A zombified coyote realizes death may be a new beginning for some people.

Tonight’s story is “Coming Back” by MikasiWolf, a Singaporean Wolf Mercenary writer. “Coming Back” has formerly appeared in the Texas Furry Fiesta Conbook (2016). His works have been published by Thurston Howl Publications, Rabbit Valley, Goal Publications among others. You can find links to more of his stories on his FA or WikiFur page.

Read by Dralen, the Dapper Dragonfox.

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https://thevoice.dog/episode/coming-back-by-mikasiwolf

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You’re listening to the Ghost of Dog

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on The Voice of Dog. I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and Tonight’s story is

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“Coming Back” by MikasiWolf,

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a Singaporean Wolf Mercenary writer.

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“Coming Back” has formerly appeared in the Texas Furry Fiesta Conbook

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(2016).

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His works have been published

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by Thurston Howl Publications,

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Rabbit Valley, Goal Publications among others.

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You can find links to more of his stories

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on his FA or WikiFur page.

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Read by Dralen, the Dapper Dragonfox.

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Fear like anything else can be diluted by time,

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can be lost in translation.

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The Ghost of Dog would remind you, listeners,

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that the myth of the zombie when it arose among the enslaved populations of the caribbean

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was about a very specific

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that death would be no different from life,

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and could not save one

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from being forced to work.

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And so we present a tale meant to examine the idea,

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if death were no release,

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if eternity were spent merely doing more of the same as life,

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what else might be possible?

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“Coming Back”

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by MikasiWolf

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One never knows what exactly to believe in

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till the day they die.

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Is it in Heaven? A land of everlasting glory that awaited you?

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Or is it Hell, an eternity of purgatory,

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with fire and brimstone cooking the fur, blood and sins out of you?

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I can tell you for a fact that it's neither.

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When Joseph Snyder caved my head into the sidewalk for a few dollars and my four-year old IPhone,

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I felt free. Free from the earthly bonds that had defined my life

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ever since I arrived in this world.

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Relieved I would no longer feel the pain of heartbreak from when Jessy-Maria the raccoon dumped me.

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Thankful I no longer felt the sting of rejection from Pa kicking me out of the family,

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all because I dated outside of my species.

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Bayou folk were conservative like that.

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My life was one of constant

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pain, a suffering prolonged by a stretched-out existence.

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My ears and tail had always lain flat when I lived,

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something considered

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disrespectable for a canid,

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a coyote to boot.

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So when I finally died,

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I was in this wonderful

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state of bliss; no thoughts,

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no worries, no nothing.

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Everything just felt so right and calm.

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That was the first time my tail briefly stood,

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right as my life melted into the sidewalk.

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I was finally free from all the troubles and shit the world had to offer.

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So believe me when I tell you how

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angry I was when a novice Magic Man brought me back to life.

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No member of the living could ever understand the shock and fury at being ripped out of one's well-deserved peace,

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and it was as much my rage as his belief

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that I should be grateful,

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that had me wringing his own life out of him.

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Or perhaps, in some sick way, that was his own plan all along.

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To die in peace once he’d the chance to fulfill the

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unthinkable. But the Bokor,

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the Magic Men. were the only ones who could undo the spell they wrought,

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and I thus found myself

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in a state of unliving.

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I was neither dead

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nor alive, but somewhere in between;

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able to remember the thoughts, anguish and regrets that had plagued my living and waking life.

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I was back to suffer all

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over again. I was lucky that Bokor was but a novice, anyone stronger and I would have remained a mindless slave for them.

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It's not all that bad;

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but it wasn't all that good either.

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Contrary to belief, we of the unliving,

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the Risen, still need to eat.

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The only difference is that I can eat eggs and toast and it tastes no different from

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days-old beef left to fester in the sun.

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You can bring the dead back to life,

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but some things just remain so.

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My sense of taste. My sense of touch.

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My wish to be in another world aside from this one.

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The loss of a sense of smell that had rivaled so many other coyotes.

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It was about the only thing I did well in, for all the good it mattered.

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Living didn't matter to me anymore,

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but you can't die twice.

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Believe me, I've tried.

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Broken legs and arms were a terrible inconvenience, so I didn’t try that more than once.

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We could still heal;

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albeit slowly. Having little else to do, I visited my old haunts.

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Not having a corpse and all, or any family that gave a shit,

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there wasn't any report made about my "disappearance",

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so I was free to wander around as long as I stayed out of the public eye.

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When I needed to go into town for food, I kept to the shadows, always

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away from the canids.

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I could only imagine how much I must stink,

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being half-dead and all.

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Water only seemed to make things worse, for some reason,

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so aside from wipe-downs in public restrooms, I pretty much gave up any chance of cleanliness.

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Life in the land of the Bayou

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ain't a bed of roses,

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and some say it's as much the inconvenience of moving

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as the roots our families had set here that makes us stay.

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It wasn't like I had anywhere else to go,

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and even the dead love the familiarity of the places we had lived

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and finally died

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in. It anchored me,

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gave me some semblance of a meaningful existence. As long as I acted like it was business as usual,

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I remained sane. It’s surprising, really,

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that with so many people living and having died here,

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I was the only free Risen around these parts.

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It’s not like there weren’t any more Bokor around,

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but more and more people moved to the cities these days.

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Not many wanted to spend years studying a discipline that may either earn a pitiful income in the sticks,

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or label one as a nutcase in the cities.

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I have to admit a year of roughing it on my own got real lonesome.

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Once, I’ve considered talking to the townsfolk;

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but what guarantee do I have that they wouldn’t see through me at once?

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A scraggly pelt held together by greyish skin isn’t exactly a sign of good health, let alone being alive.

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It probably wasn’t

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illegal to be undead,

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as I was technical still a citizen,

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but the fact I was supposed to be made dead by a crime meant I couldn’t exactly rely on faith and goodwill

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of possibly not-so upstanding citizens.

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I thus resigned myself to the fate that

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as long as I existed,

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I would go it alone.

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As they say, that’s Life.

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Or in my case, that’s Death for you.

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And so here I was,

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sitting at my favorite outlook at the edge of Barren's Pass,

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when I heard a loud sobbing.

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Now, it is said that

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feeding one of the Risen such as me salt,

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would save us from our state of unliving.

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Given that I enjoyed having some semblance of life, pathetic as it was, I wasn't keen in finding out if that were true.

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But the sobs and caterwauling seemed so familiar,

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so alluring,

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that I realized I would never forgive myself if I didn't take a closer look.

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I crept up to the source of the sound,

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a precipice at the edge of the hill.

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And it was then I saw her.

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Jessy-Maria looked nothing like how I remembered her.

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Seated on a rock, her normally immaculately-groomed sleek fur was

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matted all over, with the swamp having plastered her fur in places.

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She held her face in her paws, which were themselves soiled and worn.

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Her mask creased and wrinkled as her paws left her face.

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There were no tears.

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Her eyes were just like mine,

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half-dead but still seeing,

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tear ducts having

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long receded into her walking corpse.

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A crudely-stitched gash at her side showed,

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further confirming what her eyes told me.

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Another of my kind walked.

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"It feels really lonely here,"

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whined Jessy as her paw went over her heart,

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and in that instant,

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all my past grief at her snub faded.

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"However could you manage it, Tazzy?

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How do you go through all this, and not

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wish you were never brought back to being?"

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Her voice ended in a rill,

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echoing across the night's silence.

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A sound so lonely even the dead could feel the chills.

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"By waiting all this time for you,"

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I said, and for the first time in my life and death,

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I felt complete. It was said that unfinished business could make the departed restless enough to rise from the dead under certain conditions,

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and I realized with

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a spring of hope

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that perhaps Jessy wanted

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to be reunited with me after all.

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Our families may be intolerant and bigoted,

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but perhaps even in death

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there’s hope of a life

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for us both. This was

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“Coming Back” by MikasiWolf,

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read for you by [NAME, with CALLSIGN.]

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As always, you can find more stories on the web

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at thevoice.dog,

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or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Ghost of Dog.