A Dog's Purpose, Page 5

  I decided my time in the Yard had prepared me to dominate the puppies in my family, and was irritated they didn’t feel the same way. I’d maneuver to grab one the way Top Dog had grabbed Rottie, and then two or three of my siblings would jump on top of me, not understanding the point of the whole thing at all. By the time I’d fought them off, the original target of my attentions would be off wrestling with someone else, as if it were all some kind of game. When I tried a menacing growl, though, I sounded ridiculously nonthreatening, my brothers and sisters joyously growling back.

  One day the spotted dog next to us drew our attentions—she was panting and pacing nervously—and we instinctively hung close to our mother, who was watching our neighbor intently. The spotted dog ripped up a blanket, shredding it with her teeth, and circled around several times before lying down with a gasp. Moments later, I was shocked to see a new puppy lying by her side, covered in spots and cloaked in a slippery-looking film, some kind of sac that the mother immediately licked off. Her tongue pushed the little puppy over, and after a minute it groggily crawled toward its mother’s teats, which reminded me that I was hungry.

  Our mother sighed and let us feed awhile before she abruptly stood up and walked away, one of my brothers dangling along for a second before dropping off. I jumped on him to teach him a lesson, which wound up taking a lot of time.

  When next I glanced over at the spotted dog, there were six more puppies! They looked spindly and weak, but the mother didn’t care. She licked them, guiding them to her side, and then lay quietly while they fed.

  The man came and entered the cage where the newborns lay sleeping, looking them over before turning and walking away. Next he opened the door for the furry-looking puppies in the kennel to the right of ours and released them into the grassy area!

  “No, not you,” he said to the mother, blocking her way as she tried to follow. He shut her in and then put bowls of food down for the puppies, which they climbed in and licked off of each other—these idiots wouldn’t last a day in the Yard. The mother sat behind her cage door and whimpered until her brood had quit feeding, and then the man let her out to join her pups.

  The hairy little dogs came over to our cage door to sniff us, finally going nose-to-nose with us after living next door for these past few weeks. I licked at the goop on their faces while one of my brothers stood on my head.

  The man left the puppies running free while he departed out a gate in the wooden fence that was exactly like the one Carlos and Bobby always accessed to enter the Yard. I watched jealously as the puppies ranged up and down the tiny patch of grass, sniffing hello to the other caged dogs and playing with each other. I was tired of being inside the pen and wanted to get out and explore. Whatever was my purpose in my new life, this didn’t feel like it.

  After a few hours, the man returned, carrying another dog who looked exactly like the mother of the hairy puppies who were running free, except that he was a male. The man shoved the mother back into her pen and dropped the male in with her before shutting the gate, locking them in together. The male seemed pretty glad to see the mother, but she snarled at him when he jumped on her from behind.

  The man left the fence gate open behind him, and I was surprised at the feeling of longing that swept through me as I peered at the tiny sliver of outside world visible on the other side of the fence. If I were ever running free in the grass, I knew I would head right out that open gate, but naturally the puppies who currently had that option didn’t do anything about it; they were too busy wrestling.

  The mother raised her paws up on the cage door and cried softly as the man methodically rounded up her puppies and carried them out the gate. Soon they were all gone. The mother dog paced back and forth in her cage, panting, while the male in the cage with her lay there and watched. I could feel her distress, and it unsettled me. Night fell, and the mother dog let the male lie with her—they seemed to know each other, somehow.

  The male was only in there for a few days before he, too, was taken away.

  And then it was our turn to be let out! We tumbled out joyously, lapping up the food that was set out for us by the man. I ate my fill and watched my brothers and sisters go crazy, as if they’d never seen anything so exciting before as a bunch of dog food bowls.

  Everything was wonderfully moist and rich, not at all like the dry and dusty dirt in the yard. The breeze was cool and carried with it the tantalizing scent of open water.

  I was sniffing the succulent grass when the man returned to release our mother. My siblings bounded over to her, but I didn’t because I’d found a dead worm. Then the man left, and that’s when I started thinking about the gate.

  There was something wrong with this man. He didn’t call me Toby. He didn’t even talk to us. I thought of my first mother, the very last time I saw her, escaping the Yard because she couldn’t live with humans, not even with someone as loving as Senora. But the man didn’t love us at all.

  My gaze focused on the doorknob in the gate.

  There was a wooden table next to the door. By climbing up on a stool I was able to get on the table, and from there I was just able to stretch out and put my mouth on the metal knob, which instead of being round was a strip of metal, a handle.

  My tiny teeth weren’t very useful in getting a purchase on the thing, but I did my best to manipulate it the way Mother had the night she fled from the Yard. Soon I lost my balance and toppled to the ground, the gate still locked. I sat and barked at it in frustration, my voice a tiny yip. My brothers and sisters raced over to jump on me in their usual fashion, but I turned from them in irritation. I was in no mood to play!

  I tried it again. This time I put my front paws on the knob to keep from tumbling to the ground, and as I did so it fell away beneath me, so that my whole body hit the lever on my way down. I landed on the sidewalk with a grunt.

  To my astonishment, the gate edged ajar. I shoved my nose into the crack and pushed, and it swung wider. I was free!

  I eagerly scampered out into the open, my little legs tripping over themselves. A dirt path lay right in front of me, two tracks dug into sandy soil. I instinctively knew that was the way to go.

  After I’d run a few feet I stopped, sensing something. I turned and looked back at my new mother, who was sitting just inside the open gate, watching me. I remembered Mother back in the Yard, glancing once at me before heading back out into the world. My new mother wouldn’t be joining me, I realized. She was staying with the family. I was on my own.

  Yet not for a moment did I hesitate. I knew from past experience that there were better yards than this, with loving people who would stroke my fur with their hands. And I knew that the time for suckling at my new mother’s teat was at an end. It was just how it was supposed to work—a dog eventually separated from his mother.

  But mostly I knew an opportunity was in front of me that was irresistible, a whole new world to be explored with long, if somewhat clumsy, legs.

  The dirt track eventually led to a road, which I decided to follow, if for no other reason than the fact that it led straight into the wind, which was bringing me wonderful new scents. Unlike the Yard, which had always been parched, I smelled damp, rotting leaves, and trees, and pools of water. I skipped forward, the sun in my face, happy to be free, off on an adventure.

  I heard the truck coming long before I saw it but was so busy trying to catch an amazing winged bug I didn’t even look up until the door slammed. A man with wrinkled, tanned skin and muddy clothes knelt down, his hands out in front of him.

  “Hey there, little fella!” he called.

  I regarded him uncertainly.

  “You lost, fella? You lost?”

  Wagging, I decided he must be okay. I trotted over to him and he picked me up, holding me high over his head, which I didn’t appreciate very much.

  “You’re a pretty little fella. You look like a purebred retriever; where did you come from, fella?”

  The way he was speaking to me reminded me of the
first time Senora called me Toby. I instantly understood what was happening—just as the men had pulled my first family from the culvert, this man had taken me from the grass. And now my life would be what he decided it would be.

  Yes, I decided. My name could be Fella. I was thrilled when he sat me down inside the front of the truck, right beside him. The front seat!

  The man smelled like smoke and had an eye-watering tang to him that reminded me of when Carlos and Bobby would sit out in the Yard at a small table and talk and hand a bottle to each other. He laughed when I tried to climb up to lick his face, and continued to chuckle as I squirmed around in the narrow places of the truck, taking in rich, strange odors.

  We bumped along for a while, and then the man stopped the truck. “We’re in the shade here,” he told me.

  I looked around blankly. A building with several doors was directly in front of us, and from one of them came strong chemical smells exactly like those coating the man.

  “I’m just going to stop for one drink,” the man promised, rolling up the windows. I didn’t realize he was leaving until he’d slipped out and shut the door behind him, and I watched in disillusionment as he entered the building. What about me?

  I found a cloth strap and chewed on it for a little while, until I got bored and put my head down to sleep.

  When I awoke, it was hot. The sun now came full force into the truck, the cab airless and humid. Panting, I started whimpering, putting my paws up so I could see where the man had gone. There was no sign of him! I dropped my feet, which were literally burning from the windowsill.

  I had never felt such heat. An hour or so went by as I paced back and forth across the scorching front seat, panting harder than I ever had in my life. I began to quiver, and my vision was swimming. I thought of the faucet in the yard; I thought of my mother’s milk; I thought of the spray from the hose Bobby used to break up dogfights.

  Blearily I noticed a face staring in the window at me. It wasn’t the man; it was a woman with long black hair. She looked angry, and I backed away from her, afraid.

  When her face vanished, I lay back down, nearly delirious. I didn’t have the energy to pace anymore. I had an odd heaviness in my limbs, and my paws were beginning to twitch of their own accord.

  And then there was a hard crash, rocking the truck! A rock tumbled past me, bouncing off the seat and falling to the floor. Clear pebbles showered down on me, and a cool kiss of air swept in over my face. I lifted my nose to it.

  I was limp and helpless when I felt hands slide around my body and raise me into the air, too exhausted to do anything but hang slackly in her hands.

  “You poor puppy. You poor, poor puppy,” she whispered.

  My name is Fella, I thought to myself.

  { SIX }

  Nothing in my life has ever felt as good as the cool, clear flow of liquid that pulled me out of my dreamless sleep. The woman stood over me with a water bottle and was carefully showering me with the sweet spray. I shuddered with pleasure as the trickle painted my back, and raised my mouth to lap and bite at the stream the way I’d often attacked the drizzle that fell from the faucet above the trough in the Yard.

  A man stood nearby, and both he and the woman were watching me with concerned expressions.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” the woman asked.

  “Looks like the water is doing the job,” he replied.

  From both of them came the sort of open adoration I often felt pouring out of Senora when she stood at the fence to watch us play. I rolled on my back so the water would wash over my hot tummy, and the woman laughed.

  “Such a cute puppy!” the woman exclaimed. “Do you know what kind it is?”

  “Looks like a golden retriever,” the man observed.

  “Oh, puppy,” the woman murmured.

  Yes, I could be Puppy, I could be Fella, I could be whatever they wanted, and when the woman swept me up in her arms, heedless of the wet splat I made against her blouse, I kissed her until she closed her eyes and giggled.

  “You’re coming home with me, little guy. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

  Well, it looked like I was a front-seat dog now! She held me in her lap while she drove, and I gazed up at her in gratitude. Curious about my new surroundings, I finally crawled off and explored the inside of the car, astounded at the rich, cold air coming from two vents in front of me. Against my wet fur the air was so chilly I actually began to tremble, and wound up climbing onto the flat floor on the other side of the car, where a soft warmth, just like Mother, quickly lured me back into another nap.

  I woke up when the car stopped, sleepily regarding the woman as she reached down and picked me up.

  “Oh, you are so cute,” she whispered. As she held me against her chest and stepped out of the car I could feel her heart beating strongly and I sensed something like alarm coming off of her. I yawned off the last vestiges of my nap and, after a quick squat in some grass, was ready to face whatever challenge had her so worked up.

  “Ethan!” she called. “Come here; I want you to meet someone.”

  I looked up at her curiously. We were in front of a big white house, and I wondered if there were kennels in the back, or maybe a big yard. I couldn’t hear any barking, though, so maybe I was the first dog here.

  Then the front door of the house banged open and a human being like I’d never seen before ran out on the porch, jumped down the cement steps, and stopped dead in the grass.

  We stared at each other. It was, I realized, a human child, a male. His mouth broke into a huge grin and he spread his arms. “A puppy!” he sang, and we ran to each other, instantly in love. I could not stop licking him and he could not stop giggling, and we rolled together in the grass.

  I guess I had never bothered to consider that there might be such a thing as a boy, but now that I had found one, I thought it was just about the most wonderful concept in the world. He smelled of mud and sugar and an animal I’d never scented before, and a faint meaty odor clung to his fingers, so I licked them.

  By the end of the day I would know him not just by smell but also by sight, sound, and gesture. His hair was dark, like Bobby’s, but very short, and his eyes were much lighter. He had a way of turning his head to look at me as if he were trying to hear me more than see me, and his voice bubbled with joy whenever he talked to me.

  For the most part, though, I was drinking in his scent, licking his face, chewing his fingers.

  “Can we keep him, Mom? Can we keep him?” the boy gasped between giggles.

  The woman squatted down to pet my head. “Well, you know your dad, Ethan. He’s going to want to hear that you’ll take care of him—”

  “I will! I will!”

  “And that you’ll walk him and feed him—”

  “Every day! I’ll walk him and feed him and brush him and give him water—”

  “And you’ll have to clean up when he poops in the yard.”

  The boy didn’t answer that one.

  “I bought some puppy food at the store; let’s give him some dinner. You won’t believe what happened, I had to run to the gas station and get a jug of water; the poor thing was nearly dead with heat exhaustion,” the woman said.

  “Want some dinner? Huh? Dinner?” the boy asked.

  Sounded pretty good to me.

  To my amazement, the boy picked me up and carried me right into the house! I had never in my life imagined such a thing was even possible.

  I was going to like it here just fine.

  Some of the floors were soft and embedded with the same animal odor I’d picked up on the boy, while other floors were slick and hard, causing my feet to skitter out from underneath me as I pursued the boy through the house. When the boy picked me up, the flow of love between us was so strong it gave me a hollow feeling in my tummy, almost like hunger.

  I was lying on the floor with the boy, wrestling over a cloth, when I felt a vibration rumble through the house and heard the sound I’d learned meant the c
losing of a car door.

  “Your father’s home,” the woman, whose name was Mom, told the boy, who was called Ethan.

  Ethan stood up and faced the door, and Mom came to stand beside him. I grabbed the cloth and gave it a victorious shake but found it much less interesting without a boy attached to the other end of it.

  A door opened. “Hi, Dad!” the boy yelled.

  A man stepped into the room, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Okay, what is it?” he asked.

  “Dad, Mom found this puppy . . . ,” Ethan said.

  “He was locked in a car, nearly dead from heatstroke,” Mom said.

  “Can we keep him, Dad? He’s the best puppy in the world!”

  I decided to take advantage of the lapse in security and dove onto the boy’s shoes, biting his laces.

  “Oh. I don’t know; this is not a good time,” the father said. “Do you know how much work a puppy is? You’re only eight years old, Ethan. It’s too much responsibility.”

  I yanked on one of the boy’s laces and it gave, sliding away from his shoes. I tried to run off with it, but it remained attached to his feet so that it yanked me back, tumbling me head over heels. Snarling, I dove back onto the laces, grabbing them and giving them a furious shake.

  “I’ll take care of him, and I’ll walk him and feed him and wash him,” the boy was saying. “He’s the best puppy in the world, Dad. He’s already house broken!”

  Having wrestled the shoes into submission, I decided this would be a good time to take a little break, and squatted, depositing a stool along with my urine.

  Wow, did that get a reaction!

  Soon the boy and I were sitting on the soft floor. Mom would say, “George?” and then Ethan would say, “George? Here, George! Hi, George!” and then Dad would say, “Skippy?” and Ethan would say, “Skippy? Are you Skippy? Here, Skippy!”