Cupid was at it again! When the barking started throughout the neighborhood, Cupid dug her way out of the backyard to meet Sheila, another boxer, more delicate than Cupid, but still with a powerful chest and strong back legs. 

The two friends sniffed along walls and peered between fence slats. Valentine chocolates and roses would soon fill the air, but male dogs’ scents were what pulled Cupid and Sheila into the neighborhood streets. Randy males who would first spot Cupid and Sheila wagging their alluring butts and tiny snubbed tails began their own plaintive barking, their own frenzied digging under fences, their own furious panting and drooling that humans hated but females of their species found irresistible.

Near a field, Cupid and Sheila met up with several males. Dogs of every size and breed including one miniature Chihuahua—Cupid and Sheila exchanged smiling glances—as they all cavorted and mated (not with the Chihuahua though he surely tried as he leaped up and down behind those beautiful boxer butts) until the sun broke through the night sky and the dogs returned to their homes.

© 2008 Diane Hoover. Original for CCF  (Hoover grants CCF  first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).