At the end of this short story, there is a reference to Ricardo shaking the hand of "the dog" because he had "watered the wall". I was wondering whether it meant an actual dog or merely a man to whom Ricardo was refering to as subhuman, which would be ironic since he resents being treated in that way.

I already tried emailing Ray to the address described on raybradbury.com but there was no reply posted and it looks as if the site was last updated in 2002.

thunk--Ray does not use E-mail and really does not even come to this site. Occasionally people show him a few postings from here, but he never comes here on his own.

OK. Does anyone know the answer though? I'm going to get extra credit in English if I can show an answer :\

Sometimes a dog is just a dog. Looks to me like it's the same dog that watered the wall in the first place.