Weekend Shorts - The Not-Dog-Thing by Corey Farrenkopf

Name - The Not-Dog-Thing 

Written by - Corey Farrenkopf

Published on - Bourbon Penn August 2026 (issue 39)

That was a weird one. This short story was predictable where it was going almost from the start. Yet, Corey Farrenkopf somehow managed to create a unique tale that kept me interested all throughout with engaging prose and making me care for his characters. 

The story was a weird piece. Told through the form of an edited interview for an online forum in which a man talks about his missing father, mostly through the depiction of the TikTok videos he used to make to pass time after his wife died. There is a creepy not-dog creature that his father found in the woods which transforms into something sinister yet oddly familiar.

There is a keen sense of family dynamic dispersed between the weird tale, how they miss their dead loved one. How they fail to communicate their grief in a meaningful way, to get the closure they crave. I really liked these lines, "I don’t tell my father that every once in a while, I can almost picture Mom’s eyes in the face of a nuthatch, or a bluejay, or a wren. He wasn’t the only one allowed to see Mom in the wild."

Then comes the predictable yet finely executed ending leaving the narrator wondering if things could have turned differently if they just talked about how they felt. 

"There are too many questions. Not enough answers.

I wish my father had been better at talking to me.

Some things need to be discussed at length.

Not everything can be settled in silence."

That ending left me wondering if all that creepy creature stuff was just a metaphor that the author created to describe the darkness that grief, loneliness, and distance can bring in us.

I will give this one 4 out of 5 stars. Corey Farrenkopf has certainly become a writer to check out in the future for me.