowed her to stand upright now and then, especially to take in the provisions that were delivered weekly and left in the little shed at the head of the track just outside the tall locked doors of the main yard. He and the bitch would eat all the meat in an orgy of feasting, leaving Jane to eat the rest. It never occurred to her, when she heard her grocer's little van stop outside the yard, to shout for help - and, perhaps, even it had, she no longer had the will-power to defy her dog.

She was no longer shut up on her kennel at night; instead she was permitted to share Tower's blanket in the kitchen along with the bitch. The kitchen itself was in a filthy condition, mud and dirt tracked in by the dogs covered the floor, and the body-odour of the unwashed dogs - along with Jane's own rank smell - competed with that of the vegetables rotting in their racks. But it was better than her kennel, and warmer too as Autumn approached.

While the bitch was on heat Towser took them both indiscriminately, as and when he chose, but when she came off he no longer pestered Jane - indeed, he largely ignored her except when she'd inadvertently show some sign of independent action. Then he would growl and snap at her - the bitch too - and she would grovel at their feet in terror, dreading that they'd return her to her kennel. Occasionally a small inner voice would scream in outrage at her degradation. Of the three, she was the only one collared. At nights she slept in the coldest place, on the outside of the little huddled of fur and flesh, and she went hungry when the automatically supplied food - deliberately designed not to be quite sufficient to feed three animals - was mostly eaten by the dogs. But she was now too broken to care, and the little inner voice would fade into silence.

Then things changed for ever, although it was unrecognised at the time. One cold, sunny morning the bitch ran off as usual across the field and onto the moor on another of the dogs' daily errands of exploration. She didn't return; neither that day, nor the day after. Towser whined and whimpered, spending long hours staring out across the moor in search of his canine companion. But she didn't come back. One morning a few days later, after he'd eaten and Jane had been fed, he took her leash and dropped its loop over the top of the low post in a corner of the yard. Then he trotted off, stopping and turning before he entered the field to see Jane on all-fours leashed to her post. Apparently satisfied of her captivity, he ran though the field and onto the moor.

Jnae sat back on her haunches, the ground cold beneath her, and watched the tiny figure of her dog melt away into the distant bluey-green of the moor. She yawned and stood to give a token tug on her tether, then lay down in the cool sunlight. Long afterwards she would marvel at her failure to take advantage of his absence to free herself, now she merely lay in the dirt patiently waiting to be released. Later she rose and emptied both her bowels and her bladder in the familiar places before lying down again.

She woke from a doze with a shiver. The afternoon was far advanced, and the sun had moved on and sunk lower in the sky. It was chilly, and she longed for Towser's return. The shadows implacably lengthened, and the cold in the still air increased. Food rumbled down the chute into the empty bowl, and Jane's stomach growled in hunger. Still she lay there, now curled up against the cold, and still Towser didn't come.

The night air was bitter, with a full moon flooding the yard with its bleak light and silvering Jane's shaking body where it lay under the cold stars. When the sky finally paled and the cold was at its most intense, Jane rose to squat, her urine steaming in the icy air. She sat, her eyes fixed upon the Eastern horizon for the first sign of the rising sun.

Wakened from a doze in the faint warmth of the sun by the rumble of more food down the chute, she whimpered, tugging on her leash in an attempt to break free. There was still no sign of her dog, and she had come to dread her punishment should she free herself and be discovered. But finally she had no choice, and it was her thirst rather than her hunger which finally over-rode her conditioning. Kneeling, she regarded her roughened, dirty hands with their cracked skin and black fingernails. After a final hesitation, and not daring either to remove her collar or detach her leash, she gently lifted the loop over the top of the post and let it trail on the ground.

She looked around her timidly, every sense alert for the return of either of the dogs, before slinking away for food and water.

She drank first, her long, filthy hair trailing in the water, before she turned her attention to the food dish, now heaped high with two uneaten rations. After many seconds hesitation, all the time raising her head in fear of the dogs, she overcame her training and ate, noisily and hastily. Without even bothering to try to wipe the smears of food from her face with her forearm, she scuttled back to the post and secured her leash to it with a sigh of relief. Then she waited once more.

Noon had come and gone, but Towser had not come back to her. The evening food appeared in the dish, and this time Jane didn't hesitate for long before slipping her leash from the post and going to eat. Afterwards, whether it was the effect of being able to fill her belly on two successive occasions, or her freedom from supervision for so many hours, or even some unconscious premonition that another night spent in the open air might kill her, she butted open the kitchen door with her head and went inside to lie on Towser's blanket.

She stayed there all night. It was as cold in the kitchen as in the yard for the first few hours, nor did she think of wrapping the smelly blanket around her - least of all of standing up, going upstairs, and getting under the thick covers of her bed - but she was rescued by the operation of her central heating system, switching on in faithful obedience to a command programmed several months before.

Jane woke to unexpected and luxuriant warmth despite the partly-closed kitchen door. (She hadn't closed it, fearing, like the dogs, that she would be trapped in the kitchen - a measure of her conditioning.) She went outside to relieve herself, shivering in the cold dawn air. She drank, then went to her post and tethered herself, continually looking guiltily about her. When she heard the noise of her food arriving, she loosed herself and went to eat. Back at her post, she resumed her weary vigil.

That day passed like the previous one, and she slept in the kitchen as she'd done the night before. But, midway through the next morning, she came out of a doze on the hard ground by her post. She relieved herself, then began to pace up and down restlessly on her short tether. Slowly and imperceptibly, the impression solidified in her confused and muddled mind that Towser wasn't coming back, ever again. She stood there on all-fours for long minutes while her slow brain grappled with this proposition before she lifted the loop on her leash over the post. Trembling with fear, she walked into the kitchen.

She stayed in there for the next five days, only emerging to eat and drink and to empty her bladder and bowels and to carry in the weekly provisions delivery, the meat of which she put aside for the dogs. Slowly, she began to regain her human independence of action with a series of small victories, the first of which was to detach her leash. A day later, she stood up and closed the kitchen door - though she panicked immediately, and fumbled at its latch for sveral seconds before she succeeded in opening it - then she graduated to drinking from the tap in the kitchen, filling Towser's old plastic dog bowl and setting on the dirty floor. Food was next - but not before she'd been forced to it, for the supply of automatically supplied food ran out at last. For several days she lived on tins of cold soup and stew, eaten from Towser's bowl on the floor, at first with her face buried in it, later using a dirty spoon she found by the kitchen sink where it had been dropped and forgotten long ago.

Finally came the greatest victory so far - she opened the door to her downstairs bathroom and went in. After some time examining the fittings of her shower, her rusty brain working slowly, she entered the glass cubicle and turned on the water, gasping as the cold water struck her skin. It was several seconds before she remembered how to make the water run hot, and several more before she'd worked out the use of the cake of scented soap and the plastic bottle of shampoo which stood on a narrow shelf on the wall.

Her thought processes becoming smoother and faster by the minute, helped by the reappearance of her own familiar smell, she automatically towelled herself dry before she went back into the kitchen. After a slight relapse in which she glanced fearfully around for Towser she relaxed. So improved was her mental condition that she washed the kitchen floor and removed the remains of the rotting vegetables from their racks, then, for the first time, she made tea and drank it from a cup sitting at the table.

Faster and faster she regained normality; though she continued to sleep upon Towser's blanket for several more nights before she daringly threw it away and went to her bedroom again.

Finally, a month after Towser's disappearance, she was back to normal to outside eyes, following her final victory and wearing clothing once more. But she avoided dogs ever after, and dropped her eyes in submission whenever they stared at her, and she never told anyone about her experiences that Summer. Her collar remained around her neck for the rest of her life; she never removed it, knowing that it matched the permanent collar around her soul. She shunned BDSM for many months until she succumbed at last and was discovered in the act by Carol - but that is another story.