Street Chains

                                    Chapter 2                                  

    It was dusk and the dark blue sky looked exactly the same all over New England. Well, except for in the park near the northern part of the beautiful community commonly known by Street Dogs all over as Snob Hill. The dark sky was faintly lit by the millions of lights coming from the small town down below.
At the south-eastern end of the grassy park, Owl was lying down under a park bench, her furry head resting on her paws, which were pretty large for a dog her age. The scar she received from T.P earlier had stopped bleeding and a scab was starting to form over it, but the gash was burning like an inferno. Sighing heavily, Owl closed her aqua-green eyes and let her head roll softly off her paws and into the grass. After a while of listening to the crickets' late-night symphony, the young dog's ears perked up at the sound of a large pair of feet crunching on the crisp grass nearby; she immediately recognized the sent of another member of T.P's gang. She snorted as a response when the crunching stopped right by her head.
"'Sup, Owl?"

The brown and white, blue-collared puppy stood above his friend, a devious smirk spread wide across his lips. The lanky German shepherd mix chuckled slightly when Owl snorted again.
"What're you doing out this late, Samual?" Owl mumbled out the side of her muzzle. "Ain't you got a family that'll be worried about you by now?"

Samual shook his head, causing the fourteen-karat gold tag to click against his expensive blue leather collar. Samual was Dexter's older cousin; he was owned by an overly wealthy family who lived on Snob Hill and they treated him like a prince. Sammy absolutely loved his life there, much to most of the gang's surprise, he ate whatever and whenever he wanted to out of his gold dishes. Dishes, not bowls. Dishes.
Samual even had his own personalized space out in the backyard to go and do his business, and the rotten little mutt had tons of toys to play with; he could rip up anything in the house and his owners wouldn't get mad at him. In fact, they had enough money to replace every single thing inside their house.
"That's the life," Owl had once said to Samual who agreed and invited Owl to join his family, but she remembered her last family on Snob Hill and quickly rejected his offer; she was never going to be a tea party hat-wearing "doll" again.

Samual sat down beside Owl and looked up at the full moon. As a young puppy, Sammy had always been fascinated with celestial bodies and he strived to be an astronomer when he got older. Well, not the human kind, more like the canine "astronomers" in his neighborhood.
"I wonder what it's like," he sighed. "Up there on the moon..."
Owl groaned loudly and rolled her already sleep-heavy eyes. "No, not this talk again, Samual. I don't know what it's like on the moon neither do I care." With that said, the former House Pet stood up, shook the grass from her fur, and began to walk down the hill. "I'm gonna go mess with some House Pets," she declared. "Wanna come?"
"I don't think that's such a good idea, Owl."
"Why not? They can't get from behind the fences or them iron bars their owners put up. We'll just stand at the fence 'n trash talk 'em,  they'll charge at us, then we'll move back 'n let 'em hit the fence." Owl looked at her friend and frowned. "Y'know how to play."
Back on the peak of the hill, the German shepherd mix pulled his ears back slightly. "That's not what I mean, Owl."
"What 'cha mean then?"
Samual trotted down beside the brown and cream puppy and looked her dead in the eyes. "I know what happened to Iggy," he said flatly.
Owl's aqua green eyes grew large when the statement hit her. "What? W-Who...?"
"Georgia told me everything."
Owl's fur ruffled up. "She wasn't even there! Who did she hear it from? Who?" the older puppy asked forcefully; the though of that little gossiping Georgia going around and telling the entire gang about Iggy's first-class flight off to the pound and her fight with T.P...it was enough to make Owl choke the brown Pomeranian.

"She said that 'word gets around town'," Samual stated, "and she said that she heard the news from a 'reliable source' and that source had seen Iggy in the back of the pound truck and that they heard that T.P's going to go rescue Iggs." Sammy sighed heavily as the unnerving thought of what could happen to their baby if she got into the wrong hands crept into his mind.
"We've gotta go meet up with T.P and Dexter! Let's go!" A low growl erupted from Owl's throat as she leapt a few feet down the sloped hill, leaving a stunned Samual behind her.
"Owl, wait! Where are we going to find them?" Samual sprinted downhill in an attempt to catch up with the slightly older dog.

"We'll follow their scent through Snob Hill!" Owl called back without even looking over her shoulder. "I know they went through there!"
For what? Sammy thought to himself as the wind blew his hair and floppy ears back. Oh! Cross lives on Snob Hill T.P knew that they were going to need backup if anything goes wrong at the pound. Smart mutt!
A loud howl cut through his chain of thoughts and looking offside to his left,  Owl was still dashing for the wntrance of the park with her muzzle held high into the air. Another excited howl escaped her mouth which made Samual question if Owl was sure she didn't have at least a small percent of hound in her blood. Samual wasn't much of a howler and he hated his howling voice very much...Oh, what the heck? A howl escaped from the back of Samual's throat and rang through the crisp night air and the two dogs continued their race toward Snob Hill to meet up with their friends and get the rescue mission underway.


Meanwhile, at the bottom of the hill, a large, shaggy-furred brown dog was digging a hole near the entrance of the park. Once he finished digging, he picked up a huge rawhide bone and dropped it in the hole; the dog then started piling the freshly dug dirt back onto his buried treasure.
"Nobody's gonna find it here," he said with confidence after the hole was filled. "I've gotta be the smartest dog on the streets. All of those other mutts hide their bones in everybody's favorite alleyway, but not me!" The dog turned and trotted to the park gate. "I hide my stash where nobody even thinks of looking. If I'm not the most cleverest dog out there, I don't know who is." The dog's sentence was cut short by a loud howl ripping through the air and someone yelling, "Owl, look out!" before he was promptly hit in the side by some unseen object. The force of impact was so strong that it sent both him and the one who made the collision tumbling into the cast iron park fence; when they made contact with the fence, it emitted a loud boing.

"Oooow..." both of them groaned. The brown dog looked over to see what hit him, but before he could even say anything, the other was on her feet. "Watch where you're goin'!" the brown and cream puppy yelled.
"Watch where I'm going? How 'bout you watch where you're going?"
He stood up and faced the female dog. The light coming from a nearby streetlamp dimly lit the area they were in, but it was enough so that he could see that other puppy had brownish fur with darker brown markings on her face and back, a cream muzzle and grayish colored leg stockings. She had a few freckles dotting her face and a nice sized scar over her left eye.

"You ran into me," the brown puppy said and watched the fur on the girl's back spike up. "Oh, you wanna fight, huh?" He growled lowly and began to slowly advance to his opponent.
"Bring it!" Owl crouched and prepared to launch herself at the other when Samual ran down the hill and between them. "Owl!" he scolded. "Forget fighting! We've got to meet up with the others. Now." The House Pet put force behind the last word so that he'd let Owl know that he was being very serious. Owl looked at her friend then at the growling dog across from them. "Fine. Let's get outta here. I don't have time to be worryin' about no stupid stray anyway." She trotted out of the park and onto the sidewalk, not stopping to give Samual time to catch up. Sammy looked at Owl then to the other male dog. "You goin' yet, House Pet?" He spat out the last half of the sentence. Samual was about to say something back, but stopped; there was a bit of annoyance in the other's voice and Samual didn't want to risk getting into a fight with a dog who more than likely had more strength then he did. "Just about to." Samual quickly walked out the gate and upped his pace in order to catch up with his friend before she disappeared into the night.

The older male watched the two dogs until he could no longer see them.
"Stupid House Pets."