Once upon a time there was a little dog called Zac, only most folks did not agree. They didn't contest that 'Zac' was his name, but they were very wary about his status as a dog. 

The confusion centred on his face; it just seemed... too owly for common comfort. His eyes were ‘stark and demented’ and pitched ‘too close together, for both taste and ‘European Standards’... as told by canine consensus. ‘Captain Beaky’ became his puppy nickname after the ‘crooked’ geometry of his little nose, and even his tawny coat resembled owl’s feathers.

According to village-lore, his flappy ears flew him around at night, gliding him into all kinds of mischief. To most folk's mind, this conveniently explained-away every village-mishap, from dilapidated wooden shed, to sheer barn-vandalism. 

Most villagers had deselected the understanding they were born with, namely that prevailing South-Westerlies scoured the region, since time-immemorial. 

Scorching blasts of Atlantic doom had been rendered upon those savage scenes, since Proto-Celtic farming settlements perched opaquely and onerously upon the barren and undulating plains... But denial had swept away this ravenous factor from dog-discourse, and the mere impetus of reason, no longer stirred sentience... unto the purpose of putting a pup in its place.

Nevertheless, blustering breezes belted-in from coast and sea, swept-away the wild solitude of ostensible calm, kissed the rampant emptiness of dark; in rapturous haunts of balmy swirl... ‘Hoot’ went the whistling, midnight wind...  which bent creeping legions of monstrous trees, proudly-prod every inch of earth, and impressed upon it an archaic order, wild and forlorn as its ancient conception... Moreover, some teenaged humans tended to peck their names into wooden bus-shelters; not so much a dog-on-the-wing.

Hound-land

It was a typical Cornish settlement; green fields, granite-lain walls and barns; hidden homesteads nestled... all threading loosely throughout a gentle river valley. Farming was its passion in Frisson, where Zac was born and reared; but most of all, it was a dog-town. 

Some towns are ‘cat-towns’; with a sultry air and leafy tone: un-hounded, you might casually inhabit the tree-lined paves, and from a vacant stance amongst the vintage abodes, watch the brick-built and terraced-life float lingeringly by. No whisper nor whimper there’d be; no working-bark in your midst. But if a rare pooch did emerge, then it would be shivering at the end of a sparkling lead or peering nervously over the lip of a clutch-bag, garbed in knitwear prime-hued and ‘loud’, just like its humans, as they over-baringly proclaiming them as ‘Sooo cute’. 

From such safe-savannahs, cats might slink silently from erroneous chasms to scout you out... From the inner sancti of street-life... dredge from under the perpetually-stationed wheels-of-wagons, of the three-door and hatch-backed variety. In droves and dozens, leap with lazy agility, to ambush you with benignly-held curiosity... which is either feigned, fiendish or friendly... for all that you would know... They would diffuse from the shadows of crust-rimmed bins that enthralled them... from the street-relics that ordain the fanciful facadery of this bookshop-land; a land with stories of the urbane but vintage, dyed-haired liberal-lifestyle... and wheelie bins with the religious rigour of colour-codedness... that wheel-screech on a sleepy Tuesday. 

How would you know if they liked you? They may purring adorn you with clung thoraxes, wrapped with sensual affection, yet begging no lip-service in-kind. If particularly honoured, they might nonchalantly nod your way with a marathon of 'meows', to convey the deepest or the shallowest of message… or none, by that highly-strung symphony of sour-song. Then, with gazetting gazes, lax and aloof, altogether prove their purpose as inter-speciel ingratiation. 

Such a cacophony might congregate in the terms and time of its own suiting, since they are on the most catastrophic ‘crusade’... infurably at least, by their unfeasibly assured demeanours. Frisson on the other-hand, was absolutely none of that. It was an intensely hard-working farming-village with an immaculately tough pack mentality. None of these facts were very conducive to a bird-of-prey faced-dog's smooth assimilation.

‘Why the owl’s face?’, a collie pup once cheeped in amicable impudence. The mother dragged-off the proselytizing-progeny by its collar-ruffle, as it squealed its protests, craning back at Zac, who gorped impotently in-kind. The pair beat-a hurried path away, shrinking into distant-dots, then into specs, from what had self-morphed into a stunned silence... which loomed as long as their dwindling visages on the opaque horizon. First the pup, and then its mother: engulfed by the hillside-barren and bare...  digested by its fast-fading light; fading ever-more readily than its lamentable legacy upon Zac. 

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