A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

kennel area to feed the dogs, he didn’t speak much to any of us, radiating a bland indifference so at odds with the kindness of the men tending the dogs in the Yard. When the puppies in the kennel next to us rushed over to greet him, he pushed them away from the dinner bowl with a grunt, letting the mother have access to her food. We were less coordinated in our attack and usually didn’t manage to tumble our way to the cage door before he’d already moved on and our mother let us know we were not to share her meal.
    Sometimes the man would be talking when he moved from cage to cage, but not to us. He spoke softly, focused on a piece of paper in his hands.
    “Yorkshire terriers, week or so,” he said one time, looking in at the dogs in the cage to our right. He stopped in front of our pen and peered inside. “Golden retrievers, probably three weeks yet, and got a Dalmatian ready to pop any day.”
    I decided my time in the Yard had prepared me to dominate the puppies in my family, and was irritated they didn’t feel the same way. I’d maneuver to grab one the way Top Dog had grabbed Rottie, and then two or three of my siblings would jump on top of
me
, not understanding the point of the whole thing at all. By the time I’d fought them off, the original target of my attentions would be off wrestling with someone else, as if it were all some kind of game. When I tried a menacing growl, though, I sounded ridiculously nonthreatening, my brothers and sisters joyously growling back.
    One day the spotted dog next to us drew our attentions—she was panting and pacing nervously—and we instinctively hung close to our mother, who was watching our neighbor intently. The spotted dog ripped up a blanket, shredding it with her teeth, and circled around several times before lying down with a gasp. Moments later, I was shocked to see a new puppy lying by her side, covered in spots and cloaked in a slippery-looking film, some kind of sac that the mother immediately licked off. Her tongue pushed the little puppy over, and after a minute it groggily crawled toward its mother’s teats, which reminded me that I was hungry.
    Our mother sighed and let us feed awhile before she abruptly stood up and walked away, one of my brothers dangling along for a second before dropping off. I jumped on him to teach him a lesson, which wound up taking a lot of time.
    When next I glanced over at the spotted dog, there were six more puppies! They looked spindly and weak, but the motherdidn’t care. She licked them, guiding them to her side, and then lay quietly while they fed.
    The man came and entered the cage where the newborns lay sleeping, looking them over before turning and walking away. Next he opened the door for the furry-looking puppies in the kennel to the right of ours and released them into the grassy area!
    “No, not you,” he said to the mother, blocking her way as she tried to follow. He shut her in and then put bowls of food down for the puppies, which they climbed in and licked off of each other—these idiots wouldn’t last a day in the Yard. The mother sat behind her cage door and whimpered until her brood had quit feeding, and then the man let her out to join her pups.
    The hairy little dogs came over to our cage door to sniff us, finally going nose-to-nose with us after living next door for these past few weeks. I licked at the goop on their faces while one of my brothers stood on my head.
    The man left the puppies running free while he departed out a gate in the wooden fence that was exactly like the one Carlos and Bobby always accessed to enter the Yard. I watched jealously as the puppies ranged up and down the tiny patch of grass, sniffing hello to the other caged dogs and playing with each other. I was tired of being inside the pen and wanted to get out and explore. Whatever was my purpose in my new life, this didn’t feel like it.
    After a few hours, the man returned, carrying another dog who looked exactly like the