A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray

by Ann M. Martin

  The second the car was out of sight, Moon and I made a dash for the nearest tin. From out of other hiding places rushed three more dogs. In moments all the food was gone and the other dogs had disappeared.

  The sun came out, and Moon and I basked in it, our stomachs full.

  We spent that night — I know now that it was Christmas night — in the spot between the Dumpsters. The next morning we were awakened earlier than usual by the sound of voices. The tall woman was back. This time she was with another woman, a woman with the longest hair I had ever seen.

  “Look,” I heard the tall woman say. “All the tins are empty.”

  “Licked clean.”

  “Let’s get them filled up. We have to hurry. I want to do this before the store opens. I don’t think the dogs will come out for food if anyone is around.”

  “And also,” said the woman with the long hair, “we’d better do this without being seen.”

  The women worked quickly. They walked around the parking lot, filling each tin with more hamburger. When they were finished, they climbed into a car. But I noticed that this time they drove to the edge of the lot and stopped. Moon and I waited for a moment. The car didn’t move. But two big dogs rushed for the pie tins, anyway, so Moon and I did the same. Before we were done, two more dogs arrived.

  In no time the plates were empty. The women left then.

  They were back the next day.

  “I brought extra plates,” said the tall woman. “And more hamburger. I didn’t realize how quickly the dogs would eat everything.”

  “Maybe we should feed them twice a day,” said the woman with the long hair.

  “That’s a good idea. We’ll have to switch to dog food, though. We can’t afford to keep buying meat.”

  “They can’t live on hamburger alone anyway. They need more vitamins.”

  That was how Moon and I got lucky, at least for a while. The women and their friends visited the parking lot of the supermarket every morning before the store opened and every evening after it closed, leaving out plates of wet and dry food for the dogs who had made their homes in Claremont.

  Moon and I continued to steer clear of the other dogs. They were nearby, of course. We passed them everywhere, and we all vied for the same food in town — whatever the garbage cans or pie tins had to offer. But I never forgot about the encounter with the dogs at the rest stop and trusted no dog except Moon.

  The winter, that winter in Claremont, might have been cold and snowy, but for once, Moon and I didn’t have any trouble finding food. Every morning we break fasted at the parking lot. Then we would wander discreetly through Claremont, watching Robert and Lisa and Sarah and Amanda, watching as the Christmas decorations were taken down and in their place sprouted hearts and cupids, and later eggs and rabbits and chicks and baskets and candy. In the evening we would eat dinner at the parking lot again, then spend the night between the Dumpsters.

  We noticed that the other stray dogs now slept in the parking lot as well. And that there were more of them. By the time the air was growing warmer and crocuses and daffodils were starting to bloom in Claremont we noticed something else: Occasionally a large, dark-colored van was parked in the lot early in the morning. If it was there, the women wouldn’t feed us. They would drive by the lot and not return until the van had left. Then they would feed us if the supermarket hadn’t opened, but sometimes we missed our breakfast because of the van.

  One morning, a bright warm morning with sniffs of spring in the air, the very tall woman and the woman with the long hair arrived at the parking lot, looked around for the van, then hurriedly filled the pie tins, placed them around the lot, and drove away. Moon and I and several other dogs had rushed to the tins and were beginning our breakfasts when the van eased into the lot and glided to a silent stop. I kept my eye on it as Moon and I bolted our food.

  The front doors of the van opened quietly. Two men slipped out, each carrying a long pole with a loop of rope attached to one end. They pointed to the dogs eating from the pie tin nearest the van and ran toward them, poles extended. The dogs, a little one Moon’s size and a bigger one, didn’t see the men. In a flash, each man threw his loop around the neck of a dog and pulled tight.

  Caught! The dogs were caught in the ropes. They yipped and barked and fought, jerking back and forth, pulling and snapping. But the men held tight to the poles and tugged the dogs toward the van. They threw open a door at the back and hauled the dogs into cages. Then they slammed the door shut. They stood in the lot, poles in hand.

  “Do you see any of the others?” asked one of the men.

  “Nope. They disappeared fast.”

  “They’ll be back tomorrow. Or maybe tonight. Those people were feeding them at night, too, I think.”

  “All right. Well, let’s get these two to the shelter. We’ll come back here later.”

  That night after the supermarket had closed, Moon and I waited cautiously between our Dumpsters. The women arrived, put out our food, and left. The moment they drove away, the van pulled into the parking lot. Moon and I ran into the woods and circled around to Nassau Street. We found supper behind The Wagging Tail and slept under the awning of the back entrance to Robert’s jewelry store.

  The next morning we made our way to the supermarket again. The van returned.

  It was time to leave Claremont.

  On a windy day with clouds gathering on the horizon, Moon and I set off through the woods and left the town behind us.

  Spring that year was long and slow and dry and warm. Moon and I had little trouble finding food. We were smarter now. Instead of avoiding towns we sought them out. But we were careful to linger mostly at the edges and not to stay too long. Whenever we arrived at a new town we explored it carefully. We studied its rhythms and looked for the pet stores and watched to see if anyone might be feeding stray dogs. We ate mostly in darkness, and we paid attention if we saw a van that was driving slowly. We stayed in each town for only a few days, then we lived in the woods for a time, keeping our hunting skills sharp, and then we moved on to another town.

  In one town we slept behind a woodpile at a house where two women and two little girls lived. The women caught sight of us and set out dishes of food and water, and seemed very kind. Outside another town we discovered a small farm with a barn that housed a donkey named Tico and a cow named Bluebell. We slept in an empty stall for three nights, drinking water from a large tub and dining on birdseed, grain, and little red squirrels. Then we moved on. As the moon changed from the tiny curl of a cat’s claw to a half-closed eye, and the days grew longer and even warmer, my friend and I slept in towns, on farms, and once in an open field where the nighttime sounds reminded me of an evening at the Merrions’ when I had watched Mine trot through their yard.

  One day, one of the longest of the year, when the sun rose early and set late, Moon and I left a town called Republic. We hadn’t liked the town. As soon as we’d arrived we’d seen a man kick a dog that was tied up in a yard on a very short chain. Later, after we had discovered a feed store in town, we were waiting in some bushes for the store to close, when a group of boys and girls who were not little but were not grownups yet either, discovered our hiding place and threw rocks at us. One rock, with a sharp point on it, hit me behind my ear, and a large one landed square on Moon’s back. We were on our way out of Republic, my head bleeding slightly, when we came upon a grocery store where a man was putting some cheese and stale bread and the ends of sausages in a bowl by the back door. He saw us as we were running away, paused, then added more sausage to the bowl before he went inside. So Moon and I waited until dark and ate our supper at the store. Then we spent the night at an abandoned gas station. But the next morning we left Republic behind us.

  We had wakened early, checked the bowl at the grocery store, found it still licked clean from the night before, and set out. Very quickly we reached some woods. We trotted through them, our stomachs empty but not grumbling too loudly. We had just passed through a small cle
aring when we came to a sleepy mountain road and spotted two chipmunks perched on a fallen log on the other side.

  Moon sprinted across the road and I was after her in a flash. We were so intent on surprising the chipmunks that neither of us heard the truck that came thundering around a bend in the road, not until it was almost upon us. I looked up in time to see the terrible blue thing, like an enormous dog with big yellow eyes and a row of gleaming teeth, bearing down on us. I heard a person scream and the truck make a loud squeal, and I jumped backward. Moon had already reached the middle of the road, though, and the truck hit her at high speed and sent her flying. It only clipped me, but it clipped the shoulder that had been injured when George had thrown Bone and me away, and I couldn’t move, so I lay at the edge of the woods.

  I yelped for Moon, but I didn’t hear any sound from her.

  The truck flew past, still squealing, and its tires locked in place as it skidded down the road, leaving long marks that swerved from side to side and finally ended as the truck came to an abrupt stop.

  I heard more screams and then the screams became voices, but I couldn’t see who was speaking.

  “A dog! You hit a dog!”

  “No, two dogs. I think there were two.”

  “They came out of nowhere.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “They just ran right in front of me.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Is the truck okay?”

  “I think so.”

  A little silence followed, and I lifted my head to see where Moon was. She had landed by the log — the chipmunks had disappeared, of course — and she lay still. I dropped my head back to the ground.

  I heard footsteps running in the road then, and soon I could see several pairs of legs. Two feet with sneakers on them stopped next to me. A girl who was about the age of Matthias Merrion’s brother leaned over and peered into my face. She put out a hand and rested it on my back for a moment. “This one’s alive. I think it’s going to be okay,” she said.

  I watched some other sneakers cross the road. A woman stooped down beside Moon. She ran her hand down Moon’s back and rolled her over gently. “This one’s dead, I’m afraid, but let’s take both of them to the vet.”

  “I’ll bring the truck back here,” said a man, and a third pair of sneakers walked down the road toward the truck.

  The girl sat next to me at the edge of the woods and put her arms around me.

  “Be careful!” the woman called to her. “I don’t want you touching a strange dog.”

  “Well, it’s not bleeding or anything,” the girl replied.

  I tried to figure out how many people had been in the truck. There was this girl, and the woman who was sitting with Moon, and the man who had gone for the truck, and now I realized there was a boy, too. He crossed the road and knelt beside Moon and the woman.

  I wanted to look at Moon again but my head had grown very heavy, and as the girl stroked my back I fell asleep. I woke up when I felt a pair of strong arms lift me from the ground. The arms belonged to the man and he set me carefully in the back of the truck. A moment later he laid Moon next to me and I could tell that she was indeed dead. I had seen many dead things in my life, and now Moon was one of them.

  I slept in the back of the truck until I felt it jerk to a stop. Then I heard doors slamming, and then, just like before, all the people began to talk at once.

  “Here we are.”

  “I hope they’re open. Is the vet open on Saturday, do you think?”

  “I’ll run inside.”

  “What do they do with dead dogs?”

  “Hush. Don’t worry about that now.”

  “Hello! We have an emergency here!” That was the man. He was calling to someone.

  A few moments later the doors at the back of the truck were opened and first I and then Moon were slid out and rushed inside a building. A woman in blue clothing opened a door and hurried all of us — the man, the woman, the girl, the boy, Moon, and me — into a small room where Moon and I were laid side by side on a table. The woman in blue was opening drawers and laying things on a counter, when another woman, this one wearing a white smock, bustled into the room.

  She held out her hand to the man and the woman and said, “Hi, I’m Dr. Roth. I understand we have an emergency.” Before the man or the woman could answer her, Dr. Roth began to examine Moon.

  “We don’t know whose dogs they are,” said the man after a few moments, “or whether they even have owners.” He shook his head. “We think that one is dead,” he added, indicating Moon.

  Dr. Roth nodded. “I’m afraid so. If it makes you feel better, she probably died instantly. She didn’t have time to feel any pain.”

  I heard the woman let out her breath. “Well, I guess that’s good. We do feel terrible, though. Even if it was an accident. I mean, we never saw the dogs coming. We were driving down Bostock, and they just came flying out of the woods.”

  “They’re not wearing collars,” the man added.

  Dr. Roth laid her hand on my head. “I imagine that this dog,” she said, looking into my eyes, “has led a pretty hard life.” She stroked my ears. “We’ll try to find out if she has owners but, I’ll bet she’s been on her own for quite a while.” She ran her hands up and down my back, then my belly. “Lots of scars. She’s been in a few scrapes. And she hasn’t been spayed, but that’s no surprise.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked the boy then. “Why isn’t she moving?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” replied Dr. Roth. “She doesn’t look too bad. We’ll take some X-rays and find out what’s going on.” She stroked my ears again.

  Dr. Roth and the woman in blue laid a blanket over Moon, then slid me onto a moving table. They wheeled me out of the room. I never saw Moon again.

  Later, after Dr. Roth and the people at the vet had finished looking at me and looking at the pictures they took of me, I was laid in a large cage on a bed of soft blankets. At one side of the cage were a dish of water and a dish of food. Around me were other cages with other dogs in them. One dog was whining and one was barking, but the others were mostly quiet.

  I crawled to the dish of food, ate some of it, then curled up on my side on the blankets. I had a pain in my shoulder, the same shoulder that had been injured when George threw me out of the car, and that is the part of my body that Dr. Roth had taken the most pictures of.

  I had almost fallen asleep again when the man and woman and girl and boy came into the room, followed by Dr. Roth.

  “Here’s our girl,” said the vet, leading them to my cage. “She’s resting now.”

  The girl and the boy peered in at me.

  “What did you find out?” the man asked Dr. Roth.

  “A few things. I think she’s about two years old. She weighs forty pounds, which is a good weight for her size, and she’s fairly healthy, although as I thought, she’s led a tough life. She’s been in a few fights, and I can see an old fracture on her right shoulder, which healed up pretty well on its own. Also, she has fleas and quite a bit of tartar on her teeth. Her main problem, though, is a broken leg. It’s badly broken, too.”

  “Can you fix it?” asked the girl.

  “Yes. But she’ll need surgery.”

  “Surgery,” repeated the man. “That sounds … expensive.”

  Dr. Roth hesitated. “Well,” she said, “there’s nothing else seriously wrong with her. If her leg heals, she’ll be just fine.” She reached into my cage and patted me. Dr. Roth had very gentle hands, even when she was touching the most painful parts of my body. “She’s such a nice dog,” she went on. “She has an awfully sweet temper, especially for a stray. I think she’ll make a wonderful pet if we can find someone who wants to adopt her. Speaking of which, as long as she’s here, I’d like to spay her and give her all her shots.”

  “I hate to ask this,” said the man, “but who’s going to pay for this
? After all, she’s not our dog.”

  “I can donate my time,” Dr. Roth replied, “and I know of an organization that may be able to cover the rest of the cost. I’ll call them this afternoon.”

  “All right,” said the man. He was edging toward the door. “Come on,” he said, and the woman and the girl and boy joined him. He was about to leave when he turned back to Dr. Roth and said, “Thank you so much. We really appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “It’s my pleasure.” Dr. Roth gave me a final pat, then quietly closed the door to my cage.

  Sometime later — a day or maybe two — Dr. Roth repaired my leg and spayed me so that I wouldn’t be able to have a litter of puppies. I don’t remember when any of this happened, only that eventually I woke up in my cage feeling very groggy and with a huge pain in my leg. I whimpered and the woman in the blue outfit, whose name was Rachael, called for Dr. Roth, who gave me a shot and I fell asleep again. The next time I woke up I felt a little better, and soon Dr. Roth was coaxing me out of my cage and encouraging me to walk across the room. This wasn’t easy. I was wearing a huge plastic collar around my neck and there was some sort of heavy contraption on my leg, but I couldn’t see what it was.

  “Good girl! Good girl!” Rachael and Dr. Roth said as I hobbled and slid across the linoleum floor. They patted me and gave me treats and told me I was brave and beautiful.

  One day the woman and the girl and the boy came to visit. By now I knew their names: Mrs. Becker and Margery and Donald.

  “The kids wanted to see how the dog was doing,” said Mrs. Becker. “I was hoping it would be all right to visit her.”

  Margery and Donald peered at me through the bars of my cage.

  “She looks much better!” exclaimed Margery.

  “Why is she wearing that thing around her neck?” asked Donald.

  “To keep her from biting at her stitches,” replied Rachael. “We want her leg to heal as fast as possible. Her tummy, too. She’s doing just fine. Here — I’ll let her out of the cage and you can see her walk.”