by Ali Standish
But now she was in a room that was like a big cage. It had three concrete walls and one wall that was just a chain-link gate. Beyond that, she could see more little rooms holding still more dogs.
She began to tremble. What is this place?
The huge horse-dog bared his huge teeth at her, and Bella let out a whimper.
“Don’t worry,” said the droopy-eared dog, waddling closer. “That’s just Leo’s smile.”
The dog called Leo, who had wavy brown fur and a bite taken out of one ear, continued to bare his teeth, and Bella backed closer to the wall.
The scruffy dog padded toward Bella and circled her, his sharp ears pinned back as his sharp eyes examined her. “You don’t have fleas, do you?” he asked sharply. “Because my new humans are coming to pick me up any day now, and they will not appreciate it if you give me fleas.”
Bella wished she had something to hide under. She didn’t really know how to talk to other dogs. Once, when she had been out for a walk with Mr. McBride, they had stopped to talk to a neighbor who was out walking his dog, too. Excited to meet a new friend, Bella had sniffed and kissed the other dog hello, but she must have done it wrong, because he’d growled and lunged at her. Frightened, Bella had turned tail and run—straight into Mr. McBride, who fell with a splash into the mud puddle behind him. After that, when they had seen other dogs, Mr. McBride had crossed the street before Bella could so much as wag her tail.
Certainly a dog had never asked her if she had fleas.
(She didn’t, of course.)
“Where am I?” Bella asked. “Who are you? Why am I here?”
The droopy-eared dog exchanged a look with Leo. “I’m Hazel,” she said. “The little guy is Runt. And this place is called the pound. It’s where dogs come who are lost or alone or . . . unwanted.”
Bella considered this.
She had not been brought here because she was lost. She had not come here alone. So that must mean she was—
“Unwanted?” she asked, feeling the way the strange word sat heavy on her long tongue. “What’s that?”
“It means when your humans don’t want you anymore,” said Runt.
“It means when your humans don’t appreciate you enough,” said Hazel, stomping on one of Runt’s paws with her own.
“Which is why I never want a human family,” said Leo. “They don’t know how to appreciate us.”
Bella flopped down on the floor again. Was it true? Was Mr. McBride not coming back?
Am I really . . . unwanted?
“It’s not true,” said Bella. “It can’t be!”
Hazel sighed and dropped down to the ground so that her droopy eyes were level with Bella’s. Her brown ears pooled on the floor. Leo lay down, too, his tongue lolling from his mouth, while Runt paced back and forth behind them.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” said Hazel kindly.
So Bella told them about the McBrides. She told them about the other children’s bad behavior, about Mr. McBride’s shopping bags, and about Mrs. McBride’s growing belly. She told them about being left in the garage, and about the treat tree, and about Christmas.
When she was done, Hazel and Leo shook their heads sadly. Runt was still tap-tapping around the room.
“Your problem is obvious,” he barked gruffly. “Your family is having a baby.”
Bella shook her head impatiently. “They already have a baby.”
“Another baby,” Runt said.
Bella didn’t understand. Why would the McBrides want another baby when they have four perfectly good children already?
“How do you know?” she asked.
Hazel explained to Bella what was happening with Mrs. McBride’s belly.
As Hazel spoke, Bella had the feeling that the droopy-eyed dog had been around a long time and seen many things.
“If you ask me,” said Leo, “the problem was that your so-called family never wanted you in the first place.”
Bella’s head snapped up, her ears pinning back. “That’s not true!” she cried. “The McBrides love me. I know they do.”
Hazel shot Leo a warning look. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “They probably didn’t want to leave you here at all. It’s just because of the baby. Lots of humans do things like this when they’re expecting a new child.”
Bella thought back to what Mrs. McBride had said the night before. We can’t deal with her anymore. Especially not when the little one comes.
Hazel was right. They had chosen the new baby—the little one—over her.
Suddenly Bella had a horrible thought. “What about the other children?” she asked. “Do you think the McBrides took them to the pound, too?”
Bella didn’t like it when the baby’s screams woke her up in the night, chasing away her dreams of galloping through a sunny field filled with buttercups that were really made of butter. And it was never fun when her sister tied her ears up in itchy pink bows, or when her brother bonked her over the head with stuffed dinosaurs. But they all deserved to be loved.
They didn’t deserve to be abandoned at the pound.
“Children don’t go to the pound,” said Leo. “The pound is only for dogs. And besides, humans always choose their children over their dogs.”
“That’s why you have to find humans with no children to adopt you,” yipped Runt. “Like I did. My humans already came and picked me out. They’re coming back to get me any day now. Just as soon as they get the house ready for me. Have I said?”
“But . . . ,” Bella began slowly. “But I’m their child, too. I’m the best of all the McBride children.”
Runt finally stopped tap-tapping. Leo’s tongue disappeared back into his mouth as he cocked his head.
“Oh, dear,” Hazel breathed.
She inched closer to Bella. “Humans only have human children, you see. A dog can simply never be a human’s child.”
“But the McBrides are my parents,” Bella argued.
“No, Bella,” Hazel said softly. “They were your owners. But they aren’t anymore.”
Bella’s thoughts began to whirl in her head. She had known, of course, that the other McBride children were different from her. She had even felt sorry for them. They couldn’t reach the popcorn that fell under the couch. They had no tails to wag and only two legs to run on, and their noses barely even worked!
It had never occurred to her that she was the different one. The one who didn’t belong.
If I don’t belong with the McBrides, where do I belong?
“There’s a water bowl over there,” Leo said, nudging Bella gently. “Why don’t you go drink a bit?”
Bella was suddenly too tired to argue anymore, so she padded over to the other side of the room. But instead of drinking, she stared down at her reflection in the bowl. She stared at her snowy fur with its black-and-brown splotches, her floppy ears, her long snout, her slick nose with its slender white whiskers.
How have I not seen it before? she thought. I’m nobody’s child. I’m just a silly dog.
A silly, unwanted dog.
Four
The New Family
Each morning when she woke up, Bella wished with all her might that she was back at the McBrides’ house.
Each morning, she opened her eyes to find that she was still at the pound.
With each morning that passed, she lost a little bit of hope. Every day, Bella felt a hole growing in her heart, much deeper than any she’d dug in the McBrides’ backyard.
Leo said she shouldn’t waste another thought on her humans, that they weren’t worth it. But he only knows the bad parts about them, Bella thought.
Leo and the others had never heard about the way Mr. McBride sang silly songs on Saturday mornings while he flipped pancakes. Bella hadn’t told them that in the beginning, he would even make Bella her own special pancake shaped like a doggy bone.
Leo didn’t know that Mrs. McBride always smelled like honey and flowers and had skin so soft, it felt like silk when B
ella nuzzled her. Or that the baby had a smile he smiled only for Bella, or that Bella’s favorite game had been playing hide-and-seek with her brother and sister.
He doesn’t know that before things got bad, they were really good.
Leo didn’t like to talk about where he’d been before the pound. Whenever Bella asked him, he would suddenly become very interested in his breakfast, or in the game that the fluffy blond puppies in the cage across from them were playing.
But Hazel told Bella that she missed her old owner, too.
“I don’t remember anything from before Lucy,” she said. “She was the best owner any dog could ask for. We were together a long time. Almost forever, I think.”
“So what happened?” Bella asked.
Hazel’s nose twitched, and her ears seemed to droop even lower than usual. “She went to the hospital one day,” Hazel said, “and never came back. The next thing I knew, our neighbor was bringing me to the pound. I’ve been here ever since.”
Now it was Bella’s turn to nuzzle Hazel, who heaved a sigh full of sadness.
Then, “It’s not so bad here,” Hazel said, trying to sound cheerful. “The people who take care of us are nice, and Leo and Runt are okay, too.”
Runt wasn’t very much older than Bella, but he had lived with four families and in two other pounds before being brought here. Some of the families had been kind at first, like the McBrides.
Some had not.
Bella understood why Runt was always tap-tap-tapping around their cage, why he startled at loud noises, and why he devoured each of his meals like he might not have another for a long, long time.
She was happy for him on the morning when his new owners came to pick him up. She had begun to wonder if they were even real.
They had just finished breakfast, and Leo had suggested a game of throw the chew toy when they heard human footsteps approaching. All the dogs in all the cages around them began to bark. All the dogs (except Leo, of course) hoped that the footsteps were coming for them.
“Here we are,” said Leslie, the nice lady who took care of the dogs during the daytime. She stopped outside Bella’s cage. Behind her were two men, a bit older than Mr. and Mrs. McBride. When they spotted Runt, they both smiled.
“There’s our handsome little guy,” said one.
The other held out a beautiful blue collar with a matching leash.
I wish I had a collar like that, Bella thought.
“Goodbye!” Runt called, after the man with the collar had fastened it around Runt’s scruffy neck. Instead of attaching the leash to it, though, he scooped Runt up into his arms. “I hope you all find humans as good as mine!”
To which Leo growled.
“Goodbye, Runt!” Hazel called. “We will miss you!”
To which Leo grunted.
When darkness fell and dinner was done, the pound became a very sad place indeed. It filled with the sounds of dogs sighing, whimpering, crying. And their songs of loneliness were loudest after one of the dogs had left with a new family.
When she finally fell asleep that night, Bella had bad dreams. In them, she was frightened and running. Just when she thought she was safe, she would look up to see a dark tree, one hundred feet tall, that was about to crash down on her. As she began to run again, she heard the voices of the McBrides shouting behind her.
BAD BELLA!
When she woke up the next morning, something was different.
Instead of missing the McBrides, Bella was thinking about the look on the humans’ faces when they left with Runt the day before. They seemed so happy. So loving. Bella was sure they would keep Runt forever.
Runt was no longer unwanted.
“Hazel,” Bella said, as soon as Hazel had finished her morning stretches, “how did Runt find his new family?”
“At an adoption fair,” said Hazel. “There should be another one coming up soon.”
Bella’s eyes widened, and her ears lifted as if they had been tied to balloons. She and Mr. McBride had walked by a fair once, in the field beside the school her brother and sister attended. There had been bright tents nestled between games and rides, and wonderful smells of hamburgers and ice cream wafting over the fence. Bella had wanted to go in, but Mr. McBride had tugged her away.
A fair sounded like the perfect place to find a new family!
“Do you think maybe I can find a new human at the fair?” Bella asked.
Hazel brushed her warm nose against Bella’s. “Of course you can. All you have to do is be yourself, and some human is bound to see how special you are.”
Hazel was a very wise dog, but Bella wasn’t sure about this advice. After all, Hazel herself hadn’t found a family to adopt her yet, had she? And if I’m really so special, wondered Bella, then why did the McBrides leave me here?
But Hazel was right about something. The next fair came very soon indeed.
The following day, Leslie took Bella, Hazel, and Leo to a room with a tile floor.
“It’s bath time!” Leslie called. “You’ll all want to look and smell your best for the adoption fair tomorrow!”
This made Bella feel a little bit happy, but mostly very sad. Because she did not like baths.
Neither did Leo, it turned out. When Leslie angled the hose toward him, he lunged forward and grabbed it between his teeth. Then he ran around her in circles until she was all tangled up in the hose and slipped and fell onto the soapy, sudsy floor.
Bella cringed, ready for Leslie to get up and start yelling at Leo. That’s what the McBrides would do.
Instead, Leslie popped a soap bubble on the tip of her nose and started to laugh.
“You are one great dog,” she said, shaking her own head as she patted Leo on top of his.
Bella thought this was a very strange response.
“Why can’t you behave yourself, Leo?” Hazel moaned afterward. She had stood still all through her own bath. Bella had tried to do the same, though she did run away when Leslie lifted her fluffy tail to clean underneath.
“Why should I have to get a bath? I don’t want any humans to adopt me,” Leo grumbled, shaking the water from his dark fur.
Later, after all the lights had been turned out and Hazel was softly snoring, Bella nudged Leo.
“Are you awake?” she asked.
“Hmm.”
There was a question that had been on her mind ever since she’d met him.
“Why don’t you want a family, Leo?”
“I have a family already,” Leo said. “They just aren’t humans.”
“What are they, then?”
“Street dogs. A whole pack of them.”
“But you must have had a human family sometime,” Bella said.
Leo was quiet for a long moment. Bella had an awful thought.
“Did they abandon you?” she asked. “Did they leave you on the street? Is that how you met your pack?”
At least Mr. McBride brought me here, where it’s warm and safe.
“No,” Leo said finally, “they didn’t abandon me. I ran away.”
“You did what?”
“I lived with the same humans for four years,” said Leo with a sigh. “I was like you. I thought they really loved me. Then one night I heard them talking. About how they were moving and they couldn’t keep me anymore. They were going to take me to live with someone else, but I didn’t want to go. I realized then that the only thing humans are good for is changing their minds and disappointing you. Why would I want to live with more of them? So when they took me for a walk, I ran away. And not long after that, I found my pack.”
“Don’t you miss them?” Bella asked. “Your humans?”
“No,” said Leo, a little too quickly. “I like my pack much better. Packs aren’t like people. They’re always there for each other. Trust me, we dogs would be a lot happier if we just kept to ourselves.”
“How will you get back to your pack?”
Leo’s tail thumped twice against the floor, and he smiled his sly smile.
“You’ll see, Bella. You’ll see.”
Bella stayed up long after Leo fell asleep, thinking about the adoption fair. She thought about Runt’s advice to find a family with no children. This had worked well for Runt.
She thought of Hazel’s advice about being herself. But Bella had been herself—her very best self—with the McBrides. And they had still abandoned her.
She thought of Leo, who didn’t even want a human family. Can he really be right about humans? she wondered. Are they all as bad as that?
But then she thought of Leslie, heard her calling Leo “one great dog” even after he ran around and around with the hose in his mouth, and she couldn’t quite believe it.
Besides, if they were happier without humans, then why did the dogs here cry every night? If Leo was right, then why did the pound feel so very lonely?
Her thoughts circled around each other, like so many dogs chasing their own tails, until she finally fell asleep.
Five
The Not Fair
The next morning, before she opened her eyes, Bella wished with all her might. But it was a different wish than she had wished before.
I wish that today I will meet my new family.
She had decided not to think anymore about what Leo had said. She believed that some humans were good. All she had to do was find the right family to take her home with them.
After Bella, Hazel, and Leo had eaten their breakfasts, Leslie came in and tied colorful scraps of cloth around each of their necks.
“There!” she said. “Don’t you all look nice in your bandannas?”
Bella’s bandanna was blue, like the leash that Runt’s new humans had brought him. Maybe it was a good sign.
“It makes you look very pretty,” said Hazel kindly.
But Bella knew she would need to do more than that to get a family to believe she was special enough to take home.
Soon Leslie came in with three leashes and fixed them to the dogs’ collars.
“It’s time!” she sang. “Is everybody ready?”
Yes! barked Bella, which made Leslie throw back her head of curly hair and laugh.
She led them out to the yard where they were usually taken to play. Even Leo marched behind Leslie without dragging his paws. “Here we are,” said Leslie cheerfully.