A Dog's Purpose

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “Hey!” Hannah came over to see us. I licked her leg, which was salty with sweat. “What a nice surprise. Hi, Bailey!” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “My times are really coming down in the four hundred,” the girl said.

  “Who was that guy?” Ethan asked.

  “Oh. Who? What do you mean?”

  “That guy you were talking to and hugging, you two seemed really friendly,” Ethan said. His voice sounded strained. I glanced around but couldn’t see any danger.

  “He’s just a friend, Ethan,” the girl said sharply. The way she spoke his name, it sounded like the boy had been bad.

  “Is it that guy, what’s his name, Brett? He’s certainly fast on his feet.” Ethan stabbed at the ground with his cane, and I sniffed at the tuft of earth that he overturned.

  “Well, what is that supposed to mean?” Hannah asked, her hands on her hips.

  “Go on back; your track coach is looking over here,” Ethan said.

  Hannah looked over her shoulder, then back at Ethan. “I do, I do need to get back . . . ,” she said uncertainly.

  “Fine,” Ethan said. He turned and limped away.

  “Ethan!” Hannah called. I looked at her, but the boy just kept walking. The dark, confused mixture of sadness and anger was still there. Something about the place apparently made Ethan feel bad, because we never went back.

  That summer brought some big changes. Mom came to the Farm, and this time a truck followed her up the driveway and men unloaded some boxes and carried them up to her bedroom. Grandma and Mom spent a lot of time talking quietly to each other, and sometimes Mom would cry, which made Grandpa uncomfortable, so he’d go out to do chores.

  Ethan had to leave all the time to go to “work,” which was just like school in that I couldn’t go with him, but when he came home he smelled deliciously of meats and grease. It reminded me of the time, after Flare abandoned us in the woods, that Grandpa fed me food out of a bag in the front seat of the truck.

  The biggest change in our lives, though, was that the girl no longer came around to see us. Sometimes the boy would take me for a car ride and as we passed her house I would smell Hannah, so I knew she was still around, but the boy never stopped or turned in her driveway. I found that I missed her; she loved me and smelled wonderful.

  The boy missed her, too. When we drove past Hannah’s house, he always stared out the side window, always slowed down a little, and I could feel his yearning. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just drive up to her house and see if she had any biscuits, but we never did.

  That summer Mom went down to the pond and sat on the dock and was very sad. I tried to make her feel better by barking at the ducks, but she could not be cheered up. Finally she pulled something off her finger, it wasn’t food and was made of metal, a small round thing that she threw into the water, where it slipped beneath the surface with a tiny plop.

  I wondered if she wanted me to go after it, and gazed up at her, ready to give it a shot even though I knew it was hopeless, but she just told me to come, and the two of us went back to the house.

  After that summer, life settled into a comfortable pattern. Mom started doing work, too, and came home smelling of fragrant and sweet oils. Sometimes I would go with her past the goat ranch and over the rumbling bridge and we would spend the day in a big room full of clothes and stinky wax candles and uninteresting metal objects and people would come in to see me and sometimes they would leave with items in bags. The boy came and went for Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas and Spring Break and Summer Vacation.

  I pretty much had gotten over my resentment toward Flare, who didn’t do anything anymore but stand and stare into the wind all day, when Grandpa showed up with a creature who moved like a baby horse and smelled unlike anything I’d ever encountered before. His name was Jasper the donkey. Grandpa liked to laugh as he watched Jasper skip around in the yard, and Grandma would say, “I don’t know why you think we need a donkey,” and go back inside.

  Jasper was not at all afraid of me despite my position as top predator on the Farm. I played with him a little, but it seemed as if I was so easily tired all the time, it just wasn’t worth investing myself in a creature who didn’t know how to pick up a ball.

  One day a man named Rick came to dinner. The feeling from Mom was happy and embarrassed, and from Grandpa it was suspicious, and from Grandma it was ecstatic. Rick and Mom sat on the porch just like Hannah and Ethan used to do, but they didn’t wrestle. After that, though, I started seeing more and more of Rick, who was a big man with hands that smelled of wood. He would throw the ball for me more than anybody, so I liked him a lot, though not as much as the boy.

  My favorite time of day was when Grandpa did chores. Sometimes when he didn’t do chores I would go and take a nap in the barn just the same. I was taking a lot of naps and no longer had any interest in going out on long adventures. When Mom and Rick took me for a walk, I was always exhausted when we got back.

  About the only thing that could make me excited was when the boy would come to the Farm for a visit. I’d still dance and wiggle and whimper, and I would play at the pond or walk in the woods or do anything else he wanted, even chase the flip, though the boy thankfully seemed to have forgotten where it was. Sometimes we went to town to the dog park, and while I was always glad to see the other dogs, I thought the younger ones were juvenile with their relentless playing and wrestling.

  Then one evening the oddest thing happened: Grandpa set dinner down before me, and I didn’t feel like eating. My mouth filled with drool, and I drank some water and went back to lie down. Soon a thick, heavy pain came through my body, leaving me panting for breath.

  I lay there all night on the floor by my food bowl. The next morning, Grandma saw me and called to Grandpa. “There’s something wrong with Bailey!” she said. I could hear the alarm in her voice when she said my name, and wagged my tail so she’d know I was okay.

  Grandpa came and touched me. “You okay, Bailey? What’s wrong?”

  After some conversation, Mom and Grandpa carried me to the truck and we went to the clean, cool room with a nice man, the same nice man we’d been visiting more and more often in recent years. He felt me all over and I wagged a little, but I didn’t feel very well, and didn’t try to sit up.

  Mom came in, and she was crying, and Grandma and Grandpa were there, and even Rick came. I tried to let them know I appreciated all of their attention, but the pain was worse, and it was all I could do to roll my eyes to look at them.

  Then the nice man brought out a needle. I smelled a sharp and familiar smell and felt a tiny jab. After a few minutes, my pain felt a lot better, but now I was so sleepy, I just wanted to lie there and do chores. My last thoughts, as I drifted off, were, as always, of the boy.

  When I woke up, I knew I was dying. There was a sense within me of a rising darkness, and I had faced this before, when I was named Toby and was in a small, hot room with Spike and some other barking dogs.

  I hadn’t given it any thought at all, though I suppose deep down I knew that one day I would wind up like Smokey the cat. I remembered the boy crying the day they buried Smokey in the yard, and I hoped he wouldn’t cry over my death. My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn’t want to cause him any unhappiness now—in that way, I decided it was probably better than he wasn’t here to see this, though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly.

  The nice man came into the room. “You awake, Bailey? You awake, fella? Poor fella.”

  My name, I wanted to say, is not Fella.

  The nice man leaned over me. “You can let go, Bailey. You did a good job; you took care of the boy. That was your job, Bailey, and you did a good job; you are a good dog, a good dog.”

  I had the sense that the nice man was talking about death; there was a feeling of kind finality and peace emanating from him. Then Mom and Grandma and Grandpa and R
ick all came in, and they hugged me and said they loved me and told me I was a good dog.

  Yet from Mom I felt a tension, a sure sense of something—not danger, exactly, but something I needed to protect her from. I gave her hand a feeble lick and, as the darkness came from within me, I pushed back against it. I had to stay alert; Mom needed me.

  The tension seemed to rise after another hour went by, first Grandpa joining in Mom’s mood, then Grandma, and then even Rick, so that just as I felt myself flagging, a new resolve to protect my family from this unknown threat would renew my strength.

  And then I heard the boy. “Bailey!” he shouted. He burst into the room and the tension left everyone at once—this, I realized, was what they had been waiting for. Somehow, they’d known the boy was coming.

  The boy buried his face in my neck and sobbed. It took everything I had to lift my head up and lick him, to let him know it was all right. I wasn’t afraid.

  My breathing turned raspy, and everyone remained with me, holding me. It felt wonderful to receive so much attention, but then a shudder of pain shot through my stomach so sharp I couldn’t help but cry out loud. The nice man came in then, and he had another needle.

  “We need to do this now; Bailey shouldn’t have to suffer.”

  “Okay,” the boy said, crying. I tried to wag my tail at the sound of my name, but I found I couldn’t manage even a twitch. There was another jab in my neck.

  “Bailey, Bailey, Bailey, I’m going to miss you, doodle dog,” Ethan whispered in my ear. His breath was warm and delightful. I closed my eyes at the pleasure of it, the sheer pleasure of love from the boy, love by the boy.

  And then, just like that, the pain was gone—in fact, I felt like a puppy again, full of life and joy. I remembered feeling like this the first time I ever saw the boy, coming out of his house and running to me with his arms open wide. That made me think of diving after the boy during rescue, the fading light as I dove deeper, the way the thick water pushed against my body, just like now. I could no longer feel the boy’s hands touching me; I could just feel the water on all sides: warm and gentle and dark.

  { EIGHTEEN }

  Awareness came long after I’d come to recognize my mother’s smell and learned how to fight my way to her teat for nourishment. My eyes were open and my vision was starting to sharpen well enough for me to see my mother’s dark brown face the day I understood, with a jolt, that I was a puppy again.

  No, that wasn’t quite it. It was more that I was a puppy who suddenly remembered being me again. I had this sense of drifting in my sleep, aware of nothing but the long, long passage of time, not dreaming, not even thinking, and then, in a blink, I was looking at the world through the eyes of a very young dog. Yet somehow I remembered being this same puppy since birth, scrambling for my mother’s milk without any awareness of my previous lives.

  Now that I remembered everything that had come before, I was truly puzzled. I’d felt so complete, there just didn’t seem to be any reason for me to go on—how could I possibly have a more important mission than loving the boy?

  I missed Ethan so much I sometimes whimpered, which my new siblings always mistook for a weakness and jumped on me with the intent to dominate. There were seven of them, all dark brown with black markings, and I was impatient with the idea that they didn’t recognize who was going to be in charge, here.

  A woman took care of us most of the time, though there was a man who often came down into the basement to feed us and it was he who carried us in a box to the backyard when we were a few weeks old. A male dog in a cage sniffed at us when we all ran over to see him, and I understood instinctively that this was our father. I’d never met a father before, and was curious as to what he was doing there.

  “He seems fine with them,” the man said to the woman.

  “You going to be okay, Bernie? You want to come out?” The woman opened Father’s cage—his name was obviously Bernie—and the male dog bounded out, sniffed at us, and then went over to pee on the fence.

  We all galloped after him, falling on our faces because our puppy legs could barely move. Bernie put his face down and one of my brothers jumped up and disrespectfully bit at his ears, but Bernie didn’t seem to mind. He even played with us a little, knocking us around before trotting over to the back door to be let in.

  A few weeks later I was in the yard, showing one of my brothers who was boss, when I stopped and squatted and all at once realized I was a female! I sniffed in amazement at my urine, snarling a warning when my brother took the opportunity to barrel into me. What would Ethan think?

  How could I, Bailey, be a girl dog?

  Except I wasn’t Bailey. One day a man came and played with us in an unusual fashion. He clapped his hands, and the puppies who didn’t cower from the noise (I was one of these) he put into a box. Then one at a time he took those of us in the box out into the yard—when it was my turn, he turned and walked away from me as if he had forgotten I was there, so I followed. He told me I was a good dog just for doing that—this guy was a pushover. He was about the age that Mom had been the day she broke the car window and gave me some water, the first day I ever saw the boy.

  The man put me inside a T-shirt and then spoke to me, calling me. “Hey, girl, can you find your way out?” I figured he’d changed his mind about wanting me bagged up inside the shirt, so I jumped out and ran over to him again for more praise.

  The woman had come out into the yard to watch.

  “Most of them take a minute to figure it out, but this one’s pretty bright,” the man remarked. He flipped me over on my back, and I squirmed with it, playing, thinking to myself that it was unfair since he was so much bigger than I was.

  “She doesn’t like that, Jakob,” the woman observed.

  “None of them like it. The question is will she stop struggling and let me be the boss, or will she keep fighting? I got to have a dog that knows I’m the boss,” the man said.

  I heard the word “dog,” and it didn’t sound angry—I wasn’t being punished, but I was being pinned down. I figured I didn’t know what sort of game we were playing now, so I just relaxed without struggle.

  “Good girl!” he said again.

  Then he took a ball of paper and showed it to me, waving it around until I became absolutely tantalized. I felt stupid and uncoordinated, trying to get a bite of the thing with my little puppy mouth when it was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t move my head fast enough. Then he tossed it a few feet away, so I ran over and pounced on it. Aha! Try to get it now!

  Then I remembered Ethan and the stupid flip, how happy it made him when I brought the thing back to him. I turned around and trotted back to the man, dropping the ball at his feet and sitting for him to throw it again.

  “This one,” the man said to the woman. “I’ll take this one.”

  I whimpered when I saw the kind of car ride I was going to be taking—in the back of a truck, locked in a cage very similar to the one that had taken me to the hot noisy room with Spike. I was a front-seat dog; anyone could tell that!

  My new home reminded me of the apartment where we went to live after the fire. It was small, with a balcony over a parking lot, but it was down the street from a nice park where the man took me several times a day.

  I knew I was far away from Ethan by the smell of the trees and bushes—this wasn’t a wet place like the Farm, with frequent rain, though it was lush with flowers and shrubbery. The air was tinged with a strong smell of automobiles, which I could hear driving in the near and far distance every single hour of the day. Somedays a hot, dry wind blew in, reminding me of the Yard, but other days the air was thick with moisture, which never happened when I was Toby.

  The man’s name was Jakob, and he named me Elleya. “It’s Swedish for ‘moose.’ You’re not a German shepherd; you’re a Swedish shepherd, now.” I wagged in noncomprehension. “Elleya. Elleya. Come, Ellie, come.”

  His hands smelled of oil and his car and of papers and people.


  Jakob wore dark clothes and wore metal objects on his belt, including a gun, so I figured he was a policeman. When he was gone during the day a nice woman named Georgia came over every few hours to play with me and take me for a walk—she reminded me of Chelsea, who had lived down the street from Ethan and me and had a dog named Marshmallow and then later Duchess. Georgia had all sorts of names for me, some of them really silly, like Ellie-wellie Cuddle-Coo. It was sort of like being called a doodle dog—it was my name, but different, delivered with an extra dose of affection.

  I was doing my best to adjust to this new life as Ellie, so different from my life as Bailey. Jakob gave me a dog bed very similar to the one I’d been given in the garage, but this time I was expected to sleep in it—Jakob pushed me away when I tried to crawl under the covers with him, even though I could see he had plenty of room.

  I understood that what was expected of me was to live with the new rules, the way I’d learned to live with Ethan going to do college. The sharp pain I felt when I thought about how much I missed the boy was just something to get used to: a dog’s job was to do what people wanted.

  There was, though, a difference between obeying commands and having a purpose, a reason for being. I thought my purpose was to be with Ethan and that I’d fulfilled that purpose, being by his side as he grew up. If that was the case, why was I now Ellie? Could a dog have more than one purpose?

  Jakob treated me with a calm patience—when my little bladder suddenly signaled and let go all in the same rush, he never yelled and ran me out the door like the boy used to; he just gave me such praise for when I went outside that I resolved to get my body under control as soon as I could manage. But Jakob didn’t gush affection the way the boy did. Jakob focused on me in the businesslike fashion Ethan focused on Flare, the horse, and to an extent I liked the sense of direction it gave me—though there were other times I pined for the feel of the boy’s hands on my fur and couldn’t wait for Georgia to come over and call me Ellie-wellie Cuddle-Coo.