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Her name is Cassie. It’s not what he would have picked, but she’d been responding to it for almost five years and it didn’t seem fair to change it. He’s rather glad Mycroft picked her out because he probably wouldn’t have considered her, thinking she’d be too active for him. But despite her slim physique, she’s a rather lazy dog, doing well with just one good walk a day and then curling up beside him as he spends time in his mind palace or online. She’s also frightfully intelligent, her liquid brown eyes peering at him in an uncannily human manner as she ponders the new tricks he tries to teach her.
He tries. He hasn’t succeeded. He wants to train her to follow scents, which would be helpful in his investigations, but so far all she’s proven useful at finding are sources of food. He’s added two new curry houses (he probably has the only dog in England who likes korma), a bakery (no raisins in her scones, of course), and a Polish sausage stand (no mustard for her) to his roster of favourite restaurants.
He can barely remember what life was like before her. She’s a handful sometimes, especially when he’s minding Rosie and he essentially has two toddlers underfoot, but the pair make good playmates. Spending time with them, he finds himself laughing more than he has since he was a child and they are deep belly laughs that make his diaphragm hurt and fill him with joy.
It’s the best high he’s ever had and his friends seem to approve. Rather than be concerned that he’s on something, they encourage him by asking for amusing tales of his adventures with Cassie. Their favourite story is of the night after he brought her home. He’d been tired after his first day with her and had fallen into a deep exhausted sleep after he’d finally managed to coax her into her crate. What felt like only minutes later, he was wide awake to the sound of an incessant whine.
He remembers fumbling with the crate door and then finding himself on the upstairs landing with his dog on a lead while he was wearing absolutely nothing. There was no time to waste, so he just grabbed his coat and pulled it on as Cassie almost threw herself down the stairs. And so that’s how Sherlock Holmes found himself shivering outside Baker Street wearing nothing but his coat while his dog relieved herself. He made a mental note to leave a few waste bags in his pockets because it wasn’t much fun having to go clean up her mess after having put her back to bed.
Such unpleasantries are minimal in this new life. Her short coat makes her very low maintenance. He might have preferred a longer coat that he could brush, but she’s so easy to keep clean that he doesn’t mind. He loves toying with her floppy ears when she’s lying with her head in his lap. He loves how she snuffles when she’s dreaming and burrows closer against him. He loves her non-sloppy kisses. He loves everything about her. He loves her.