The near future: Mike, over-attentive pet-owner.

[dreadedcandiru2]

As we all know, Mike's enthusiasm for being a pet owner slowly faded away. He, like the rest of his family, kind of took Farley for granted as if he were a shaggy, lumbering annoyance they had to put up with. Unlike the others, his more-or-less benign apathy followed a period of obsessive affection for his puppy. He made the mistake a lot of six-year-olds make when they interact with animals: regarding a living creature as a toy. The end result was one of the rare examples of really responsible parenting; Elly, you see, had to step in and make sure that Mike didn't do the poor little fellow an injury (or vice versa) by treating him like a stuffed animal he could hug and cuddle at will. There's a point at which our need to be affectionate starts to become abusive; that point is when the object of our affection refuses it.