Your dog hates you.

You know how you can tell? He doesn't play catch with his usual eagerness. He's just going through the motions. He rolls his eyes at you. You've never seen a dog do that before; you've never seen a dog smirk. He used to smile.

What went wrong? Like you don't know. It wasn't the 'operation', for dogs have poor memory. No, this hatred took extensive conditioning; he had to be annoyed by your singing thousands of times.

He watched you dress in stupid clothes, lie to your mother, try different recipes for the 'perfect madeleine' only to discover it's just a crappy, crumbly cookie -- which you then tried to feed to the poor dog. He didn't really want you to quit smoking, he just pretended to encourage you. Come to think of it, that was the first time he rolled his eyes at you. It's like, he won't say anything about what's bothering him, because he can't fucking talk. And the cat can't talk either and anyway he doesn't want to get in the middle of this. Kitty's been tense, chewing the houseplants, eschewing the litter box and defiling your favorite sneakers.