A Dog's Purpose

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “Hey,” he said, his voice muffled by the closed door. “Stop that.”

  I heard the rebuke and tried to sit obediently, but my butt bounced right back up.

  “What do you want?” he asked finally. I heard the question in his voice, wondered what he was asking me.

  Then I realized I didn’t have to wait for him to make up his mind—with the inner door open, the dog door was free. I lowered my head and pushed through the plastic curtain, bursting into the house.

  “Hey!” the old man shouted, surprised.

  I was surprised, too. The second I was in the house, I clearly smelled the person blocking my way. I knew who he was: I would recognize that scent anywhere.

  Unmistakably Ethan.

  I’d found the boy.

  { THIRTY }

  Though Ethan was standing, I tried to leap into his lap. I lunged up, straining to lick him, nuzzle him, climb on him. I couldn’t stop the sobs coming from my throat; I couldn’t keep my tail from flying.

  “Hey!” he said, backing away and blinking. He tried to steady himself on his cane, and then he sat down heavily on the floor. I jumped on him, licking his face. He pushed my mouth away. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “Stop it. Okay.”

  The feel of his hands on my face was the most wonderful sensation I’d ever encountered in my life. I half-closed my eyes with the pleasure of it. “Get back now; get back,” he said.

  The boy laboriously climbed back to his feet. I pressed my face into his hand, and he briefly stroked me. “Okay. Goodness. Who are you?” He snapped on another light, peering at me. “Whoa, you’re a skinny one. Doesn’t anybody feed you? Huh? Are you lost or something?”

  I could sit there all night and just listen to his voice and feel his gaze on me, but it wasn’t to be. “Well, look, you can’t come inside.” He opened the outer door and held it. “Out now, go on outside.”

  It was a command I recognized, so, reluctantly, I went. He stood and looked at me through the glass. I sat expectantly. “You’re going to have to go home, dog,” he said. I wagged. I knew I was “go home,” I was finally, finally “go home,” on the Farm where I belonged, with Ethan, where I belonged.

  He shut the door.

  I waited obediently until the strain was just too much and then yipped a bark full of impatience and frustration. When there was no response, I yipped again, giving the metal door a good pawing as well.

  I’d lost count of how many times I’d barked when the door opened again. Ethan was carrying a metal pan, succulent odors wafting off of it. “Here,” he muttered. “You hungry, buddy?”

  As soon as he set the pan down I dove into the dinner, bolting the food.

  “It’s mostly lasagna. I don’t have much in the way of dog food around here. You look like you’re not fussy, though.”

  I wagged.

  “You can’t live here, though. I can’t have a dog; I don’t have time for it. You’re going to have to go home.”

  I wagged.

  “Good lord, when was the last time you ate? Don’t eat so fast; you’ll make yourself sick.”

  I wagged.

  When I was done, Ethan bent slowly down to pick up the pan. I licked his face. “Yuck, you have really bad breath, you know that?” He wiped his sleeve on his face and stood back up. I watched him, ready to do anything he wanted. Go for a walk? Go for a car ride? Play with the stupid flip? “Okay then. You go on home; dog like you obviously isn’t a mutt. Somebody must be looking for you. Okay? Good night.”

  Ethan shut the door.

  I sat there for a few minutes. When I barked, the light over my head went off with a click.

  I went around to the small grassy hill by the side of the house and looked into the living room. Ethan was moving slowly across the floor, leaning on his cane, turning off one light after another.

  My boy was so old, I never would have recognized him. But now that I knew it was him, the gait was familiar, if more stiff, and the way he turned his head and peered out into the night before snapping off the final lamp, ears cocked as if listening for something, was pure Ethan.

  I was confused over being an outside dog, but the food in my belly and the exhaustion in my limbs soon overtook me and I curled up on the spot, tucking my nose near my tail even though the night was warm. I was home.

  When Ethan came outside the next morning I shook myself off and ran over to him, trying to restrain myself from showering so much affection on him. He stared at me. “Why are you still here, huh, boy? What are you doing here?”

  I followed him into the barn, where he let a horse I’d never seen before out into the yard. Naturally, the dumb animal didn’t react when he saw me—just gazed at me the way Flare used to, no comprehension registering. I’m a dog, you idiot! I marked the yard while Ethan gave the horse some oats. “How are you doing today, Troy? You miss Jasper, don’t you? You miss your pal Jasper.”

  Ethan was talking to the horse, which I could have told him was a complete waste of time. He stroked the horse’s nose, calling him Troy and mentioning the name Jasper more than once, though when I went into the barn the donkey wasn’t there, just his smell. Jasper’s scent was particularly strong in the trailer.

  “That was a sad day, the day I had to take Jasper in. He lived a good long time, though. Forty-four is pretty old for a little donkey.”

  I felt sorrow in Ethan and nuzzled his hand. He regarded me absently, his mind somewhere else. He gave Troy a final pat and went back into his house.

  A few hours later I was sniffing around the yard, waiting for Ethan to come out to play, when a truck swung up into the driveway. As soon as it stopped I recognized it as the one I’d seen in the parking lot of the dog park, and the man who eased himself out of the front seat was the same policeman I’d smelled who’d been probing the bushes with the pole and noose, which he now grabbed from the back of the truck.

  “You won’t need that!” Ethan called, stepping outside. I turned from the man and went wagging over to my boy. “He’s really cooperative.”

  “Just wandered up last night?” the policeman replied.

  “That’s right. Look at the ribs on the poor animal. You can tell he’s a purebred, but someone sure hasn’t been treating him right.”

  “We’ve heard reports of a nice-looking Labrador running loose down at the city park. Wonder if this is the same one,” the policeman said.

  “Don’t know about that. Pretty far,” Ethan replied dubiously.

  The man opened a cage on the back of his truck. “You think he’ll just go in? I’m not in a mood to chase him down.”

  “Hey, dog. Up here. Okay? Up here.” Ethan patted the inside of the open cage. I regarded him curiously for a moment and then gave a little leap, landing lightly inside. If that’s what the boy wanted me to do, that’s what I’d do. I would do anything for my boy.

  “Appreciate it,” the policeman said. He swung the cage door shut.

  “So what happens now?” Ethan asked.

  “Oh, dog like that will be adopted out pretty easy, I imagine.”

  “Well . . . would they call me, let me know? He’s a really nice animal; I’d like to know he’s okay.”

  “I don’t know about that. You’ll have to call the shelter, ask them to notify you. My job is just to pick them up.”

  “That’s what I’ll do, then.”

  The policeman and the boy shook hands. Ethan came over to my cage as the policeman slid into the front of the truck. I put my nose up against the bars, trying to make contact, breathing in Ethan’s scent. “You take care of yourself, okay, buddy?” Ethan said softly. “You need a nice home with kids to play with. I’m just an old man.”

  I was astounded when we drove off, Ethan still standing there, watching us go. I couldn’t help myself, I started barking, and I barked and barked all the way down the driveway and down the road past Hannah’s and beyond.

  This new development left me bewildered and heartbroken. Why was I being taken from Ethan? Was he sending me
away? When would I see him again? I wanted to be with my boy!

  I was taken to a building full of dogs, many of whom barked with fear all day long. I was put in a cage by myself, and within a day I was wearing a stupid plastic collar and had a familiar pain in my groin—was this why I was here? When was Ethan coming to take me for the car ride home?

  Every time someone passed my cage I leaped to my feet, expecting it to be the boy. As the days wore on, I sometimes gave voice to my frustration, joining the nonstop chorus of barking that rang off the walls. Where was Ethan? Where was my boy?

  The people who fed me and took care of me were gentle and kind, and I have to admit that I so craved human contact I went to them whenever one of them opened my cage, offering my head for stroking. When a family with three young girls came to visit me in a small room, I climbed into their laps and rolled on my back, so desperate was I to feel human hands on my body.

  “Can we keep him, Daddy?” one of the girls asked. The affection pouring off the three children made me squirm.

  “He is as black as coal,” the mother of the family said.

  “Coaly,” the father said. He held my head, looking at my teeth, and then lifted my front paws one by one. I knew what this meant; I’d been through this type of examination before. A cold fear grew in my stomach. No. I couldn’t go home with these people. I belonged to the boy.

  “Coaly! Coaly!” the girls chanted. I regarded them numbly, their adoration no longer welcome.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” the man said.

  “Dad-eee!”

  “But then when we’re done, we’ll come back and take Coaly for a car ride,” he finished.

  “Yay!”

  I heard the words “car ride” clearly but was relieved when, after a lot more hugging from the girls, the family left. I was put back in my cage, and curled up for a nap, a little mystified. I remembered when Maya and I did school, how it was my job to sit and let children pet me. Maybe this was the same thing, only now the children would be coming to me.

  I didn’t mind; what was important was that I’d been wrong, the family had not been here to take me away with them. I would wait for my boy. Human motivation is unfathomable to dogs, so I wasn’t sure why the two of us were separated, but I knew that when the time came, Ethan would Find me.

  “Good news, boy, you’ve got a new home,” the woman who fed me said as she passed in a bowl of fresh water. “They’ll be back soon, and we’ll get you out of this place for good. I knew it wouldn’t take long.” I wagged and let her scratch my ears, licking her hand, sharing her happy spirits. Yes, I thought in reply to her good mood, I am still here.

  “I’m going to call that man who brought you in. He’ll be happy to hear we found you a good family.”

  When she left I circled around a few times and settled down for a nap, back to waiting patiently for the boy.

  Half an hour later I sat bolt upright out of my sleep. A man’s voice had just come to me, an angry voice.

  Ethan.

  I barked.

  “My dog . . . my property . . . I’ve changed my mind!” he was shouting. I stopped barking and held perfectly still—I could sense him on the other side of the wall, and I stared at the door, willing it to open so I could smell him. And a minute later it did, the woman who had given me water leading the boy down the hallway. I put my paws up on the cage, wagging.

  The woman was furious; I could sense it. “Those children are going to be so disappointed,” she said. She opened my cage and I lunged out, crushing myself against the boy, wagging and licking and whimpering. The woman’s anger left her as she watched. “Well then,” she said. “My goodness.”

  Ethan stood at the counter for a few minutes, writing something down while I sat patiently at his feet and tried not to paw him. Then we were outside the door and in the front seat of the car for a car ride!

  Though it had been a long time since I’d had the wonderful thrill of a car ride with my nose out the window, what I wanted most was to put my head in Ethan’s lap and feel his hand stroke me, so that’s what I did. “You really do forgive me, don’t you, buddy?”

  I gave him an alert look.

  “I put you in jail, and you don’t care at all.” We drove a bit in comfortable silence. I wondered if we were headed to the Farm. “You are a good dog,” the boy finally said. I wagged with pleasure. “Okay, well, let’s stop and get you some dog food.”

  Eventually we did go back to the Farm, and this time when Ethan opened the front door to the house he held it open for me so I could trot right in.

  That night, after dinner, I lay at his feet, more content than I could ever remember being.

  “Sam,” he said to me. I raised my head expectantly. “Max. No. Winston? Murphy?”

  I wanted so much to please him, but I had no idea what he was asking of me. I found myself wishing he would command me to Find; I loved the idea of demonstrating the kind of work I could do.

  “Bandit? Tucker?”

  Oh, I knew what this was about. I gazed at him expectantly, waiting for him to make up his mind.

  “Trooper? Lad? Buddy?”

  There! I knew that word. I barked and he started in surprise.

  “Whoa, is that your name? Did they used to call you Buddy?”

  I wagged.

  “Well, okay, Buddy. Buddy, your name is Buddy.”

  By the next day I was fully comfortable responding to “Buddy.” It was my new name. “Here, Buddy,” he would call. “Sit, Buddy! Well, hey, somebody trained you pretty well, looks like. Wonder how you came to find yourself here; were you abandoned?”

  For the most part, I was afraid to leave Ethan’s side, that first day. I was surprised when he went to Grandpa and Grandma’s room to sleep, but didn’t hesitate when he patted the mattress, jumping up on the soft bed and stretching out in a groan of pure luxury.

  Ethan got out of bed several times that night to use the bathroom, and I loyally went with him on each occurrence, standing in the doorway while he did his business. “You don’t have to follow me every time, you know,” he told me. He also didn’t sleep in as late as he used to but was up with the sunrise, fixing both of us a breakfast.

  “Well, Buddy, I’m semi-retired now,” Ethan said. “I still have a few clients I consult with, and I’ve got a phone call scheduled with one of them this morning, but after that we’ve got the day free. I was thinking the two of us should work in the garden today. That sound good to you?”

  I wagged. I liked the name Buddy, I decided.

  After breakfast (I had toast!) the boy talked on the phone, so I explored the house. Upstairs felt little used—the rooms held a musty odor, with barely any evidence of Ethan’s presence. His room was still the same, but Mom’s room had no furniture and was full of boxes.

  A downstairs closet was firmly shut, but as I sniffed along the bottom crack a familiar scent wafted out.

  The flip.

  { THIRTY-ONE }

  There was a sadness in the boy, a deep hurt that was new to him and far more substantial than the pain that had settled in his leg.

  “It’s just me living here; I don’t know who you’re looking for,” Ethan told me as I examined every corner of the house. “I always meant to get married—came close to it a couple of times, in fact—but it never seemed to work out. Lived with a woman in Chicago for a few years, even.” The boy stood and stared sightlessly out the window, and the sadness in him increased. “John Lennon said that life’s what happens when you’re making other plans. I guess that sums it up, pretty much.” I went over to him and sat, lifting a paw to press against his thigh. He dropped his gaze down to me, and I wagged. “Well, hey, Buddy, let’s get you a collar.”

  We went upstairs to his bedroom, and he pulled a box down off a shelf. “Let’s see. Okay, here it is.”

  A jangle sounded from the box as Ethan lifted a collar out of the box and shook it. The noise was so familiar I shivered. As Bailey, I had made that same jangling sound whenever I had
moved. “This used to belong to my other dog, a long, long time ago. Bailey.”

  I wagged at the name. He showed it to me and I sniffed it, picking up the ever so faint scent of another dog. Me, I realized. I was smelling me—it was a very odd sensation.

  He shook the collar a few times. “Now that was a good dog, that Bailey,” he said. He sat for a moment, lost in thought, and then looked at me. When he spoke, his voice was rough, and I felt a surge of strong emotions come from him—sadness and love and regret and mourning. “I guess maybe we’d better get you your own collar, Buddy. It wouldn’t be right to make you try to live up to this one. Bailey . . . Bailey was a pretty special dog.”

  I was tense when the car ride the next day led us into town—I did not want to go back to the cage, in the place with all the barking dogs. But it turned out we were just picking up bags of food and a stiff collar for my neck, to which Ethan affixed some jingling tags when we got home.

  “It says: ‘My name is Buddy. I belong to Ethan Montgomery,’ ” he told me, holding one of the tags in his hand. I wagged my tail.

  After several such trips to town, I learned to relax my guard—it no longer felt as though Ethan were going to abandon me. I stopped haunting his side and took to wandering around on my own, stretching my territory out to include all of the Farm, paying special attention to the mailbox and additional places by the road where other male dogs had been.

  The pond was still there, and there was still a flock of stupid ducks living on its banks. For all I knew, they were the very same ducks—it hardly mattered; they acted the same when they saw me, jumping into the water in alarm and then swimming back to look at me. I knew there was no point in chasing them, but I did so anyway, just for the sheer joy of it.

  Ethan spent most of his day on his knees in a big, moist plot of ground behind the house, and I learned that he did not want me lifting my leg in that area. He talked to me while he played with the dirt, so I listened, wagging when I heard my name.