"I've never had one so I dunno what the baseline is."

"I think lots of people can't read their animals so they don't understand why they're behaving however they're behaving and don't know how to change it. But if you have a little bit of an instinct for it or help from someone more experienced it's easy to get, like, a snake or a working dog to a state where you're really glad you have them, and possible to get there even with animals that are stupider or more work."

"I think most people with dogs devote some time every day for a few months to training the dog."

"I knew somebody with a badger but I dunno what it was trained to do."

"Fy scouts for us, sometimes, and she can intimidate people, and she can venemously bite someone though she's never actually done it to a person and I worry it'd bother her."

"Delicate sensibilities?"

"She can't track all of what's going on, right, nothing subtle or mostly established by talking, and she's got no problem hurting anyone who's actively attacking us but if they aren't then I'd just be telling her, hey, that person standing there doing nothing wrong, and I think it'd be confusing."

"Huh. I'd expect being confused to require the same stuff as tracking what's going on..."

"I don't think so? Like, she's got some rules, like, monsters are okay, animals are okay, humanoids are right out unless she's defending herself, and then she's not gonna understand something like 'this person is threatening our life in a way that doesn't involve pulling a weapon at all' but she can understand that the rule wasn't followed."

"Huh. I guess making the rule 'only bite on command' reduces her ability to act independently in a fight."

"And makes her useless if I'm down, yeah."

"Which happens a lot."

"Two of you could ever make a friend who does melee."

"Why's that their job, why don't you make a melee friend?"

"Do I look like a friends-making kind of person?"

Mahdi pets his hair. "I think you actually do, is the thing."

"Not counting Belmarniss, she doesn't suck. Easy to get along with people who don't suck."

"I'm flattered."

"Not a high bar, I've met four people who don't suck."

"Four?"

"Fy's a person."

"But how many people have you met who do suck -"

"Oh, thousands. Tens of thousands. I spent a century trapped as a statue in the court of a Taldoran count and every person there sucked."

"I wouldn't call that meeting."

"Hmm. 

We've adventured with some people who didn't suck very much."