The Heart of a Dog

Dakota's kooky inventor grandfather had passed away a few years ago, at this point Dakota was over the worst of her grief. She was cleaning her room before her mother got home from work since her mother had yelled at her to clean her room last night, looking through her drawers she found several of the items that her grandfather had sent to her during his final days. In a large envelope, she discovers his personal, top-secret instructions to finish building something he was working on before his death. She decides to finish the project without really knowing what it does, but, when she's done, the object looks like a doorway with no door. The final step instructs her to walk through the doorway and that, if she does, her reality will never be the same again.

Dakota had let the structure sit in her studio in the basement for several days now, she walked down the stairs slowly, determined to finally go through the strange doorway. Once she was in the basement she stopped and stared at it, seeing no harm walking through an empty doorway she went through, as soon as she walked through a wave of dizziness, her vision unfocusing as she tripped over herself. Once the dizziness went away she looked around, something was wrong. Multiple things, actually. First of all, she was in a spruce forest, how did that happen? Second, she was way lower to the ground than she should be, but she wasn't laying down, or sitting, or crouching.. Dakota looked down at her hands, shocked seeing furry paws instead, she looked behind her, she had a tail, and another two paws, and fur.. was she a dog?

Dakota, confused, walked through the forest, stumbling over herself frequently, until she reached a large clearing, it resembled a human town but it looked like it was for dogs, with doggy doors being the only entrance and most buildings being weirdly short, only meant to have space for dogs. The town smelled, unsurprisingly, of dog food and dog biscuits. And even more unsurprisingly, there were dogs walking around everywhere she looked. Dakota walked up to one of the buildings and looked at her reflection in the window, she was a husky with stunning red fur. Dakota slowly walked around, looking around and trying to figure out what was going on, why was she a dog? How does she turn back? Can she turn back?