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said.
    Bobby’s tension rippled through the pack, and I could feel the fur on my back rising up, though I wasn’t sure why. Top Dog and Spike were stiffly examining each other, neither one backing down, the pack in a tight circle. Spike’s face was covered with scars—teardrop-shaped pits and lumps colored a pale gray against his dark fur.
    Something about the way Spike seemed to take us all in, every single one of us arrayed against him, made me afraid, though the result was as it should be. Spike allowed Top Dog to put his head over his back, though he didn’t bow or lower his stomach to the ground. Instead, Spike went over to the fence, carefully sniffed at it, and then lifted his leg. The males immediately lined up after Top Dog to do the same thing on the same spot.
    Senora’s face appeared over the top of the gate, then, and a lot of the anxiety I’d been feeling went away. Several of us broke from the circle and ran over to her, putting our legs on the fence so she could reach our heads.
    “See? He’ll be okay,” Senora said.
    “A dog like him’s been bred to fight, senora. He is not like the rest of ’em, no ma’am.”
    “You be a good dog, Spike!” Senora called over to him. I looked jealously in the new dog’s direction, but his reaction to having his name spoken was to glance over as if it were nothing at all.
    Toby,
I wanted her to say.
Good dog, Toby.
Instead she said, “There are no bad dogs, Bobby, just bad people. They just need love.”
    “Sometimes they’re broke inside, senora. And nuthin’ will help ’em.”
    Senora’s hand absently reached down and scratched behind Coco’s ears. I frantically shoved my nose underneath Senora’s fingers, but she didn’t even seem to know I was there.
    Later Coco sat down in front of me with a rubber bone, gnawing on it industriously. I ignored her, still hurt that I, Senora’s favorite, had been treated so dismissively. Coco flipped on her back and played with the bone with her paws, lifting it out of her mouth and dropping it, holding it so lightly that I knew I could take it, so I lunged! But Coco was rolling away from me, and then I was chasing her in the yard, furious that she had gotten the game all backward.
    I was so preoccupied with getting the stupid bone back from Coco because I was supposed to have it, not her, that I didn’t see how it started; I just registered that suddenly the fight I think we’d all known was coming was already happening.
    Normally a fight with Top Dog was over quickly, the lower-status dog accepting his punishment for challenging the order. But this horrible battle, loudly joined and viciously savage, seemed to last and last.
    The two dogs clashed with their forelegs off the ground, each vying to obtain the higher position, their teeth flashing in the sun. Their yowling was the most ferocious and terrifying thing I had ever heard.
    Top Dog went for his usual grip on the back of the neck, where control could be exerted without doing permanent damage, but Spike shook and snapped and bit until he had Top Dog’s snout in his mouth. Though it had cost Spike a bloody tear under his ear, he now had the advantage over Top Dog, forcing our leader’s head lower and lower toward the ground.
    The pack did nothing, could do nothing but pant and circle anxiously, but the gate swung open and Bobby came running in, pulling a long hose behind him. A jet of water hit both dogs.
    “Hey! Cut it out! Hey!” he shouted.
    Top Dog went limp, acceding to Bobby’s authority, but Spike held on, ignoring the man. “Spike!” Bobby yelled. He thrust his nozzle forward and blasted Spike right in the face with it, blood flying into the air. Finally Spike broke away, shaking his head to get it out of the spray, and the look he turned on Bobby was murderous. Bobby backed away, holding the hose out in front of him.
    “What happened? Was it the new one?
El combatiente?
” Carlos called, coming into the yard.
    “
Sí. Este perro será el