June 8, 2026 
The pup had spotted his quarry. He followed it with eager eyes, one ringed with black, as if he were a cartoon animal that had been punched. An ear flopped jauntily over the eye, the only spot of black on his white body, other than the jet black nose poised over the lolling pink tongue.
And suddenly, he found himself free. There was no answering tug at the other end of the leash when he pulled. He took it as a sign: finally he would show his human, and all the other assembled humans on the grass berm in St. Gallen, Switzerland, what his instincts told him he could do.
He would take down the dark horse, currently in full gallop across the green field.
Encoded into his DNA over millions of years was the law of the jungle. Where humans saw a ridiculous size differential, the terrier knew the truth: he was predator and the other was prey.
He took off like lightning. The horse was fast, but he was faster, and he had closed the space between the spectator area and the arena within seconds. He was on the horse’s heels, the useless leash bouncing in the wind of his wake.
He found him at the Longines vertical. Just as he was in nipping distance of a pastern, the horse ascended into the air like a black swan, leaving him alone at the base of the jump, a white rail blocking his pursuit.
No matter—he swerved around the standard, losing hardly any ground in his pursuit and was off again, to catch the meaty animal on the open stretch of green field.
But the animal was crafty, heading to the left towards a body of water hovered over by a set of orange poles and again—the horse left the ground and the pup on it and hovered in the air like a dark angel, an incredible feat, one he could not hope to replicate.
He swerved again, he knew he was faster, he just needed to get some purchase on the ground and get the horse away from these obstacles it faced without flinching. Who would have thought such a big thing could fly like it did, it hadn’t wings, it weren’t no bird (and he weren’t no bird dog), what it appeared to have developed was advanced evasive techniques, but no matter he knew he was faster—
And then came the tackle. He ran around the standard on the inside turn, he was sure to capture the thing this time, and then what? A pesky human launches himself at the pup, who swerves again to avoid capture, but the leash is there and the human lands on it and he is immobilized.
How absolutely stupid. Don’t the humans see the flesh on the animal? Can’t they imagine the roasting spit and the juice dripping down chins from thick steaks? This close and yet forced to return once again to that bowl of dry kibble!
Animals without instinct, that is what these humans are. Stupid, really. Made him wish his DNA wasn’t also, along with pursuit of prey, encoded to love them. How his heart pounded with joy to see them, to be with them!
He couldn’t help but imagine how proud they would be if he had caught the horse. Why did they interfere? He would have dragged the corpse right up the berm to them, he wasn’t selfish!
He heard the crowd cheering. They seemed to be impressed with his efforts despite the failure of them (he couldn’t imagine they were cheering his capture, something closer to the truth).
“Coolio kept his cool,” said 5,491 people, each laughing at their wit. Others opted for alliteration, speaking of the “terrorizing terrier” and the “furry fiend.”
Many pointed out, falsely or not, that without the help of the pup, Marcus Ehning and Coolio 42 were headed for a time fault. One rider, whose round that day was less successful, said, “I needed a dog on my ass!”
And it was not an easy Grand Prix, this one. The end of round one brought only four clears out of a field of fifty: Katharina Rhomberg of Austria, Marcus Westergren of Sweden, Pia Reich of Germany, and of course Ehning, Coolio 42, and the pup.
Luckily for the crowd, it was a winning round, bringing back the top 12, so in addition to the four clears, eight four-faulters returned for round two.
Round two hardly proved easier in terms of scoring a clear round: again, only four did it and only three grabbed the double clear and made it to the podium. Reich and her 14-year-old gelding PB Loewenherz placed third, Rhomberg and 11-year-old gelding Colestus Cambridge second, and, of course, Ehning, Coolio 42, and the pup at the top!
But the results of this Grand Prix are not the end of the story. It was only minutes after Ehning took the top prize that the dogs of the FEI grooms, laboring under severe containment restrictions, applied for relief to the FEI.
“Our friend, the white pup with the punched-out eye,” the letter stated in part, “has proved the utility—nay, the necessity—of loosened leash laws within the FEI barn and on the show grounds. Not only has today shown that a canine offered the chance to move at liberty can facilitate a victory, as a group we suggest that we could eliminate time faults altogether and that circling will simply not occur, as it would lead to instant capture and death. Think about it.”
The FEI has yet to respond.
