Pony Life

Chapter 7

“Well, I’m under no such constraints!” Penny exclaimed with a shrug, eyeing Melon speculatively over the stall door the following morning. “I understand where you're coming from and why you’re hesitant, but in the long run, you won’t be doing Mandy any favours. Nor, perhaps, this sad creature, though it won’t appreciate it. They never do, but the sooner they learn, the better their lives will be... kind of," she finished with a cruel laugh.

‘They never do!’ Why am I not surprised by that, I mused. I wondered whether any owner had ever thought to sit down with one of their captive animals and explain that all the training, beatings, and ultra-humiliating, degrading treatment was ultimately for the pony's own good, and whether the pony appreciated it. Now that was a ridiculous idea!

“What's up?” Penny had paused in the act of unfastening the door to Melons' stall and was looking at me curiously.

“Up?”

She nodded. “Yes, your face suddenly went all kinds of funny, like spasmy just then, kind of weird as though you were about to have a fit or something”.

I grinned. “Nonsense, I’m perfectly well,” I assured her, laughing. “It was an odd thought I had that was so absurd it collided with common sense, and so I…is that a real word, anyway, Spasmy?”

Penny shrugged. “Of course it is. I used it, and you knew what I meant, so that makes it real. Isn’t that the whole basis of communication, understanding one another?” She flipped the catch and opened the stall door. “Whereas with these creatures, we adopt a much simpler form of communication, repetition, enforced by various painful aids to accelerate the necessary learning curve!”

“No pain, no gain!” I muttered quietly, thinking there were even more holes in that statement, especially as the creature in question could understand every word we were saying and, by the sound of those strangled, muted noises, was indeed desperately trying to join in the conversation. Melons, as I’d expected, had proved to be a very noisy animal, so apart from mealtimes, we’d had her generous mouth ball-gagged or on a tight bit rather than a loose-mouth bit since her arrival. Silence had never been golden to her, and she was well known for publicly expressing her opinions, loudly, and on a wide range of subjects, frequently controversial and at length. Another way of ensuring her face and prominent ‘upperworks’ frequently appeared in the popular press and gossip magazines.

This time, I had my facial muscles firmly under control, though it didn't matter, as all my tall, glamorous friends' attention was fixed on the not-so-tall but generously uddered mare, who was trying to merge with the rear wall of her stall. Despite sharing my life and farmhouse with one tiny woman and a cute, petite young blonde girl in the shape of Suzy, I’d not fully realised how lacking in inches Melons was. Not till Penny entered her stall.

I suppose it was partly the hoof boots the new arrival had been wearing ever since we’d collected her back at Sir Jeffert’s place, and those artificially enhanced, overly prominent udders of hers. In her prior existence, she’d had one of those annoying, pushy personalities that’s hard to ignore. You could have applied the old cliché about the revolving entrance door to her. No matter how many times she followed you in, she’d always come out first! A larger-than-life aura when I’d seen her in magazines or on TV. Then again, both those media forms can be deceiving, scale-wise, can’t they? In my mid-teens, I’d been somewhat disappointed to learn that one of my favourite male Hollywood heartthrobs, a giant on screen, was virtually the opposite in real life!

Penny wasn’t even wearing heels, but then who among us did when visiting the stable or exercising our animals in the yard? High heels might be an obligatory fetish fixture in Femdom artwork and the like, but they had no place in the daily reality of training and handling human equines, or real ones, come to that. Aside from being bloody uncomfortable at the best of times, stilettos and soft dirt don’t match, and far from looking glamorous, incongruous or even stupid would be more appropriate adjectives.

Melons could retreat no further, which, given the size of my stalls, sounded like a much more impressive distance than it was.  I’m talking feet rather than yards and certainly not miles, or should that be centimetres rather than meters? That odd thought flipped across my mind. A centimetre was such a small, such a puny unit of measurement compared to a foot. I lived in a country, of course, that had decimalised its currency in the seventies and, some years later, gone metric in weights and measures – mostly. We still bought our beer by the pint, and yet our milk was sold by the litre. We filled our cars by the litre, yet our mileometers and road signs were in miles!

Penny suddenly let out a throaty chuckle. “You know I feel a bit like Red Riding Hood in the children’s story,” she said. “You remember, what big eyes you have, Grandma. What big teeth, etc. Only in this case,” she giggled, hands extended, flexing fingers and nails like a bird of prey’s talons, ready to seize its prey. “What big udders you have, Grandma!”

I sighed audibly, and to think I’d promised Mandy I’d see she wasn’t ‘damaged’ too much before she took full ownership of the mare! I hadn’t reckoned on Penny’s unexpected arrival, had I and that gleam in her eye, along with those eager outstretched fingers, probably frightened me as much as it did Melons!

*****

Our visit to the stable followed the next day from Penny’s arrival. It was the morning after, and not much had happened in terms of the ‘night before’—no wild partying or anything of that nature. Penny had arrived fairly late in the day, and once she’d got herself and her pets settled in, we’d adjourned for an early supper, opened a bottle of chilled wine, and spent the evening gossiping. All a little tame, I’ll admit, but Penny was in a relaxed, gossipy mood and admitted to being somewhat tired and ready for an early night.

Actually, her term was ‘pooped’, another Americanism that translates to ‘knackered’ in UK slang or ‘tired’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. “Bloody kids, bloody doggie problems, overdoing things at the bloody riding school, plus I said NO to hubby the other week for the first time, imagine that! Me saying no to a bout of rumpy pumpy with Mister Hunky! Boy, was he miffed! Mr Sulky, himself! Then this job, which had been hanging about on the horizon, came up at short notice, and I decided I needed a break, a refresher, a battery recharge, and so on. Anyway, I owed Bettina a favour, and as she’s the head honcho on this shoot, plus, of course, then I heard about your latest arrival, Miss big tits as well, and that was an opportunity I could hardly miss! A double no-brainer, you might say!”

As I said, it was morning after time, and the two of us were playing early birds. I’d got up first, as I frequently did, to let Raven out to stretch his legs and do his business, and found Penny up and about, somewhat negating her ‘pooped’ comment. As per usual, in a baggy cream sweater and blue jeans, she looked her immaculate, chic self, despite the early hour, doing likewise with her two doggies. One was exceedingly eager to sniff everything, explore and do his business… the other, visibly less so!

The shyer and less enthusiastic of the pair on the end of the leashes she held was called Ceaser. Not the most original name Penny had admitted the previous evening, but it followed on from Brutus, at least that had been her thinking at the time. His original name had been Harvey, but she hadn’t liked that.

“A bit too human?” I’d questioned. “Or was that his real name before he became a dog?”

“Forcibly canined! Hardly,” she’d laughed, shaking her head. “That was Dee Dee, or maybe Gale, who named him once they got their hands on him. I’ve no interest in anything before then. I’m like that with my animals, only interested in now and the future. I don’t give a shit about who or what they were before my ownership. That’s immaterial. Only wild ones interest me, not those bred and raised in captivity! What’s up?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head quickly and realised I was unintentionally frowning as I considered her words. ‘Bred and brought up in captivity’. Once again, such a simple, casual statement was blowing my mind as I considered the implications.

“Oh, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it,” Penny cautioned, correctly guessing my thoughts. “There are a couple of places I know of that either specialise in, or have a sideline in, breeding fresh stock, as well as taking in the unwanted odds and sods that inevitably turn up! Bred-in-captivity stock is cheap, well, relatively cheap when compared to freshly caught wild ones, but it’s boring! No…” She paused for a second to haul on Caesar's leash, and I realised that the ‘no’ wasn’t aimed at him. “No go in them, no spirit, because they’ve never known anything else. Not my cup of tea!” She grinned at me, stretched out a shapely leg clad in skin-tight denim, and used her boot to nudge Ceaser. “Give me raw, fresh meat like boyo here to chew on every time!”

Our early morning conversation was taking place down past my farmhouse towards the woods on my little estate. I hadn’t anticipated my guest being out and about so early, and there had been a brief ‘oh my gosh’ moment earlier when Raven had fearlessly bounded up to Champ and skidded to a halt, peering uncertainly at him. Since neither growled nor appeared aggressive, they were merely curious. Penny tickled his head with one finger, then unclipped Champ's leash from his collar, pulled an old tennis ball from her pocket, and threw it towards the woods at the far end of my farm track. She looked down at Ceaser but, obviously, decided he was far too new to play ball or, more likely, to be let off the leash. Potential conflict solved. We spent the next five minutes chatting and casually tossing the ball depending on whose pet retrieved it.  Competitive, yes, as the two dogs jumped on each other and rolled around in the grass, barking and yapping excitedly, but not aggressively.

“There ya go, chase that!” Penny drew her arm right back and hurled the ball as far as she could. It arched high in the air and then fell somewhere unseen amid the trees, the two dogs already delightedly racing after it and quickly disappearing into the thick undergrowth.

“Good throw”, I observed.

“Too good, she admitted. “I think we may have a lost ball situation on our hands, but not to worry. I have a few kicking about the van. Did my comment bother you just then?”

I shook my head again. “Not really, it’s just…well, as you know, I’m still relatively new to all of this, so…. what do you mean by ‘odds and sods'?’

“What?” Penny’s attention was primarily on the woods and seemed startled by my question. “Oh, yes. I suppose you could call them accidents or unwanted additions, instead. Ponies are only one aspect of the human bondage scene, remember. Female captives are inevitably going to be regularly fucked by their various masters regardless of their assigned role, and I doubt that any of them take precautions, so…. she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders. “There is a black market, as you’d expect, desperate childless couples and the like, with no questions asked. No doubt very profitable and highly beneficial for those lucky enough to go down that route, whereas the rest….”

“End up in a stall”, I finished somewhat bleakly, “or worse!”

“Here, boy, here, good boy, here. Bring it to mummy!” Penny had dropped into a half crouch, excitedly slapping her thighs as the enormous shape of Champ burst through the bushes, ball in mouth, racing back towards us. Raven’s head appeared a dozen yards further along, and after giving vent to a mournful howl, he bounced forward in vain pursuit.

“I don’t make the rules, Honey. I abide by them and don’t believe in upsetting established apple carts. One of those breeding farms they go to has been in the same family for about three centuries, so it's not as though it's anything new! Heck, it was probably even legal or semi-legit back in the days of Good Queen Vic or one of her ancestors! Now, there's a good boy, no, NO! Give it to mummy, go on, let go, you silly boy. I can’t throw it for you, can I if…Oh, hold him for a moment, will you?”

Him being Ceaser, my hand automatically reached out. It took the proffered leash as she bent down to wrestle for possession of the hard rubber ball that Champ was suddenly reluctant to relinquish, possibly because he had one eye on the eagerly hovering black form of young Raven, competition!

What a bizarre life I was leading! Here I was standing next to one of the world's most glamorous women, the face that had launched a…a hell of a lot of glossy magazine covers and not a few product videos and similar. A regular participant on a popular women’s afternoon TV chat show, mother of two gorgeous young twins herself, and yet she was so nonchalantly talking about illegal baby farms of the most horrible sort imaginable. Not only that, the dog on the end of the leash I was tentatively holding was not a dog at all, the…thing, the man it had once been and still predominantly was, despite its lowly position and doubled up stubby limbs denying it any degree of movement other than in a very limited form.

We’d been introduced to Caesar the previous evening, after the coffee break, when Penny had dragged the reluctant ‘hound’ from her new or latest camper van. Dragged, being the appropriate word, along with quite a lot of other words, mostly of the obscene variety, from Penny, plus liberal use of a meaty riding crop and the toe end of her boot. An expensive, red-soled Louboutin, what else! Hardly what I’d have called driving shoes, and I noted that yesterday’s French elegance had been swapped for a pair of tan, well-scuffed, low-heeled old knee boots this morning.

Caesar was a big boy or had been until his limbs had been bent double and strapped tight, then somehow fitted into the furry skin-tight doggie suit. Lord knows how someone had done that, for I’d had enough problems putting one on my Fluffy, and she was a fraction the size of this brute, plus about as passive a little bitch as you could wish for. Oh, she had her moments, of course. I mean, who wouldn’t, given her situation, but they didn’t, indeed couldn’t, last long and were swiftly dealt with by her superiors. ‘Puppy getting uppity’, as Sally put it!

Passive wasn’t a term I’d have applied to this brute I was hesitantly holding, and maybe that ‘had been’ size observation was a tad inaccurate. The more I looked down at him, the more I realised that Caesar was still a very big boy, puppy suit notwithstanding! It had been one of those de ja vu situations the previous evening, and for a second time we’d all taken a step backwards when the creature reluctantly emerged on the end of its heavy leash when we’d returned to her van, just as we had when Champ appeared earlier.  Passivity, obedience and compliance weren’t words that came readily to mind despite the substantial bindings on the animals' bent limbs. Suzy’s low admiring whistle and “Wow, now that’s some doggie you’ve got there, Mister Atom Bomby, himself, boom boom!”

She hadn’t needed to explain that remark either. That huge thing on the end of the leash radiated hate, anger and a hell of a lot of other things all at the same time, and every one of them was dangerous in the extreme. They say you can’t see radiation, but you could virtually see what he was emitting!  Hell, if you could bottle that…that attitude, you could run a…well, run something off that pent-up hostility and aggression! I’ve never come face to face with an unexploded bomb, nor am I ever likely to, but yeah, I can imagine now how I’d feel.  I’d felt that way initially with my Goldie, still did at times, but even he came a poor second to this huge thing. I glanced down at Caesar, so far so good this morning in the boom boom department, but ye gods, the potential was there by the bloody bucketful! Thank God those leather fittings were so substantial.

“Didn’t they have anything bigger or wilder available, then?” It had been Suzy’s sarcastic comment as the quivering mutt hesitantly but inevitably descended to ground level in the early evening twilight, allowing us a full view of the beast.

“Oh FunEEEE!” had been Penny's growled response as she hauled her latest acquisition along for all of about two feet.  I’ve no idea what breed he was supposed to be, if any? But then Fluffy’s second skin was pretty non-descript as well, so nothing new there. He was a big boy, though, and something of a heavyweight, and those leather knee and elbow restraints better be pretty damn good, I thought, eyeing the muscle structure revealed by that furry, fuzzy second skin. Jeez, just what the hell had he been until recently?

“Impressive, eh! Twenty-five in human years, one-time budding lawyer, bodybuilder and amateur boxer,” Penny nodded towards her new pet, thus disproving what she was to say later about having no interest in their previous lives, or maybe she didn’t count that as such. “Or about seven and a half weeks in puppy years”, she added with a wicked chuckle as she yanked on his substantial leash. “And doesn’t my poor whip arm know it!”.  Maybe she didn’t know any more beyond his or its age; no other background information was forthcoming.

“Here, boy, heel!” She hauled the obdurate thing all of three inches nearer to us and then gave up, defeated by his total lack of inertia. “No good trying to get this idiot brute to obey anything yet”, she muttered. “Deaf, daft and fucking dumb and about as unyielding a creature as I’ve ever had, but” she gave a harsh laugh and waved the crop and then lashed it down hard on an exposed right rump cheek, one already covered in whip marks and scars so that the fresh imprint hardly added to the brutal picture. The effect, however, was different for Caesar, who instantly gave vent to a muted howl, audible despite the huge ball filling his mouth and vainly attempted to pull away from his ultra- lightweight tormentor.

“But Mummy doesn’t mind, she likes a challenge”, Penny snarled, screwing her beautiful face up and delivering a couple more meaty whacks, then kicking and dragging him back into her van. “And Mummy always gets her way in the end as you’ll fucking well learn! Now back to your basket for the night, I think. Oh thanks”

The last remark addressed to young Suzy, who’d bravely leapt forward to help haul the thing back into the camper van, adding the toe end of her own right cowboy boot to his savaged rump in the process. Penny nodded her thanks and then called over her shoulder. “I’ll get him settled again and tell you more over dinner! I’m not in the mood to play games with him now; he’s been a pain all day. Pets, I despair sometimes, you give them a loving home and what thanks do you get!”

A couple of sharp cracks sounded from inside the van along with a muted howl. Sally glanced sideways at me, pulled a funny face and winked. “Loving?”

It was her turn to cook, and she served up pizza from the freezer and fresh salad. None of us was what you might call ‘enthusiastic’ about cooking, so our meals tended to be somewhat simplistic or, what might more accurately be called, basic. The home-made coleslaw was perhaps the most ambitious offering on the table.  Not that Penny minded, and I noted she went for more salad and less pizza than the rest of us; no doubt the fact that she had a modelling job on the go had something to do with that.  Not a meal, though, that precluded conversation.

“Dee Dee and Gale had told me about Champ”, Penny said, spooning more coleslaw onto her plate. “So, he was the one I’d predominantly gone to see, other than taking Brutus over to rehome as I told you earlier. I’d asked about a replacement, more out of curiosity than intent, but they lied… well, no, I’ll take that back. They didn’t exactly lie, but told me they had nothing to hand that might be of interest.  I wanted a guard dog for my stable rather than a house pet, so that’s how Champ entered the picture. Round my way, there’s been a few farm break-ins and burglaries, idiots coming down from the city thinking us county bumpkins are easy targets, and I know my security stuff is good, but it all depends on electricity”.

“Ditto, here with our system”, Suzy noted. “But you have a backup, surely? Emergency batteries in case of power failure, we do?”

Penny nodded and pushed an escaping sliver of red cabbage back into her mouth. “Yes, and a generator, but you need to go out and manually start it and hope it's in a cooperative mood! But a big savage dog barking his head off is also a pretty good deterrent, belt and braces. That was my thinking. I’m not too worried about the riding school and that stable, but… well, yes, I am. However, showing the local constabulary the crime scene there wouldn’t be any problem. Whereas my other stable!” she chuckled. “Different kettle of fish, so I let Champ run loose in there every night. I think he scares some of my ponies more than me!”

“And the other one?” I asked, although my mind was only half on her story and half on my own site security. I glanced over toward Raven's basket and nodded. He’d got sharp ears and had woken us up more than once when all the alarms had remained dormant. False alarms so far, probably overexcited rabbit chasing dreams or something, but one never knew. I hadn’t actually considered my pet in that sense, but the stable was only yards away across the yard, so as Penny had just said, belt and braces.

“Plus, of course, having decided to part with Brutus”, Penny paused to consider a piece of mushroom pizza, compromised by cutting the one-sixth-sized piece in half and added it to her plate along with another spoonful of coleslaw.

“Anyway, once I’d settled on Champ there, I’d been thinking about Brutus on the drive over and remembered all the fun I’d had training him and, well…since I was going to where I’d got him from, why not?”

“Why not indeed?” Suzy yawned loudly.

“Bored”, Penny inquired sweetly. “Well, let's try and spice things up a bit. “Nothing in stock, but they said they’d keep an eye open, keep me informed, you know how that goes? Then, as I was having a look around, I spied that big brute in the next pen with my avaricious little eye, throwing his weight around in his pen and being very disagreeable. One very unhappy boy, it appeared!”

“Love at first sight”, I murmured, thinking about the animal we’d just seen. Suzy had been right. The bloody thing had radiated anger and hostility to the point where you could almost physically feel it.  I’ve heard about radioactivity and half-life, quarter-life, and all that chemistry stuff. Is it chemistry or physics? Anyway, that nasty stuff that takes a long time to degrade. In the case of Ceaser out there, the bloody bomb had only just exploded and not one atom of his rage had as yet degraded, not so much as a single electron or whatever so far as I could tell! Boy, was he one great big angry pup inside that suit!

“Hardly”, Penny laughed. “Well, maybe lust of a certain kind at first sight. He certainly made my right arm twitch. I wanted him and wasn’t about to take no for an answer. The more I stood there admiring him, the angrier the stupid thing got, scuttling back and forth in his pen and trying to hide himself, some hope!”

“Expensive?” Sally asked.

Penny rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask! That big enthusiast,” she waved a fork towards Champ stretched out on the rug in front of the empty fireplace. “He cost enough and then talk about wanting a pound of bloody flesh, hell, I thought those two girls were friends!”

“Business is business”, Suzy observed, helping herself to that surplus piece of Pizza Penny had left before our guest changed her mind.

“Yeah”, Penny pulled a face. “But the number of times I’ve…oh well, they did give me a discount of sorts, at least I think they did. Gale said they didn’t like selling untrained, unbroken dogs as a general rule, so this would be a first, plus they already had a wealthy customer in mind for him. I kinda got the impression that it was no big deal so far as Gale went more about the fact that Dee Dee had hardly had a chance to work her ‘magic’ on the sullen brute yet, and that young lady is very fond of using her various wands!”

“Which was the major attraction for you?” I surmised and then frowned. “It looks like someone has had a pretty good go at him from what I just saw, your ‘wand or wands’, I take it?”

Penny didn’t bother to reply, merely giving me a very sweet, unsweet smile if you get my meaning, then yawned loudly and decided she was ready to retire for the night.

That had been then, and this was now, and I’d be lying through my teeth if I said I felt one hundred per cent happy holding the end of that leash she’d so nonchalantly handed me. I mean, yes, on the one hand, I’d been handling captive two-legged animals for a while now and had probably found my comfort zone. The expression ‘you look like someone holding a live snake’ flashed into my mind, or perhaps ‘live hand grenade’ might be more apt! Being heavily restricted,  Caesar's options were decidedly limited, as with all such captive animals, and I sensed he had realised that. But the look in his eye as he stared unblinkingly at me from behind his puppy mask chilled my blood.

Also, I wasn't unfamiliar with handling ponies, especially the newer, more unruly ones, and with that laser-like look they were capable of giving you. Sally’s Medusa and my Goldie were two good examples, and Beauty hadn’t exactly been cooperative when I’d first captured her, but this creature outdid even them by some margin. I recalled Penny’s fury just before she put him back in her camper van last night.  The big pup had suddenly thrown himself sideways, almost knocking her off her feet—no warning, just that spontaneous eruption of enraged movement. Penny staggered, recovered and then had her own Vesuvius or whatever was the one in the US a while back? Her own Mt St Helens moment.

She’d handed the end of the leash to Suzy. “Here, grab hold of this, please.” Then she set about the big creature, vigorously applying her riding crop to her pup's exposed, expansive, white, fleshy rump. Nor, by the look of his tortured buttock cheeks, was it the first such severe thrashing the poor thing had recently received. Suzy had to use both hands to hang on to the leash and set her feet firmly into the dirt, bracing herself and leaning back to hold the angry beast until it calmed and quietened, surrendering to its Mistress’s brutal, untrained assault upon its vulnerable rear end.

With its various openings, it was similar to the puppy suit I’d bought for Fluffy; neither of them was a full, body-covering suit sans convenient openings. You could buy them like that, of course, but I preferred to see the results of my ‘corrective’ handiwork through various openings. I’m sure a whip, crop and cane would have stung just as much if the recipient's flesh had been covered, but why deny yourself the sight of all that gorgeous red, black and purple blistered and bruised, bloody flesh? It would be like… like painting with your eyes closed, wouldn't it? I suppose some people, maybe most, would find it somewhat gruesome, but I found it rather delightful, not to mention erotic and a turn-on. Oh, what a sad and horrible person I’d become!

A portion of his back, his buttocks, upper thighs and captive genitalia had all been on view as Penny’s heavy crop rose and fell, and her new pup writhed in muted agony, unable to express himself other than in those less than impressive squeaks and sounds that somehow escaped his mouth. His head was two-thirds covered with a puppy mask, and some kind of muzzle was clamped over his mouth and nose, probably to stop him biting. Only his angry brown eyes were visible to confirm the human part of him, and they were screwed up and damp as that crop rose and fell with merciless pressure. Pain, anger, rage, humiliation, probably all four and more, I thought, watching him being corrected. He might be big and have bulging muscles, but restrained as he was, all he could do was roll about and endure the savage thrashing from his glamorous new Mistress and owner.

“Sorry, I was wool-gathering again. What was that you were saying?” I switched my attention back from Ceaser and the previous evening to Penny again.

“Well, he’s not that old either, like your Raven,” Penny repeated as she pocketed the ball, not without some difficulty, with Champ doing his best to leap up and knock her over. I unthinkingly grabbed his collar, hauled him back, and held him at arm’s length until he calmed down, again not without some difficulty. If I’d thought Raven was a big, strong pup, then Champ made him look wimpy by comparison. Thankfully, the new arrival was quite docile once he realised you meant business and didn’t throw his full weight around.

“More manageable than I thought he’d be,’ I told her, snapping the lead she’d handed me to his collar and handing it back.

“Shagged out more like! Penny retorted. “Mummy’s slobber monster was full of beans last night, weren’t you big boy? A bit too full given the size of my van!” Penny gently ruffled the tufts of fur on Champ's head. “But mummy has a very efficient way of calming him down and burning off some of that surplus energy, doesn’t she, thanks to Aunty Dee Dee?”

“Oh?” I pricked up my ears. Raven sometimes had an annoying habit of getting ‘frisky’, as Sally put it, when we were getting ready to retire for the night. He tended to bark and chase his tail as well to the extent that one of us, usually me, had to shed bedroom slippers for rubber boots and take him for a quick walk in the yard clad in my nightie! Not so bad in summer but decidedly chilly in winter, even with my heavy coat on!

“Oh, nothing that involves any effort on my part,” Penny laughed, guessing where I was coming from. “All I need to do is remove Caesar’s tail plug and let Champ here go to work on this handsome bitch of mine!”

“Bitch?” I blinked, and then understanding dawned, “Oh!”

Penny laughed again, presumably at the expression on my face, as the full realisation of what she’d just told me penetrated my early-morning brain lethargy. “You mean…. mean he….”

“Fucks him, yep!” Penny confirmed with a giggle and switched her caressing hand to Caesar's doggie head cover. “Nothing like a good knotting to put you in your place, eh, bitch boy and knock some of the bounce out of your best buddy at the same time. Two birds with one stone, that's what Dee Dee said when she introduced Champ into his pen to show me him in action as a further selling point. It’s one of her favourite ways to break in a new pup, plus it keeps her other big breeding dogs very happy! This big boy had already entertained a few of them!”

I saw a tremor run through Caesar, head to…tail, for he was sporting a cute little turned-up one that was on some internal spring and tended to wag somewhat enthusiastically when he moved about.  Although I'm pretty sure the poor creature wasn’t the least bit enthusiastic about anything or anyone to do with his new situation. Seven and a half weeks in puppy age, she’d said, and that was nothing, was it?

Hell, and I thought I was a bad, evil, cruel bitch, and yet… I looked at Penny fussing over Champ. Perhaps the most poised, cool, beautiful person I’d ever met, with a sparkling personality to match, and yet how utterly… I stopped and shook myself. “Contrasts”, I muttered to myself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing important. Please, do go on” Penny gave me a curious look for a second and then continued.

“Leaving aside their…their more specialised activities, Dee Dee and Gale are both breeders and trainers. One of them is usually at Crufts every year. You know, the big prestigious dog show.”

I nodded. I’d certainly heard of the event and the ultimate winner, the champion of champions, best of the best, or whatever they called it. The winner usually made the newspapers and, perhaps, was featured in one of those ‘fluffy’ items they save for the end of the news broadcast to cheer everybody up after all the doom and gloom reports!

“Top class pedigree canines, larger breeds mostly” Penny continued. “So, they have a number of huge male stud dogs available, plus people pay to have their bitches impregnated by such high-class studs. Not always easy, of course, to keep the randy things in top form without being overrun with surplus puppies, so they’ve found another way to keep their rampant Romeos happy. They keep a couple of permanent male bitches on hand. Low-class merchandise that doesn’t have much resale value! Male, female, I don’t think it matters overmuch to those big boys”

I glanced down at Caesar, noting the horrified look in the poor mutt's eyes at this conversation. I saw shame and embarrassment there now, as well as anger, and could understand why. There were worse things than being beaten and whipped, as the big boy well knew, and having his shame and degradation discussed by two women, so openly, no doubt twisted the knife that bit more.

“As I said, Dee Dee also finds them a useful addition to her breaking and training sessions, she…”Penny broke off and chuckled. “Usually, but she told me that she’s occasionally had a bitch through her hands who seemed to enjoy the experience after a while. Probably doesn’t say much for their previous sex lives, if any!”

I pulled a face at that thought, and Penny laughed again.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Not that you get any choice, do you, boy?” she flashed a lovely smile down at Ceaser. “And of course she’s never yet had a boy who enjoyed playing bitch, and I know one, mentioning no names, who absolutely detests being doggie fucked, don’t I, big boy?”

Ceaser looked away quickly, but not before I’d seen the despair and mortification in those sad eyes that shuffled rage and anger temporarily sideways and for a fleeting moment felt for him.  Poor thing, what had he done to deserve this horrendous fate and in that skin-tight suit and merciless bindings, not a thing the big brute could do about it other than…than accept if that was the right word to use. Probably not for it implied a degree of ‘willing’ that was obviously not the case, but offhand I couldn’t think of another term.

I handed the leash back to Penny, reminding myself that not far away, there was a young woman wearing restrictive pony harness I’d named Beauty. What had she done to deserve her horrible fate? I was no better in that respect. Funny how I seemed to automatically exclude myself when thinking about how awful, indeed, cruel and evil my friends and little lover truly were. Understandable, though, I suppose, because I didn’t really see them as evil, did I? In many ways, they were so…so ordinary, so it was natural that I would exclude myself. I shook that thought away, along with my head, as though to clear it, for Penny was regarding me with that slightly perplexed look on her face again.

“Hey! Hey, you two, early birds!”

We turned to see Suzy standing half in, half out of the farmhouse door, wearing that blue dragon-patterned silk shortie kimonos I always admired. Not that it went very well with her green rubber boots, but I supposed the petite blonde had been anticipating a walk to find us, and mud was never far away from my farmyard.

“Breakfasts on the table, or will be in a couple of ticks. DIY BB’s and breakfast coffee”. The girl shouted and bobbed back into the house only for her head to emerge briefly. “So come in and do your gossiping back here before it gets cold!”

“Remind me to…to…well, that brat’s overdue a lesson in humility and what the hell is a DIY BB?”

I chuckled. “Well, you’ve a week to provide such a lesson. Come on,” I snapped my fingers at Raven and made a gesture he knew, then turned to Penny “, Let's go get something to eat, you might as well bring Champ and his friend”, I giggled. “We’re a dog-friendly establishment after all”, I nodded at Ceaser. “Sort of!”

We headed back, the two real four-legged friends romping along behind in their own fashion, jumping on each other, rolling over and over and then hurrying after us. Ceaser on a tight, very tight leash, walking or waddling as best he could to heel under the threat of his gorgeous mistress's crop, which would show him no mercy.

“Well?” Penny queried as we resumed our slow walk after a brief pause to allow that crop to do its evil work, twice when she thought him too slow.

“Well, what…oh! DIY BB’s you mean? House slang for do-it-yourself bacon butties, you know, bacon sandwiches”.

“HEEL, Damn you, HEEL, you clumsy brute!” That heavy crop rose and fell again. “You mean a plate of bacon, some slices of bread, and your poor guest has to put her own breakfast together?”

I winked at her. “You're not poor and don’t pout, or I won’t take you to see Melons later!”

“Lead me to it then, and there better be some decent ketchup, none of that cheapo supermarket own-brand rub….HEEL WILL YOU!”

The heavy crop rose and fell yet again, and this time so hard that I couldn’t help wincing a tad in sympathy!