A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray

by Ann M. Martin

  “Coming!”

  Neither of the voices sounded close by, so I peeked outside. I saw a woman, a woman who was older than Mrs. Becker, standing at the front door of the house. A man who looked about the same age as the woman was making his way slowly along a walk to the door. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, and he was carrying a bucket.

  This was Hal, I learned, and the woman was named Jean, and they had lived on this small farm for many years. They were quiet, kind people who took good care of their animals — the horse, the cows, four cats, and some geese who had made their home by the pond.

  I made my home there, too, but I didn’t show myself to Hal and Jean, even though I stayed on their farm during all the days of the cold weather. I stayed while the pumpkins and flower wreaths were taken in and ribbons and evergreen wreaths were put up in their place. I stayed through the snows, one storm so bad that Hal and Jean couldn’t leave their farm for three days, but they fed their animals and I dined on grain and mice until I could reach the compost heap again. I stayed while the snow melted. I stayed until I could smell spring in the air, and then I left.

  I spent the warm weather wandering, as I had wandered after I left the Beckers’ house. When the cold weather arrived, I looked for another farm. And that became the pattern of my life. Farms in the winter, wandering the rest of the time.

  I had lived on four farms including the Andersons’, and another spring had arrived, when I came upon familiar odors, odors that sent me searching for Bone.

  Springtime, and I was on the move. I had learned that humans generally make preparations for moves or trips. The Beckers had made preparations for leaving their house, but back then I hadn’t recognized the signs. Now I knew what they were: boxes and packing and plans. But I never made preparations for moving on. When it was time to go, I left. It was as simple as that.

  And so I had left the most recent of the farms — a large one with horses and stables and people coming and going every day and lots of good hiding places for a dog. One morning I woke up, searched for my breakfast, and spent the day as usual. The next morning I woke up and trotted away.

  I was in an area called Lindenfield. I knew that from listening to people on the farm. As I loped along on that first day of traveling, I thought I smelled scents that were familiar. I couldn’t quite identify them, though. They didn’t say Chipmunk to me or Squirrel or Male Dog or Bread the way some scents did. Still … something about them made me quicken my pace and keep my nose to the ground, snuffing, as I hurried along.

  After a while I let the scents tell me where to go. And because I was following the scents, I found myself in areas that were busier than I liked. I walked along a road with cars and trucks whizzing by in both directions. I came to a gas station. (I ran off when I heard a boy call out, “Hey, look at that dog!”) I managed to cross a road, waiting first by the side until I didn’t think any cars were going to speed into me. On the other side of the road I found myself in a large parking lot where the familiar smells were stronger than ever.

  Snuffle, snuffle. I could barely lift my nose from the ground. But when I did, I saw an expanse of cars, and a line of buildings with people coming and going, and some lampposts, and then a lamppost on a bit of grass with a tree nearby.

  This could be only one place.

  It was the parking lot were Bone and I had been thrown away. I was sure of it. Odors don’t lie.

  I was excited. I sniffed all over the lot, not caring if anyone saw me. I smelled food and I ate the end of a hotdog bun and then some old bologna, but those weren’t the smells that interested me. I was smelling time, a time long ago when my brother and I were young. And I was smelling place, the last place in which I had seen my brother. I didn’t smell Bone — I hadn’t caught his scent — but that didn’t matter. This was the closest I had felt to him since we had been separated.

  I sniffed around to the other side of the buildings, to the place where I had found the garbage cans. I sniffed my way back to the tree, and then to the spot where I thought George had stopped the car and tossed us out. Still no scent of Bone, but the other familiar odors kept my nose going and my tail wagging. And they sent me searching for my brother.

  On that day, just as I had done on the day I had been separated from Bone, I hung around the parking lot. I wasn’t as small as I had been then, and I didn’t want to be noticed, but I was smarter about staying out of sight and about not attracting attention to myself. I waited until darkness was falling, until the parking lot had cleared of people and cars, and then I stood at the edge of the busy road and watched the cars with their lit-up eyes and listened for the WHOOSHING. When the whooshing stopped, I ran across the road, ran back to my old woods. And here were the smells of my first winter alone. I nosed around, but I spent only one night in the woods. There was no scent of Bone, so no need to stay. In the morning I set out.

  Although I had spent the last few summers roaming woods and fields and keeping to the edges of towns, now I carefully investigated places with human dwellings. I found streets like the side streets in Claremont, but longer and with more houses on them. During the day I watched these houses from hiding places. At night, I inspected them more closely.

  No Bone.

  I found a long street that reminded me of the one Marcy and George lived on, but I didn’t think it was theirs. It was lined with houses, and I could tell that lots of dogs lived on this street. There were signs of dogs — leashes and bowls and toys in the yards, excrement, too, in some places — and scents of dogs. And I saw several dogs on runs or peeking over fences.

  But no Bone.

  I wandered on and found another neighborhood. I nosed into garages. I sniffed up and down the streets at night. I even sniffed around doorways and porches if the houses were dark.

  No Bone.

  I began to search houses that were farther out in the country, in the woods and hills. I explored sheds and porches. I investigated country stores. I searched while the moon changed and the days lengthened, then began to shorten. I searched until I felt a chill in the air. Some of the odors were still familiar now, but not as strongly so as the ones I had smelled at the beginning of the summer. I wasn’t sure where I was anymore, didn’t know how far I had walked. And I hadn’t found Bone.

  So I moved on. It was time to find another farm for the winter. And that is exactly what I did.

  Winter came and went. Spring arrived, then another winter, then another spring, another winter, another spring, and finally another winter, and I had become an old dog.

  I was an old dog with black fur beginning to turn white, a filmy eye, bad hearing in one ear, and very achy bones in the shoulder and leg I had broken when I was young. I was weak, too, and when this newest winter arrived it was the coldest and stormiest one I could remember.

  Cold.

  The cold came early that winter, that winter when I knew with certainty that I was an old dog. No early snow, though. Not like the winter Moon and I had spent in Claremont. But there was plenty of cold. And there were storms that flung sleet and ice out of the clouds, stinging my skin and eyes. I was living at the edge of a town then, my instincts telling me it was time to find a farm for the winter, my old bones protesting at the prospect of the journey. The first of the ice storms came one frigid night, causing school to be closed the next day, which was Halloween. I had learned that children generally enjoy an unexpected day off from school, but the ones I saw in their yards on Halloween morning were not happy.

  “No trick-or-treating tonight,” I heard the parents say. “It’s icy, too dangerous to go out.”

  I had spent the night in the shelter of an upended wheelbarrow in someone’s backyard. I was dry, but I was so cold I was shaking, and I hadn’t eaten since the morning before. Still, I stayed in my shelter until the next day, when the air warmed and the ice started to melt. I waited until the people who lived in the house with the wheelbarrow had left. Then I walked out of their neighborhood and into some woods.
/>   I traveled for two days and two nights. My limbs felt heavy; they no longer moved with ease. Some days they were stiff, most days they were just plain slow. I was almost always hungry and thirsty; sometimes I was so hungry that I couldn’t even feel the hunger pangs. Hunting had become difficult because my reflexes weren’t what they used to be. I wasn’t fast enough to catch most animals, unless they were unsuspecting. I needed to rely on garbage.

  But garbage was easier to find in towns, and I had not forgotten the animal control officers.

  One morning I woke up in the gray dawn, shivering in a hollow under an outcropping of rock. I noticed that my hind foot was bleeding. I licked it, then rose unsteadily and set off walking again. I wasn’t sure when I had last eaten, only that I needed to find a farm soon.

  But I walked all day and saw no farms. I was in the country, and I saw an isolated house here and there, but not a single farm. I fell asleep that night dreaming of Jean and Hal, of the horse and cows and cats and geese, of the warm barn and the compost heap. When I awoke the next morning, stiff and freezing and famished and thirsty, I set out again. I didn’t bother to stick to the woods. I was too tired. I walked down a country road. When a car or a truck rumbled by, I stepped out of the way, but I didn’t hide.

  I traveled this way for two more days, eating an already dead squirrel I found in the road and drinking bad-tasting ditch water. And then the first snow fell.

  It began late in the afternoon, just before the winter darkness seeped in. I stopped walking and flopped down on my haunches, out of breath and shivering. I looked around. Only one house was nearby. A long drive led from the road to the side of the house, and a path led from the drive to the front porch. The house was white with black shutters. The yard was tidy. Lights glowed in two of the windows, and good scents came to my nose. I smelled food, and I smelled smoke, which I realized I could see curling out of the chimney.

  I turned and walked up the drive, leaving bloody footprints behind me in the snow. When I reached the house I looked behind it and saw a tool shed. I checked the shed and found the door open. I nosed my way inside.

  The shed was my shelter for the night. The air inside was cold but dry, and when I peered outside the next morning, I saw that the snow had stopped falling. I tiptoed out of the shed and around to the front of the house. I was sitting underneath a yew bush when a woman stepped onto the porch. She was old. I know the human signs of old age: Her hair was white, her face was wrinkled, and she moved as slowly and stiffly as I did. But her face looked kind, and she smiled as she tossed some birdseed onto the ground, glanced at the brightening sky, then slipped inside again.

  As soon as the door had closed, I made my way to the seed. I was eating it — in great big gulps — when I heard the door open again. I ran around to the side of the house. And I heard the woman say, “Oh, my. A dog.”

  I hid in the shed until the afternoon, then returned to the birdseed. Not much was left, but I snuffed up what I could find. I was still snuffing and searching through the snow when the door creaked open. I raised my head. And the old woman poked her own head around the door.

  “Good afternoon, dog,” she said.

  I ran back to the shed. Behind me I could hear the woman calling, “Where are you going? Are you hungry?”

  I was hungry. I thought maybe I had never been hungrier in all my life. And so that evening, as I lay in the shed long after the dark had come, I paid attention when I heard a noise from the back of the woman’s house. It sounded like a door opening and closing. I peeked out of the shed. The lights in the house were winking off, and soon the house was bathed only in moonlight. I crept to the stoop by the back door. And there before me were two bowls. One was full of water, the other was full of chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes. I slurped up the food, licked the bowl clean, and drank half the water before returning to the shed.

  The next morning I was peeping out of the shed when the back door opened. I froze in place and watched the stoop. The old woman stepped outside and peered at the dishes.

  “My, she was hungry,” she said. “Not a crumb left.”

  She carried the dishes inside. A few moments later she set them out again. I waited a bit before venturing to the stoop. The water dish had been refilled, and the food dish now contained turkey, cheese, and rice. I gobbled up the food, drank some of the water, and hurried to the shed.

  That night I found more food in the dish, and the next morning, too. On the day after that, the woman put food in the dishes in the afternoon as well as in the morning and the evening. On the day after that, I arose early and waited in the shed for breakfast. Sure enough, as I watched, the door opened and the woman stepped outside, gathered up the empty dishes, and soon returned with full ones, which she left on the stoop, closing the door after her.

  I was chomping on a piece of steak when the door opened a crack and there was the woman, standing in the doorway. I stiffened, then backed up.

  And the woman said, “Oh, now. For heaven’s sake, dog, you must be as old as I am. Why don’t you come inside and warm up?”

  But I ran off, leaving several mouthfuls of good steak behind. And I skipped lunch, waiting for darkness before I ate again. I didn’t want to skip breakfast the next day, though (there had been more steak for dinner), and while I was eating the bowl of scrambled eggs and bacon that I found waiting for me — as I stood on a stranger’s stoop in broad daylight — there came the turn of the knob, the click of the door.

  I backed away from the food. “Come on, old dog,” the woman said. “Enough of this silliness.”

  I retreated in the direction of the shed.

  “You know,” the woman continued, “the last thing I need is a dog, but I really think you ought to come inside. You must be freezing.”

  I put my tail between my legs and kept walking.

  “That shed isn’t very warm,” called the woman. “Not warm at all. If you come inside, you can sit by the fire.”

  But I couldn’t do it. I could not go into her house. Not until the morning when the air was so bitterly cold that I couldn’t feel the bottoms of my paws. On that morning, I shivered as I ate the chicken that had been set out. The woman came to the door and watched me. I didn’t run away, just stood over the bowl, shaking and trying to swallow.

  “Old dog, for goodness’ sake, you are a mess. I can see your ribs, you’re shivering, and your feet are bleeding. You look like you can barely stand up. Please come inside.” She held the door open for me.

  I raised my head. I could feel the warmth from her house. I could smell the wood smoke, and hamburger, good food smells. I looked back at the bowl, down at my feet, my frozen feet. I thought of Marcy and George, of the shouting and swatting and the night in the box. I thought of the Beckers and my dusty bed in the garage. But then I thought of Matthias and Dr. Roth and Rachael.

  I stepped through the doorway and into the old woman’s house.

  The woman led me through a narrow hallway and into a big bright room with a fire burning behind a grate.

  “Now you sit there, dog, and warm yourself. I’m going to get some blankets for you.”

  The woman pushed my rump down until I was sitting before the fire. I looked around the room at the couch and chairs, at a low table with a bowl of flowers resting in the middle, at the framed pictures on the walls. The colors in the room were soft, the fire was warm, the room felt safe.

  I heaved a sigh.

  “I heard that, dog,” said the woman as she returned with an armload of blankets. “You deserve to let out a sigh like that, a great big sigh. I can tell that you’ve seen a lot and done a lot, and now you’re very tired.”

  The woman arranged the blankets in a sort of nest next to me. “Okay,” she said. “Now you rest here.” She patted the blankets, and I stepped onto them.

  The woman sat down heavily in an armchair. “Oof,” she said. “My knees don’t work the way they used to. I’m not much good at stooping anymore.” She paused. “Well, dog,” she c
ontinued, “I suppose I ought to introduce myself. My name is Susan. Susan McGrath. I expect you have a dog name of your own, but I don’t know what it is, so I’m going to call you Addie. Unless it turns out that you’re a boy, in which case I’ll have to think of a different name. But I’ve been watching you for days now, and I have a feeling you’re a girl — and Addie seems to suit you.

  “Today, since you’re not feeling well, I’m going to put your food and water dishes right here by the fire. When you’re feeling better, you can eat in the kitchen with me.”

  Susan rose slowly and walked out of the room, talking to herself. “I’ll have to call the vet,” I could hear her say. “Make an appointment for Addie. Goodness, it must be three years since I last called that office. I wonder if Skip is still there.”

  Susan’s voice faded away. I stretched my front legs in front of me and rested my chin on them. I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth from the fire curl over me like a nest of leaves. I didn’t open my eyes again until Susan returned carrying the water bowl and the dish of chicken that had been outside on the stoop. She placed them next to me.

  “Here you go, Addie,” she said. “Breakfast in bed.”

  I took a drink of water and finished the chicken.

  Susan watched me from her chair, then pulled a footstool to the hearth and sat beside me. “Do you mind if I pat you, Addie?” she asked. “I don’t want to frighten you.” Susan held her hand toward my snout.

  I sniffed her fingers. Then I gave them a small lick.

  “Ah. You’re a kisser,” said Susan. “That’s fine.” She scratched me under my chin, then ran her hand slowly along my back. “Good girl,” she said. “Good girl.”

  I rested by the fire for a long time that day. I was too tired to feel nervous or afraid. Besides, Susan was as kind and as gentle as Rachael and Dr. Roth had been. Every now and then she would stir the fire or add another log to it. When she did she spoke softly to me. “Sorry to disturb you, Addie, but I want to keep the fire going. I want you to stay warm.”