A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray

by Ann M. Martin

  Rachael opened my cage and I stepped out onto the floor and scrabbled across it. Then I walked back to Rachael and she wrapped her arms around me and I rested my head on her shoulder. “See how sweet she is?” said Rachael.

  “Have you found a home for her?” asked Mrs. Becker.

  Rachael shook her head. “Not yet. And no one has contacted us about a missing dog.”

  “Mommy, could we have her?” cried Donald. “Please?”

  “Puh-lease?” asked Margery.

  “Oh, kids. I don’t know. We’ll have to discuss this with your father.”

  The Beckers left and for the next few days I continued to practice walking. Soon my belly was feeling better, the contraption was removed from my leg, and then the collar was removed, too, and a different kind of collar — narrow and colorful — was fastened around my neck. Rachael began attaching a leash to the collar and taking me for walks outside. I didn’t like the collar or the leash at first, but Rachael was patient and talked softly to me about the importance of good doggie manners, and after a while I was barely aware of the collar.

  One day Dr. Roth entered the room, opened my cage, rubbed my ears, and said to me, “Good news, girl! You have a home. The Beckers want to take you.”

  A few days later, when I was walking almost as well as before the accident and I didn’t need any more medicine, Mrs. Becker and Margery and Donald returned. Donald was carrying a blue leash and jumping up and down, shouting, “She’s our dog now! She’s our dog now!” And Margery was grinning and holding a stuffed animal in one hand and a treat in the other.

  Rachael clipped the blue leash to my collar and said to me, “We’re certainly going to miss you, girl. You were one of our best patients ever. I’m glad you have a home, though.” She walked out to the Beckers’ car and helped me into the backseat. Then she patted my head and said, “Good-bye,” and I could tell she was crying a little.

  In the car, Margery sat in the front seat with her mother, and Donald sat in the back with me. As we drove along, Donald said, “You’re so lucky. You’re going to be our new dog. Your name will be Daisy. We already decided. Remember the dog we had last summer, Mommy? Sasha was a good dog.”

  “Sasha wasn’t our last-summer dog,” said Margery. “Last summer’s was Shadow. Sasha was two summers ago.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Donald. “You’re right.”

  We drove on to my new home.

  My new home was in a large room off of the Beckers’ house, which I learned was called a garage. I shared the garage with the truck that had hit Moon and me, a car, and lots of things that reminded me of my old home at the Merrions’ — gardening tools, buckets, ropes, some mice, and three families of barn swallows. The barn swallow parents had built their muddy nests in the eaves and each pair was raising four babies. They were all very noisy.

  I didn’t know much about being someone’s pet and living in a home, but I had peeked in enough windows in Claremont and the other towns Moon and I had passed through to know that a lot of pet dogs live inside the main house with the humans. However, I had also seen plenty of dogs living outside in yards, and anyway, the garage wasn’t bad.

  On the day the Beckers brought me home from the vet, Margery and Donald helped me out of the car, and Mrs. Becker said, “Now, Daisy, this is going to be your bed.” She pointed to a puffy round cushion in a corner of the garage near an open window. The cushion was dusty and covered with a layer of black and white hairs. “And here’s your water and food.” She pointed to two dishes near the bed. One was filled with water. The other was filled with something I investigated immediately and found to be pieces of chicken, bits of bacon, and some scrambled eggs and toast. “See?” Mrs. Becker went on. “You’re a lucky stray. None of that dog food for you. You get our table scraps.”

  I cleaned the bowl in a flash, even though I had eaten breakfast at the vet.

  Margery took me by the collar and led me to my bed. “This is all yours,” she said. “And here — this is your very own sheep.” She set the stuffed animal next to the bed. “Why don’t you lie down now and take a nap?”

  “No! Let her come inside. I want to show her my room,” said Donald.

  “Absolutely not,” replied Mrs. Becker. “You know the rule, Donald. No pets inside. Daisy is an outdoor dog. Why don’t you play with her in the yard? Put the leash on her so she won’t run away.”

  That day Donald and Margery attached the leash to my collar just like Rachael used to do, and they walked me around their yard, which was big, but not as big as the Merrions’. I could see other houses not far away. The yard was pleasant, with trees and gardens and insects, and small rodents hiding in the gardens. We walked until I began to limp on my newly healed leg.

  “Oh, she’s tired,” said Margery. “Let’s put Daisy to bed.”

  Donald and Margery returned me to the garage, carefully pulling the big door down behind us. Then Margery led me onto my bed before unclipping the leash. “There,” she said. “You rest now.”

  I was left alone in the garage, but I didn’t mind. I was tired, so I did rest on the bed, even though it smelled of other dogs. At the end of the day Mrs. Becker filled my food dish with more scraps, which I ate quickly. Later, when darkness had fallen, Margery and Donald sang me a song that they said was supposed to help me go to sleep.

  For a while, each day at the Beckers’ house passed in much the same way as the one before. In the morning, Mrs. Becker would fill my food dish with scraps. Later, Margery and Donald would play in the yard with me. They stopped clipping the leash to my collar after Mrs. Becker said she guessed I knew where my home was now. Margery and Donald threw toys for me to chase after and we tumbled in the grass. When they grew tired of playing, they would lead me back to the garage. At the end of the day, Mrs. Becker would fill my food dish again, and more often than not, Margery and Donald would come to the garage to say good night to me when it was their bedtime.

  Then one day Mrs. Becker brought me my breakfast as usual, but Margery and Donald didn’t stop to play. They ran through the garage calling, “’Bye, Daisy. We’re going swimming today. See you later!” I didn’t see them until the next day, although Mrs. Becker did bring me my supper. After that, sometimes Margery and Donald came to the garage to play with me, and sometimes they didn’t. But I didn’t mind much when they forgot. The Beckers had stopped closing me into the garage during the day, and I had discovered that I was free to roam around outside. The scents and sounds of the summertime called to me, and I spent my days in the grass and gardens with the bees and bugs and rodents. Then when the afternoon shadows grew long I would return to the garage for supper. This was almost like living at the Merrions’ — when Bone and I would roam the woods all day and return to our shed for the night.

  Sometimes on the days when Donald and Margery forgot to play with me I would creep up the steps at the front of their house and stand at the door, trying to see through the screen. “Hi, Daisy!” the Beckers would call out if they noticed me. But they didn’t open the door.

  Until now I had thought pet dogs were never lonely. I was wrong.

  Late one afternoon I was sitting in the woods behind the Beckers’ house when I noticed something. I was chilly. The days were still long, but they were cooler than before. I noticed this most in the mornings when the garage felt damp, and in the evenings when I would turn around and around on my bed before curling into a tight ball in order to stay as warm as possible. When I had first arrived at the Beckers’ the nights in the garage had sometimes been hot and stuffy, even with the window open, but not anymore.

  I sat on my haunches in the woods, listening for the sounds of animals, of predators, listening to the wind in the leaves and the calling of the birds. I looked above me and saw that one branch of a maple had turned a brilliant color that I think may have been red, although red is another color I can’t distinguish. And an ash tree was already starting to lose its yellow leaves. Autumn was coming. It wasn’t here yet, but it was on its
way.

  I stood up, yawned, and stretched with my rump in the air. Then I sauntered back to the garage for supper. I waited and waited, but no one brought food. Mr. Becker, who had been out for the day, returned in his car, parked it in the garage, patted me on the head without looking at me, and said, “Hi there, Sasha,” as he went into the house.

  I sat on my bed and waited. No food.

  I sat at the garage door and waited. No food.

  I walked around to the front of the house and looked through the screen door. No one noticed me.

  I walked back to the garage and found that the door had been pulled down. Maybe later someone would see that I wasn’t on my bed. But I don’t think that happened because no one called for me.

  That night I sat by the garage door until the lights in the house went out. Then I lay down under a rhododendron bush and slept in the garden.

  The next morning Mrs. Becker raised the garage door and found me sitting on the driveway.

  “Oh, my goodness! Daisy, I forgot all about you. I’ll bring you your breakfast in just a minute.”

  And she did. But she forgot to feed me again that evening, so I caught a squirrel for dinner and spent the night on a lawn chair.

  After that, the Beckers forgot my food more often than they remembered it, and I was glad of my hunting skills. When my dish was left empty, I scoured the woods. Water was no problem because I could drink from the neighbor’s birdbath and also from a swimming pool I had discovered, but I had to be careful because the people who owned the pool would shoo me away if they saw me.

  One morning I awoke on the lawn chair, had a drink from the birdbath, then trotted to the Beckers’ garage to check my dishes. The garage was open. The dishes were empty, but I barely noticed. There was a lot of activity, and I paused to watch. The car and the truck stood in the driveway, all their doors open. Piled on the floor of the garage were boxes and cases and heavy-looking bags. Mr. and Mrs. Becker were trying to fit all of the boxes and cases and bags into the car and the truck. They were huffing and groaning and not talking much.

  But Margery and Donald were talking a lot, and they didn’t sound happy.

  “I can’t believe summer is over,” said Margery. She kicked at a box.

  “I can’t believe we have to go back to school,” said Donald.

  “No more swimming, no more rides in the boat.”

  “Back to the stinky old city.”

  “Kids, will you please give us a hand?” said Mrs. Becker. “Margery, are your suitcases in the garage?”

  “They’re here. Everything is packed.” Margery kicked at the box again.

  “Oh, look,” said Donald. “There’s Sasha. I mean, Daisy. Hey, she’s not wearing her collar. What happened to her collar?”

  “You took it off her last week, remember?” said Margery. “Where did you put it?”

  “Kids, please,” said Mrs. Becker. “A little help here.”

  Margery and Donald each lifted a carton. They carried the cartons to the truck.

  I trotted to the woods to hunt for my breakfast.

  When I returned to the Beckers’ later that morning, the car and the truck were gone and the garage door was closed. The door remained closed all day. I checked the other door, the one at the front with the screen, and found that it was closed, too. In the evening, I looked for the lawn chair and discovered that it was no longer on the Beckers’ terrace. The yard behind the house had been cleared of chairs and bicycles and toys. Even the big cooking machine and the pots with the flowers in them were gone.

  I slept under the rhododendron again.

  The next day I saw no sign of the Beckers. There was no sign of them the day after that or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that.

  I decided to move on.

  I was alone again. When I set out from the Beckers’ house that autumn, there was no Bone to follow and no Moon to walk with. There was no summer family, no Rachael, no Dr. Roth. But I knew I could take care of myself.

  I wandered through woods and fields and along highways and around the outskirts of towns. The moon grew fat, grew small, grew fat, grew small. The crickets’ voices died, and fallen leaves carpeted my path. The wind became blustery and the air frosty, but no snow fell, and I was able to find food.

  One day when weak sunlight was filtering through the bare branches of a small forest, I smelled something familiar, something that made my hackles rise. I growled softly and stalked to the edge of the woods where I saw a group of dogs, as lean as the ones at the resting place on the highway, and just as desperate.

  They were fighting one another over an old carcass, leathery now, with no meat left on it. But they fought as if it was a fresh kill. One dog held it between his front paws and gnawed at it. When another dog ran at him, he yipped and snapped, jerking the carcass away, but dropping it as he did so. A third dog swooped in and trapped the carcass between her jaws, but the first dog bit her on the neck and she let the carcass fall.

  I slipped back into the forest and crept away. It was time to find a place where I could stay for the winter.

  I spent two nights sleeping behind the Olive Free Library. On the morning after the first night a man saw me and set out dishes of water and kibble and tried to coax me inside, but I was wary. I ate the food the next night when the library was dark and the parking lot was empty. In the morning I set out again.

  I came to a little house in the woods where a man and a woman lived with their cats. I could see the cats looking out the windows of the house. They didn’t go outside, but the woman left dishes of water and scraps on the porch. “T. G. has been hanging around again,” I heard her tell the man. “I saw him twice yesterday.” I didn’t know who T. G. was, and I never found out. I hoped he didn’t mind sharing his food with me.

  I spent one night at the Bearsville Garage, the night of the first snow flurries of the winter. There I found good garbage and a dry doorway.

  I spent another night behind a big house on a hill with three sheds in the backyard. In front of one of the sheds lots of logs were stacked. I slept in a niche between the logs and the shed wall. I wasn’t warm, but I was dry.

  Early the next morning I made my way along the edge of the yard and into some woods. I had my eye on two fat gray squirrels that were chattering and scolding each other. The larger squirrel was chasing the smaller one around and around the trunk of a maple tree. They were paying no attention to me.

  I was standing motionless a little distance from the tree, one paw raised, ready to dash forward, pounce, and surprise the squirrels, when BAM! I heard a noise so loud it seemed to jolt my body. The squirrels fled up the tree, jumped to the branches of another tree, and disappeared.

  I started to run, but since I didn’t know where the noise had come from I wasn’t sure which direction to take.

  Then I heard voices, the voices of men.

  “Did you hit it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not. I don’t see anything.”

  “But it was right there.”

  Two men stepped out of the trees. They were wearing dark clothes, and each was carrying a long stick that looked like the polished branch of a tree.

  I remembered the man with the gun, the one who had killed Mine when I was a puppy, and I took off running.

  “There it goes!”

  “That isn’t a deer, it’s a dog. I think. Anyway, it isn’t a deer.”

  I ran fast, as fast as Moon and I had run to escape the dogs at the resting place. I had gone only a short distance when I came to a large doe lying bleeding on the floor of the woods. Her eyes were open — she wasn’t dead — and she turned her head slowly to look at me with glazed eyes. One leg was twitching. I slowed down, then sped up when I heard the men’s voices again. I had almost reached the edge of the woods when another blast thundered through the trees.

  BAM.

  I burst out of the woods.

  And I found myself looking down a hill at a small farm. Next to a pond
stood a white house with blue shutters. Not far away were two sturdy barns and a fenced-in pasture.

  I walked cautiously down the hill toward the pasture. Usually I tried to stay out of sight, but I was in a hurry to escape the men in the woods, and I didn’t see anyone on the farm. When I reached the pasture, I jumped easily over the stone wall that bordered it and made my way to the larger of the barns. I paused at the door to listen. From inside I heard little rustlings and cooings, the noises of small rodents and birds, but nothing else. I peeked around the corner. The light inside was dim and the dank air smelled of hay and manure and grain. Across from me were several stalls. Two were empty. A horse stood in the third. He stamped his foot and snorted when he saw me. Maybe he wasn’t used to dogs.

  I left the barn and investigated the pasture again. I came upon a pile of old vegetables and coffee grinds and eggshells. It wasn’t exactly like the Merrions’ garbage heap, but it was all right. I learned later that it was called a compost heap. I walked a bit farther, warily, my eyes on the barns, the house, the woods.

  Far off, on a small rise, stood two cows. I returned to the barn and stood in the door, studying the white house. I saw a truck parked nearby. I saw that the porch was decorated with pumpkins and wreaths of dried flowers like the ones in Claremont before Christmastime. But I didn’t see any people.

  I peered into the smaller barn. The inside looked very much like the Beckers’ garage. A car was parked there, and hanging on the walls were tools and ropes and baskets. At one end was a high wooden bench with more tools laid out on it. This was not a good place to make my home, but the larger barn might be.

  “Hal!” I heard a woman call then.

  I jumped. Then I turned around and zipped back to the other barn.

  “Hal, telephone!”