"Dirt machines come in all species and ages," Kira replies, thinking of the grown men he points at the bath just as often as the dog. If there's ash or fur or feathers it'll wind up on Casey; if there's moss or grease to be found Bodhi will take a nap in it. He's given up doing their laundry any more often than his own: if they want their clothes clean, he's not their mother.

The weather's nice but not so much so that he takes more than his flannel off before Jake reappears, slinging it over his shoulder and finding a stick to bond with his neighbor's dog in the tried and true method of tug-of-war. When he returns, Kira's experimentally handed his end to Aurora, and the dogs are trying to carry the stick away in two mouths, from two heights, with two ideas of where to go--and neither of them looking the least put out by the obstacle of the other.

"You really think these will fit me," he asks, his reluctance to drop his jeans in a stranger's yard entirely related to the vague outline of Cougar being far more filled out than he is, if not much taller.