This, Fluttershy considered, wasn't too bad. Sure they thought that she was a dog despite the abundance of evidence indicating otherwise but right now sitting in a tub of hot, soapy water she decided she could, for the time being, forgive the creatures for their selective blindness and deafness and also for the rather abrupt abduction in the middle of a street.

Sure the shampoo bottle had a picture of a dog on it, as well as a flea with a big red cross over it and something written on it that looked sort of like 'for a glossy coat'. Not that she could easily tell, these creatures written language while having some similarities to her own, was different enough from equestrian to make translating a timely and difficult pursuit. The shampoo itself smelled a little funky compared to the products she used in her own home, but it was pleasant enough and she wasn't about to make a fuss since she wasn’t covered in stinky garbage juice anymore. What she did have trouble with was the female. Janet, as she had heard Paul call her on the way over; was insisting on washing her. It was awkward, especially since Janet kept babbling to her in baby talk and calling her 'my cute lil puppy wuppy!'

"I can wash myself you know." she said not that Janet seemed to understand her. She sighed and looked over to the bathroom door and the other issue that she had right then. Sitting in the doorway was a scruffy and demented looking gray cat, which went by the name of Fritz. Normally Fluttershy loved cats but this one, from the moment she had been introduced, had done nothing but glare at her. Naturally since Fluttershy hated confrontation, this had made her rather uncomfortable but fortunately the cat had done nothing else since her arrival and she was happy to keep it that way.

"Soon Paulie will be back with some tasty num nums for you and then we can show you around your new home! Won't that be nice my lil puppy wuppy? Hmm?"

Fluttershy didn't bother to conceal her excitement since she did not, in fact, possess any. After the horrific journey in the weird metal box the creatures called a car, Janet had dismissed Paul to 'get some food for my little cutesy.' Fluttershy had felt sorry for Paul at the time since he was clearly suffering under the yoke of domestic slavery and also because she had thrown up all over the cars back seat, just to add to the smell she had already gifted to the vehicle. Fluttershy hoped she didn't have to go in the car again. Speed and bumps did not a happy Fluttershy make.

Also why the couple had dog shampoo but not dog food or a dog as far as Fluttershy could tell, was a mystery. One that would probably go unanswered. Although she did suspect it was because normal shampoo would be wasted on that scary looking cat.

"Oh, yes, that would be...nice, very, very...nice." she finished lamely. What she had seen of the house so far had been nice enough, and she supposed she should be grateful for not ending up in some raggedy flat in a rundown area. It was clean and had a garden and therefore a means of escape as soon as she could fly again. The garden also had grass which was handy since these people thought she was a dog and therefore ate what actual dogs ate. Fluttershy knew better than to hope for a nice crisp salad, and therefore was thinking of her own methods of finding sustenance.

"Now that you’re all clean let’s get you dry hey puppykins?"

Puppykins thought Fluttershy, as a towel descended upon her, that’s a new one. The care that Janet had put into washing her clearly did not extend to her drying methods which Fluttershy compared to being wrapped in flannel and thrown down some stairs. After being abused by a towel for a couple minutes Janet ceased her ministrations just in time for Fluttershy to look up and gaze into the fiery gateway of Tartarus itself.

This would be frightening enough for even the staunchest of pony but for poor, timid Fluttershy it was enough to make her jump backwards at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound. Into a shelf. Where the shampoo was kept. Or at least it was kept there until 50lb worth of pony slammed into it. Now most of it seemed to be either on the floor or on Fluttershy.

"Bad kitty Fritz, you scared the poor puppy." Janet scolded.

After several moments of quivering panic Fluttershy looked up to see a certain grey feline gazing at her once more, albeit with a look that was altogether too smug by far. Making eye contact she realized what had scared her so much. Fritz had the most intense stare she had seen on anything outside of a mirror.

"So that's what that feels like." she whispered to herself as she watched Fritz saunter off looking for all the world like he was sniggering.

Sometime later, after another session of rinsing and overly vigorous drying, Fluttershy was having her promise of a tour delivered and was doing her best to be interested. The fact that Janet was giving the tour in yet more baby talk wasn't helping.

"I don’t suppose you could just show me my room, it’s been kind of a long and stressful day and I just want to lie down. Oh and if it’s not too much trouble could I possibly have a glass of water as well, please."

Janet must have picked something up from this. “Oh I’m sorry puppy, you don’t want a tour do you? You’re still hungry and that naughty Paulie still hasn’t come back yet with your din dins.” Janet frowned for a moment before lightening up again. “But I can get you something to drink can’t I!”

Thinking to herself that Paul had clearly taken the opportunity to escape his life of servitude Fluttershy followed Janet downstairs and into the kitchen where a bowl of water was produced and placed on the floor in front of her.

“Um…can’t I have it in a glass, and possibly with a straw?” Looking up at Janet’s expectant look Fluttershy remembered that ‘dogs’ don’t use glasses. Or straws. “I guess not then.” Wilting under Janet’s continuing stare Fluttershy started drinking the water while making an unfortunate amount of slurping since normally she would have picked up whatever she was drinking from.

“Gosh you must have been thirsty” Janet exclaimed once Fluttershy had had her fill. “But I guess you’re still hungry though.”

“Actually no I just want to go lie down now.” Fluttershy said, while shaking her head hoping that Janet would pick up what she meant. “If I can that is.” She added, ever polite.

As fate would have it, and much to Fluttershys’ shock Paul returned at that moment bearing a large colourful bag and a collection of tins. He also smelled strongly of breath mints although Fluttershy had no idea why that might be. She was more concerned with the pictures of dogs on the bag and tins. This must be the fabled ‘num nums’ she had heard so much of.

“About time you got back! Where have you been?” Janet demanded.

“There was…uh, traffic and I…um, got stuck.” Paul grinned a rather desperate grin since he knew full well the store was just around the corner and that he had walked there, thus negating any and all traffic problems.

From her perspective nearer the floor it seemed to Fluttershy that Paul seemed to be swaying a bit.

“Well now your back I can finally feed poor Puppy. I hope you can forgive yourself for making her wait.” Fluttershy suspected he could.

“Her? You don’t know it’s a girl. You don’t even know what type of dog it is.” Paul said right before unleashing a rather suspect smelling burp into the world.

“She seems kinda feminine so I’ll say it’s a girl.”

“And I say it could be some kind of crazy, hermaphrodite cat dog creature from outer space for all you know."

“I’m a pony.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It could be one of them wolves, or a giant mutant Chihuahua.”

“I’m also a Pegasus.”

“Giant. Mutant. Chihuahua.” Janet deadpanned

The small pink and yellow Pegasus took this opportunity to spread her wings and do her best to flap them in this enclosed space. For some reason this failed to get the slightest amount of attention from the arguing couple. More worryingly for Fluttershy it also failed to produce even the slightest amount of lift.

While distracted with worry about her failure to fly Fluttershy had stopped listening to the conversation and so failed to notice that Paul had walked around behind her. The first thing she knew about it was his breath on her back. The second thing was the hand clumsily exploring places where hands should not be exploring at all. She never got to a third thing because by that time her instinct had bucked Paul in the face. Hard.

“It’s definitely a girl.” Mumbled Paul from several meters away as he clutched his face.

“And why would you say that?” Janet replied sweetly

“Only a girl would have let me get that far before kicking me in the face.”

“I didn’t even know dogs could kick like that.”

“Yeah, it’s a frigging miracle of nature.” He said whilst watching a panicking Fluttershy run off to hide.

A while later after they had managed to coax Fluttershy out from her hiding place behind the sofa, and after Paul had been forced to give some rather unfeeling apologies about invading her personal space; Fluttershy found herself sat in front of a bowl of what could loosely be described as food. If you were blind and had no sense of smell it probably wouldn’t be that bad to be near as long as you didn’t have to eat it. As it was Fluttershy had both good eyesight and a rather finely tuned sense of smell, and both those senses was telling her nothing she wanted to know.

It was clearly meat. It may have been cut up into nice little chunks and covered in some kind of weird jelly stuff but none of that detracted from the fact that this was meat. Or that she was expected to eat it.

“I’m not eating this.” She said quietly while looking at the floor just in front of the bowl. “I’m a pony, I don’t eat meat.”

She wished her declarations could have actually made a difference but that selective hearing the creatures employed was in full swing as Janet once again stared expectantly at her. Paul was elsewhere at that moment which Fluttershy was glad of. Janet may have been a baby talk babbling loony but at least her hands were kept to herself.

“Go on then, eat up.” Janet ordered as a means of encouragement. “You need to eat something.” She added as a full stop to her well thought out argument in favour of eating that meaty sludge.

Once again looking at the contents of the bowl before her Fluttershy noticed some round things underneath the meat that looked vaguely biscuit like. Using her hoof she gently scraped the meat aside to have a better look, much to Janet’s confusion.

“Don’t you like the meaty chunks?” Janet asked dumbly.

Rolling her eyes Fluttershy attempted to fish a biscuit out of the bowl with a hoof. Having succeeded she gulped before placing the biscuit into her mouth and chewing on it.

It was just as horrible as she imagined it would be. It was dry and somehow managed to taste foul despite having no discernible flavour. Gagging, she quickly swallowed and drank a mouthful of water before looking up into the distant stare of Fritz who was reclining on the sofa and seemed to be enjoying the show.

“There, that wasn’t so bad was it?” Janet cooed at Fluttershy.

Fluttershy looked up at Janet with a look full of hatred. That is to say with barely any hatred since this was Fluttershy after all. “If you try some I’ll eat all the rest with no complaints.” She said against all hopes that Janet might actually hear her this time. Since Janet did nothing to react it was obvious that she’d once again gone unheard. “Didn’t think so.” She muttered darkly.

Taking a few calming breaths she looked at the bowl. If she could just eat a few mouthfuls of the biscuits Janet would probably accept that she had eaten and stop staring at her. Maybe sometime they might let her into the garden so she could at least find some vegetation to eat.

Drawing in a deep breath she practically nosedived into the bowl and stuffed as many of the biscuits into her mouth as she could, chewed and swallowed as fast as possible and repeated the process a few times while doing her best to avoid touching the meat. After a minute or two she finally relented before drinking as much water as possible to wash the taste away which somehow seemed determined to linger.

“There, who’s a good puppy?”

I am. Thought Fluttershy before catching that stray thought and mentally pounding the crap out of it. “Can you please show me my room now, please?” she pleaded.

An hour had passed and Fluttershy had still not been shown to her room and she had at the moment opted to lie on the carpet in the middle of the living room floor. Not to say that she had really opted to occupy the carpet but when she had attempted to sit on the sofa she was quickly and firmly pushed off again before being sternly told “dogs stay on the floor.”

She had gestured to Fritz, who was purring contentedly at Fluttershys’ unfair treatment, and attempted to show that it was totally unfair that he got to lie on the sofa but not her.

“Fritz isn’t a dog, he’s a cat.” Janet pointed out using her mastery of the pre-school sciences.

“So you can tell he’s a cat but not that I’m a pony.” Fluttershy said with a very flat look. “Well that’s just marvellous, I guess I’ll just sit here on the carpet and…and…oh forget it.”

And so it was that Fluttershy was reclining on the floor, feeling rather ill after the dog food and she was increasingly growing in need of the bathroom. Not that she could ask, or wanted to ask afraid that the creatures would subject her to some new kind of humiliation.

Internal pressures were unfortunately not that patient and she finally got up and fruitlessly attempted to ask where the bathroom is using her usual collection of overly shy um’s and uh’s.

“I um…need to uh… go to the bathroom, if its ok.” She said before facehoofing at the blank look Janet returned to her. Normally if her canine friends needed to go to the bathroom they would pine and scratch at the door, which was fine for them since they happily attended to their business outdoors. That was something Fluttershy was neither willing nor prepared to do.

“I uh…bathroom, please.” she tried again. “Toilettes sil vou plait? No? Don’t understand Prench? How about toire onegaishimasu? Don’t understand neighponese either? Ok what about germane, toilette bitte? Bitalian?” Fluttershy hung her head and sighed. “I’m going to have to pine and scratch at the door, aren’t I?”

Standing up she trotted over to and up the stairs taking care to not jostle her delicate stomach and her increasingly full bladder. Waiting for Janet to follow she trotted to the bathroom door and scratched at it in a feeble manner.

“What’s the matter puppy?”

Fluttershy facehoofed again. She had the feeling she would be doing that a lot during her time here so she may as well get used to it.

“Um…oh bother. Um…woof? Bark? Whine?”

“Don’t be silly puppy; you don’t need to go in there. You’re already nice and clean.”

“But…but…please!”

“Come on puppy, stop being silly and come sit back down stairs.”

“But…but…no!” Fluttershy squeaked.

Fluttershy sat there for a minute with her forehead planted against the door. Janet had already departed back down stairs leaving her to openly vent her despair. She looked up at the altogether too high handle and then looked at her woefully ineffective wings before sighing for what seemed like the thousandth time that day and heading back down stairs and over to the patio doors.
Looking at the floor, head down and feeling rather ashamed at what she was about to do, she reached over with her hoof and scratched at the door a couple of times before emitting a small whine.

“Oh you want to go out.” Said Janet “Why did you think that was upstairs you silly puppy?”

“Yep, that’s me, a silly little puppy.” Fluttershy said quietly to herself before trotting out of the now opened doors with her head still hanging low. Standing in the middle of the garden she surveyed the best place to do her business before a feeling that she was being watched caused her to look back at the house to see Janet standing there, staring at her once again.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to stand there and watch.” Fluttershy asked before sighing yet again “You are aren’t you.”

Looking back to the garden she took some time to properly study it. The tall wooden fence and big iron gate complete with big iron padlock that led round to the front of the house didn’t deliver much promise when it came to escaping. The garden itself was just a big square of surprisingly well maintained grass with a path that led to a small shed at the far left corner.

There were also some miscellaneous bushes in a row at the back of the garden that went behind the shed. Figuring that was her best hope for privacy she trotted over to the shed and squeezed through the gap between the back of the shed and the bush there. To her (very) small delight there was a narrow, open space between the shed and the fence that was not only sheltered but most importantly, private.

A short few minutes later a furiously blushing Fluttershy squeezed back out of the gap and trotted back towards the house where Janet awaited while looking, in Fluttershys’ opinion, far too pleased that her garden had just been soiled.

“Who’s a clever puppy not messing up mummy’s nice garden?”

Fluttershy suspected it may have been her but was too busy channeling her inner Rarity by holding her nose in the air and summoning her most indignant look while trotting into the house that she didn’t really respond to what might have been, in theory, a compliment.

“You are not my mother.” Fluttershy said in as haughty a tone as she could muster.

Walking around with your nose in the air is not particularly safe, especially in places you don’t know. Fluttershy found this out when she walked right into Paul who, like the big lump he was, didn’t even move while Fluttershy was left cradling her nose which was still kind of sore after her earlier nosedive out of the dumpster. Thinking about it she missed the dumpster. It was quiet in there and probably wouldn’t mistake her for some kind of dog.

“Hey there sport, guess who has an appointment tomorrow?”

“What are the chances it’s not me?” Fluttershy responded sarcastically.

“So they had a booking available?” Janet asked after closing the doors.

“Sure did, although when we sign her in we will have to give them a name for their records.”

“Ooh right. How about Lassy?”

“My names Fluttershy.”

“Lassy?” Paul snorted “How clichéd are you trying to be?”

“Ok then smart ass. How about Flossy since her hair is all fluffy and glossy.”

“My name is Fluttershy.”

“Flossy? Can’t you think of something simpler like…like…I dunno, lady?”

“It’s Fluttershy.”

“Or” Paul continued “if it’s actually a boy how about Butch?”

“What!? No! I’m a mare and my name is Fluttershy!”

“It’s not a boy Paul. Nope I like Flossy.” Janet said oblivious to Fluttershys’ efforts to be heard.

“But…but…oh fu…fu…fu…feather it all!” was all Fluttershy could say to the yet further humiliation dumped on her in the form of a silly sounding name.

“Yep, Flossy,” Janet said still ignorant of Fluttershys’ distress “We’ll tell the vet her name is Flossy.”

“Vet? Oh no, oh no no no no I am not going to a vet!”

“Fine, Flossy it is.” Paul said before walking away sparing his wife the sight of him rolling his eyes. It also spared him the sight of Fluttershy lying down, forelegs wrapped protectively around the back of her head with her face on the floor, as she screamed silently into the carpet.

Author's Note

First two chapters of my first story, feel free to point out my grammar mistakes .
Third chapter and story pic will be added sometime soon. Possibly within the next week. Possibly not.