After nearly an entire day of fuming, Sasha finally decided to tell Charlie straight out. The effect was instantaneous.

“You’re pulling my leg!” Charlie exclaimed. “All four of ‘em!”

Sasha shook her head. “Oh no I’m not, Charlie Barkin. I am dead serious.”

Charlie laughed, just a little. He was trying not to show just how shocking this news was. “Well why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I did,” she replied. “Remember, this morning?”

“This morning, you kept talking about baskets and more dogs and throwing…” Charlie trailed off as, reciting the list, he made the connection. I hate riddles, he thought.

“Like I said, I told you.”

He placed a paw on her shoulder. “Sasha, a little rule about us guys. When you want to tell us something, subtle hints don’t usually work. Big hints don’t usually work. Obvious hints don’t usually work. In other words, if you’ve got something to say, say it.”

“Well, I’ve said it now,” she replied.

“Yeah, finally,” he grumbled.

Sasha smirked as her ears picked up the sound of feet coming up the front steps. A fiendish plot began to form in the back of her mind. “Well, if you know so much about how to talk to guys…”

They heard the door open, and a familiar voice calling, “I’m home!”

Sasha leaned in close and demonstrated that remarkable power women possess to make a man shiver with just a couple of words.

“Tell David.”

“What?!” Charlie squeaked. “But... but...”

“Hi Charlie, hi Sasha,” David greeted as he came into the room.

Charlie fought to keep his knees from knocking. Having “The Talk” with a kid wasn't exactly the scariest thing he'd ever done – after all, he'd fought gangsters twice his size and a dozen times his number, faced off against a demon as big as Alcatraz... hmm, on second thought, maybe this was the scariest thing he'd ever done. “Weren’t you supposed to be home half an hour ago?” he asked, trying to divert the topic.

David shrugged. “I couldn’t help it. The magic club meeting ran late when one of Gabe Lewis’ rabbits got loose.”

Rabbits, thought Sasha. How appropriate.

“And speaking of magic,” David grinned, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and holding it by the middle over his left hand. “Ta-dah!” he cried as he lifted it away.

It was all Charlie could do not to scream. Sitting in David’s hand were two collars, red with brass studs. In other words, they looked just like the ones Red had used on him. “Uh, how… nice,” he gulped.

“It’s just like the one you were wearing when you found me,” David beamed.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Charlie groaned.

Sasha, getting impatient, nudged him with her elbow. “Well…?” she prompted out of the corner of her mouth. “You said you were good with kids, remember?”

“Uh, David,” Charlie said, wishing Sasha had chosen some other way of calling his bluff, “Sasha and I have a surprise too.”

“A surprise?” asked David. “What is it?”

Charlie’s mind raced. “We’ve, uh, been working a little magic too.”

Sasha gave him a Grade A “This is your idea of ‘say it?’” look.

“Really?” asked David. “What kind of trick? Can I see it?”

Both dogs’ eyes widened as they exchanged a look. Charlie’s expression was decidedly bleak. Sasha’s said something to the effect of “Over my dead body.”

“Uh, it’s not quite that kind of magic,” Charlie replied uneasily. “But in about eight weeks, some puppies are going to appear.”

“Eight weeks?” echoed David. “That’s way too lo…” then he froze as the realization sank in. “Wow, that’s great! I can’t wait to tell Mom and Dad!”

“Better not tell them too soon,” Sasha warned.

Charlie nodded agreement. “Yeah, they don’t know we can talk.”

“Oh, right.” David paused and scratched his head. “So when can I tell ‘em?”

The dogs exchanged an uncertain glance. “Well,” Charlie suggested, looking back at David, “When Sasha starts to look like a hip-” he stopped, aware that Sasha’s eyes were locked on him with all the delicate sweetness of a 12-gauge shotgun. “Uh, like a hip gal who’s gonna have puppies, you can tell your folks.”

Sasha apparently decided this was sufficient, for she turned and left the room. Charlie quickly leaned close to David and muttered, “When she looks like a hippo with a gland problem, tell them.”

Later over dinner, Sasha gave Charlie an incredulous look. “So that’s your idea of telling him straight-out?”

Charlie hastily chewed and swallowed. 'Why do women always ask you questions when your mouth is full?' he wondered. “Huh?”

“When you told David, you used nothing but hints.”

“Well what was I supposed to do? He’s a kid,” he protested. “Besides, it’s a guy thing. We know how to talk to each other, it’s like a special language.”

“Yeah, like the Tower of Babble,” she quipped.

“Hilarious,” muttered Charlie, rolling his eyes.

As it turned out, David’s step-mom figured it out long before David let on that he knew anything. And once she had announced her conclusion and the whole family had gone through the customary congratulations (although none of them but David realized that Sasha understood every word), she leaned over to her husband and suggested under her breath, “I think we should take her to see the v-e-t.”

To which Sasha muttered to Charlie under her breath, “I’m out of h-e-r-e.”

Getting Sasha to go to the vet was a challenge, to say the least. For David and his folks, the hard part was finding her. “I never thought I’d be glad all those guys on the street used to hound me,” she remarked to Charlie from behind the furnace in the basement, “but at least I know how to hide.”

“Come on, Sasha,” Charlie badgered. “You know it’s for your own good.”

She snorted. “That’s what the vet tried telling you a couple of weeks ago when we had our regular checkups, remember?”

“Hey, he started it,” he defended himself. “I was just protecting my-”

“Charlie, you found her!” David ran over and managed to grab Sasha by the collar. “Mom, Dad, I’ve got Sasha!”

Sasha gave Charlie a poisonous look as she was dragged from her hiding place. “I am going to get you for this,” she promised.

He gulped, wondering what it would take to convince Sasha not to raise their puppies as a widow.

The vet's office.

Many humans wonder what exactly is it about a simple place like the vet's that can spark such fear and anxiety in pets of all species? For Sasha, the question could be doubled – after all, she had gone toe-to-toe with a demon big enough to stunt double for King Kong. For Charlie, who had caught a little glimpse of “the bad place” if only in a nightmare, the question was at least quadrupled.

The two of them shared one thing: most of the time, they couldn't really say. Maybe it was the harsh, sterile environment, so alien to dogs born and bred for the open sky and the helter-skelter out-of-doors. Maybe it was the prospect of that slippery steel table and those pointy instruments – not to mention those thermometers. Ugh.

For Charlie, the problem this time was different: the wait. The doc asserted that he should check Sasha without any other dogs around, and David had been unable to come up with an explanation to the contrary without giving away too much. So, while Dad went into the office with Sasha and Dr. Greenbriar, David remained out in the lobby, trying to keep Charlie calm. It wasn't easy.

Inside, Sasha was not having a good time. Oh, it wasn't the charming pictures of various parasites on the walls that put her off, or the plastic models of various internal organs half-opened. It wasn't even the fact that the steel table and instruments set neatly on a counter next to it looked strangely like the movie about alien abduction that David had been watching the other night. It was the fact the the vet's gloved hands felt like they had just come out of the freezer. Having one's ears flipped up, eyes pulled open to be rendered useless with a light brighter than Einstein, and various other areas examined indiscriminately is annoying enough, but couldn't they at least pick someone to do it whose hands didn't make Dracula feel like a masseur?

“Now relax, girl,” the vet soothed, sensing Sasha’s discomfort. The fact that there was by now more hair on the table than on Sasha might have been a tip-off. “Just need to run a little test.”

As long as it doesn’t involve thermometers, she thought, until the vet produced an object which she almost wished was a thermometer.

David, meanwhile, was trying to keep Charlie calm. “Relax, Charlie. Sasha's gonna be fine.”

'He’d just better not stick her with any…'

“Ow!” came a cry from the