The Talking Schnauzer English

A New Year

By: Wolfgang Ausserbauer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Most folks think a dog’s mind is a quiet place. They’re wrong. Mine’s a typewriter with a busted ribbon, clacking out thoughts faster than anyone can read them.
That’s how it started — the noise. Not barking, not whining, not the usual canine soundtrack. Thoughts. Sharp ones. Heavy ones. Thoughts that weren’t mine.
I was lying on the rug, pretending to nap, when the first human sentence drifted into my skull like cigarette smoke curling under a door.
“I should really clean this place.”
It wasn’t spoken. It wasn’t even muttered. It was just there, floating in my head, uninvited. I opened one eye. My human — DocWolf, spoken as one word, the only one I’ve ever trusted with my bowl, my leash, and my existential crises — was across the room, sitting on a kitchen chair, staring at a stack of mail as if it owed him money — which it never did.” It was usually the other way around.
I didn’t panic. A good detective never panics. And make no mistake — I was a detective long before I was a dog. Or maybe I was a dog long before I was a detective. Hard to say. Identity gets slippery when you can hear every passing thought like a radio stuck between stations.
That was the day I realized two things.
First: I could hear humans think.
Second: humans think way too much.
The world cracked open after that. Every sidewalk stroll was a case file. Every stranger was a suspect. Every squirrel was a criminal mastermind with a rap sheet longer than my tail. And me? I became the narrator of it all — the lone gumshoe in a city full of secrets, padding through life on four paws and a hunch.
But this story doesn’t start with a mystery I solved.
It starts with the one I didn’t.
The one that walked into our lives on a rainy Tuesday — Fabienne — dripping trouble all over the floorboards. The one that made my human’s thoughts go quiet — too quiet — like someone had turned the volume down on his soul, but sparked his mind in directions I had never imagined.
That’s when I knew something was wrong.
And that’s when I started writing. Or at least, thinking about writing. Same thing, really.
Every story needs a first line. This was mine.