“Johnny? Can you breathe?”
The boy bent over, his hands on his knees. His breathing was thick and loud and heavy.
“He’s turning blue!” the Woman yelled. My siblings and I flinched at the raw terror in her voice.
“Call 911!” The Man shouted at her. “Johnny! Stay with me, Son! Look at me!”
Whether consciously or not, all of us had found our way to our mother and were at her feet, seeking reassurance. She lowered her nose to us briefly, but she was panting and anxious and went over to the Man and tried to nuzzle him. The Man ignored her. “Johnny!” he shouted, anguished.
Several of the puppies were trying to follow our mother and when she saw this she came back to us, pushing us with her muzzle to keep us on the blanket and out of the way.
The Man laid the boy on the couch. The boy’s eyes were fluttering and his breathing was still harsh and painful sounding. The Woman came in with her hands pressed to her mouth, weeping.
I heard the siren and it got louder and then two men and a woman were in the room. They put something on the boy’s face and took him out of the house on a bed. The Man and the Woman went with them, and then we were alone.
It is the nature of puppies to explore, so my siblings immediately left the blanket to sniff the far corners of the room. Our mother paced and whined and kept rising up on her rear legs to look out the front window, and two of my siblings followed her around.
I sat on the blanket and tried to understand. Though he was not my boy, I felt a strong concern for the child. It did not mean I didn’t love Ethan; I was just feeling a fear.
Because we were puppies we made messes all over the house. I knew when I was older I would have more self-control, but at this point I didn’t know I needed to squat until suddenly the need would be upon me. I hoped the Man and Woman would not be angry with me.
We were all asleep when the Man came home by himself. He put us in the basement and I could hear him moving around upstairs and the air carried the scent of soap. We nursed; our mother was finally calm, now that the Man was home.
The next day we were taken to a different basement in a different house. A woman who smelled like cooking and laundry and dogs greeted us with kisses and cooing sounds. Her house had the scent of many, many dogs, though I only saw one: a slow-moving male who walked low to the ground, nearly dragging his big, floppy ears.
“Thanks for this. I’m really grateful, Jennifer,” the Man said to her.
“Fostering dogs is what I do,” she said. “I just adopted out a boxer yesterday, so I knew I’d be getting more. That’s how it always works. Your wife said your son has asthma?”
“Yes. He’s apparently deathly allergic to dogs, but we never knew it because Bella is a poodle and apparently Johnny’s not allergic to poodles. We had no idea. I feel so stupid. His allergic reaction triggered his asthma attack and we didn’t even know he had asthma! I thought we were going to lose him.”
Bella, hearing her name, wagged a little. Our mother was distressed, though, when the Man left. We were in a nice-sized box in the basement, but as soon as the Man walked away Bella left it and then sat at the door to the stairs and cried. This distressed the puppies, who sat subdued, not playing. I’m sure I looked the same way—our mother’s upset was clear and urgent.
That day, we did not nurse. The woman named Jennifer didn’t notice it, but we did, and pretty soon we were all whimpering. Our mother was just too disturbed and saddened to lie down for us, even when her teats became heavy and began to leak a tantalizing odor that made us all dizzy.
I knew why she was so sad. A dog belongs with her people.
Our mother paced all night, crying softly. We all slept, but in the morning we were aching with hunger.
Jennifer came to see why we were crying and told Bella it was okay, but I could hear the alarm in her voice. She left the room and we cried for our mother, but Bella just paced and whined and ignored us. Then, after what seemed like a long time, Bella was at the door, her snout at the crack beneath it, sniffing in with great gusts. Her tail started to wag and then the Man opened the door. Bella was sobbing and jumping up on the Man and the Man was pushing her away.
“You have to stay down, Bella. I need you to stay down.”
“She hasn’t been nursing the pups. She’s too upset,” Jennifer said.
“Okay, Bella, come over here. Come on.” The Man ushered Bella over to the box and made her lie down. He kept his hand on her head and she stayed and we went at her in a mad rush, pushing and sucking and fighting each other.
“I’m just worried that the puppies’ dander is on her and it will get on me and then Johnny will have an attack. He’s got an inhaler and everything.”
“But if Bella doesn’t nurse, her puppies will die,” Jennifer said.
“I have to do what’s best for Johnny. We’re having the entire house steam-cleaned,” the Man said.
My belly was getting warm and heavy. It was a glorious thing to feed.
“Well, what if you took Bella and the poodle puppies home with you? You could bathe them, get rid of any trace of the other two puppies. You’d at least save four of them, and it would be best for Bella, too.”
The Man and Jennifer were quiet for a long time. Completely full, I staggered away, so sleepy I just wanted to climb on one of the other puppies and nap.
“You’d euthanize the other two, then? I wouldn’t want them to starve to death,” the Man said.
“They would not suffer,” Jennifer said.
A few minutes later I was surprised when the Man and Jennifer reached in and picked up a pair of puppies each. Bella hopped out of the box and followed. My brother, the one who had fur like mine, whimpered a little, but we were both really sleepy. We curled up against each other for warmth, my head on his back.
I didn’t know where our mother and our siblings had gone, but I figured they would be back soon.
FIVE
I awoke cold and hungry. My brother and I were pressed up against each other for warmth and when I stirred he opened his eyes. We groggily made our way around the box, relieving ourselves and touching each other several times, communicating to each other what was pretty obvious. Our mother and our siblings were gone.
My brother started crying.
Soon the woman called Jennifer came over to see us. We looked up at her, so tall above us.
“You poor little puppies, you miss your mommy, don’t you?”
The sound of her voice seemed to soothe my brother. He stood on his rear legs, his front legs against the side of the box, and strained to raise his small muzzle to her. She bent down, smiling. “It’s okay, little one. Everything will be all right, I promise you.”
When she left, my brother went back to his whining. I tried to interest him in a wrestling match, but he was really unhappy. I knew everything was fine because we had a woman to watch us and she would bring our mother back soon so we could feed, but my brother was frightened and hungry and apparently couldn’t think beyond that.
Soon Jennifer returned. “Okay, time to take care of you. You want to go first? Okay,” she said, picking up my brother and carrying him off.
I was alone in the box. I lay down and tried not to think about the empty ache in my stomach. It was easier to ignore my hunger with my brother off with Jennifer. I wondered if maybe I was supposed to take care of my brother but dismissed the thought. Dogs don’t take care of dogs; people take care of dogs. As long as we had Jennifer, we would be fine.
I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until I felt Jennifer lifting me up into the air. She stared into my face. “Well, that didn’t go as well as I had hoped,” she said. “Let’s hope it goes more quickly with you.”
I wagged my tiny tail.
Jennifer and I went upstairs. There was no sign of my brother, though I could smell him in the air. Still holding me, she sat down on her couch, rolling me onto my back in the cradle of her arm. “Okay, okay now,” Jennifer said. “Nice and still.”
“You need to be still now, puppy. This will go okay if you don’t fight it,” Jennifer said.
Her voice was soothing, but I still didn’t know what was going on. But then I caught the delicious scent of warm milk—the thing she was holding was oozing food. The tip of it was soft and when she probed my lips with it I seized it and sucked and was rewarded with a warm, sweet meal.
In a way, it was like being nursed by my mother, except that I was on my back and the thing in my mouth was very large. The milk was quite different, too, more sweet and light, but I wasn’t complaining. I sucked and that wonderful warm liquid erased away the ache in my belly.
When I was full I was drowsy and Jennifer held me and patted me on my back and I burped a little. Then she took me down the hall to a soft bed, where the big dog with the huge ears was sleeping, my brother nuzzled up against him.
“Here’s another one, Barney,” Jennifer whispered.
The big dog groaned, but he wagged his tail and didn’t move when I nestled up against him. Though he was a male, his tummy was warm and comforting, just like Mother’s.
My brother squeaked out a greeting and then went right back to sleep.
From that point forward, Jennifer fed us in her lap several times a day. I grew to love the feedings and the way Jennifer would talk to me as she cuddled me. It would be easy to love someone like Jennifer.
My brother was distressed when I was fed before he was, and I think Jennifer decided it made more sense to have me go second than to feed me with my brother crying the whole time.
I think I had known it all along, but one day while I was squatting and smelled my urine it occurred to me that we weren’t brothers but brother and sister. I was a female dog!
I wondered briefly what had happened to our mother and to my other siblings, but it seemed as if I couldn’t really even remember them anymore. We lived here now, my brother and I, a family of two puppies and a lazy dog named Barney. I would have to get used to being a female and being in this odd living situation.
I decided that there were times when all a dog could do was wait and see what would happen next, what choices people would make that would change everything or make it more of the same. In the meantime, my brother and I put our efforts into tugging on Barney’s soft, floppy ears.
Jennifer called my brother Rocky and me Molly. As we grew stronger, Barney wanted to have less and less to do with us, becoming impatient with us chewing on his body parts. That was okay, though, because a big gray dog named Che came to stay with us at the house. Che loved to run around the backyard, where the grass was just starting to pop up in the warming spring sun. He was very fast and Rocky and I could not hope to catch up to him, but he wanted us to chase him and when we would give up he would dart over and bow down to get us to play again. And then there was a stocky dog named Mr. Churchill. He was a bit like Barney in size except that he was heavier, and his ears were very short. Mr. Churchill wheezed and waddled when he walked—he was the exact opposite of Che. I am not sure he even could run. And after eating he smelled pretty bad.
Jennifer’s house, with all the dogs, was just about the most wonderful place imaginable. I sometimes missed the Farm, of course, but being at Jennifer’s was like living full-time at a dog park.
A woman came to see Che after a few days and took him with her when she left. “It’s wonderful, what you do. I think if I tried to foster dogs I’d wind up keeping all of them,” said the woman who took Che.
Che was going to have a new life with a new person, I realized, and I was happy for him, though Rocky appeared completely mystified as to what was going on.
“That’s called ‘foster failure.’” Jennifer laughed. “It’s how I came to have Barney. He was my first foster. I realized, though, that if I didn’t get control of myself I’d adopt a few dogs and then that’d be it and I wouldn’t be able to help any others.”
One day some people came over to Jennifer’s house to play with us—a man and a woman and two girls.
“We’re pretty sure we want a male,” the man said.
The girls were that wonderful age where they couldn’t run much faster than a puppy and were always giggling. They picked us up and kissed us and put us down and played with us.
“You said poodle and what, again?” the man asked.
Jennifer said, “Nobody knows. Spaniel? Terrier?”
I knew what was happening: they were here to take either Rocky or me home with them. I wondered why we had to leave this place—if anyone should go it should be Mr. Churchill, who mostly just stood there emitting odors or, when Rocky goaded him into it, would chase us and knock us over with his chest. But I also knew that people were in charge—they decided dogs’ fates, and I would have to go where they sent me.
In the end, though, Rocky and I stayed. I was relieved not to lose Rocky and happy not to have to say good-bye to the other dogs, but I didn’t understand it, why people would come play with me and then not want to take me with them.
And then one day, I did understand.
Rocky and I were in the backyard with a new brown dog named Daisy. Daisy was very timid around Jennifer—she wouldn’t come when called and whenever Jennifer reached down to pet her Daisy would shy away from her hand. Daisy was very thin and had light brown eyes. She would play with Rocky and me, though, and even though she was much larger, she would let us pin her when we were wrestling.
I heard car doors slamming and then a few minutes later the screen door at the back of the house slid open. Rocky and I trotted over to investigate as Jennifer and a boy and a girl came out into the yard, while Daisy slunk over to a place behind a picnic table where she seemed to feel safe.
“Oh my God, they are so cute!” The girl laughed. She was about the age that Ethan had been when he started driving a car. She dropped to her knees and spread her arms wide. Rocky and I obediently ran over to her. She gathered us into an embrace and her scent flowed from her and that’s when I made an astounding discovery.
It was Clarity.
I went wild, climbing on her and kissing her and smelling her skin. I was leaping and spinning with joy. Clarity!
Never before had it occurred to me that she might come look for me, that she would know I had been reborn and would find me. But humans drive the cars and decide when dogs eat and where dogs live and clearly this was something else in their power—they could find their dogs when they needed them.
That must be why the family with the little girls left without us. They were searching for their dogs, and Rocky and I weren’t them.
I could not get enough of Clarity. My little tail beating the air, I licked her hands, making her laugh. When the boy ran around in the yard Rocky ran with him, but I stayed right with Clarity.
“What do you think, Trent?” Clarity called.
“He’s great,” the boy replied.
“Molly seems pretty smitten with you,” Jennifer said to Clarity. “I’ll be right back.” Jennifer went back inside her house.
“Oh, you are so cute,” Clarity said, smoothing my ears back. I kissed her fingers. “But my mom won’t let me have a dog. We’re here for Trent.”
It was all clear to me now: my purpose was as I had supposed, which was to continue to watch over Clarity. It’s what Ethan would have wanted. That’s why I was a puppy again—I still had work to do.
And I would. I would watch over Clarity and keep her safe. I would be a good dog.
The boy came over carrying Rocky. “See his paws? He’s going to be bigger than Molly.”
Clarity stood and I stretched my forepaws up as high as I could on her legs until she picked me up. Rocky struggled to get down from the boy’s arms, but I held still, gazing into Clarity’s eyes.
“I want him,” the boy said. “Rocky, you want to come home with me?” He gently dropped my brother, who jumped on a rubber
toy and shook it.
“This is so exciting!” Clarity said. She set me down and I stayed by her heels as she went over to where Rocky was chewing on his toy. When she tried to pet Rocky I thrust my head under her hand and she laughed.
“Molly likes you, CJ,” the boy said.
I glanced over at the boy because he’d said my name, but then went back to cuddling with Clarity.
“I know. But Gloria, she’d lose it and start foaming at the mouth. I can just hear her. ‘They lick. They’re unclean.’ Like our house is so spotless.”
“Wouldn’t it be fun, though? We’d have a brother and sister.”
I felt a wistful sadness coming from Clarity as she held my face in her hands. “Yes, it would be fun,” she said quietly. “Oh, Molly, I’m sorry, girl.”
Jennifer came back out. “So, are there like papers to fill out?” the boy asked.
“No. I’m not affiliated with any rescue organization or anything. I’m just the neighborhood lady who everybody knows will take in strays and find homes for them. Rocky and Molly are here because a little boy’s asthma was aggravated by them.”
“You said free to a good home, but could I pay something at least?” the boy asked.
“I accept donations, if you like. And please, if for any reason it’s not working out, bring him back.”
The boy handed Jennifer something and then reached down and hoisted Rocky up into his arms. “Okay, Rocky,” he said. “Ready to go to your new home?”
“You let me know if you have any questions,” Jennifer said.
I looked expectantly up at Clarity, but she didn’t pick me up. “Oh, look at her,” Clarity said. She knelt down and stroked my fur. “It’s like she knows I’m leaving without her.”
“Let’s go, CJ.”
We all went to the back door together. Jennifer opened it and the boy went through, still carrying Rocky, and then Clarity, but when I made to follow, Jennifer blocked me with her foot.
“No, Molly,” she said, sliding the screen shut, so that I was left behind in the backyard.
What?
A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set Page 28