A Dog’s Journey Read Online Free PDF Page A

good as I sprawled on it.
    “You are such a good dog, a good dog,” Hannah whispered to me.
    I knew it wouldn’t be much longer, now. I focused on Hannah and she was smiling but also crying. Doctor Deb was stroking me, and I could feel her fingers looking for a fold of skin up by my neck.
    I found myself thinking of little Clarity. I hoped she would find another dog soon to watch over her. Everyone needs a dog, but for Clarity it was even more of a necessity.
    My name was Buddy. Before that it was Ellie, and before that it was Bailey, and before that it was Toby. I was a good dog who had loved my boy, Ethan, and had taken care of his children. I had loved his mate, Hannah. I knew that I would not be reborn, now, and that was okay. I had done everything a dog was supposed to do in this world.
    The love was still pouring off of Hannah as I felt the tiny pinch between Doctor Deb’s fingers. Almost instantly, the pain in my leg receded. A sense of peace filled me; a wonderful, warm, delicious wave of it, supporting my weight like the water in the pond. The touch of Hannah’s hands gradually left me, and, as I floated away in the water I felt truly happy.

 
    FOUR
    Images were just starting to resolve themselves in my bleary eyes when I remembered everything. One moment and I was a newborn puppy with no direction or purpose other than finding my mother’s milk, and the next moment I was me, still a puppy, but one with a memory of being Buddy, and of all the previous times I’d been a puppy in my lives.
    My mother’s fur was curly and short and dark. My limbs were dark as well—at least, what I could see of them through my newly opened eyes—but my soft fur was not at all curly. All of my siblings were equally dark colored, though as we bumped into each other I could feel that only one had fur like mine—the rest were as curly as our mother.
    I knew that my vision would soon clear, but I doubted that would do much to help me understand why I was a puppy again. My conviction had always been that I had an important purpose and that’s why I kept being reborn. Then everything I had ever learned to do added up to helping my boy, Ethan, and I had been by his side and had guided him through the final years of his life. And that, I thought, was my purpose.
    Now what? Was I to be reborn over and over, forever? Could a dog have more than one purpose? How was that possible?
    All the puppies slept together in a big box. As my limbs grew stronger I explored our surroundings and it was pretty much as exciting as a box could be. Sometimes I’d hear footsteps descending stairs and then a fuzzy shape would lean over the box, speaking with either the voice of a man or the voice of a woman. The way our mother wagged her tail let me know these were the people who took care of her and loved her.
    Pretty soon I could see they were, indeed, a man and a woman—that’s how I thought of them, as the Man and the Woman.
    One day the Man brought a friend to grin down at us. The friend had no hair on his head except for around his mouth.
    “They are so cute,” the bald one with the hairy mouth said. “Six pups, that’s a nice-sized litter.”
    “You want to pick one up?” the Man responded.
    I froze as I felt what seemed like huge hands come down and grab me. I held still, a little intimidated, as the man with mouth hair lifted me up and stared at me.
    “This one’s not like the others,” the man holding me said. His breath smelled powerfully of butter and sugar, so I licked the air a little.
    “No, she has a brother that’s the same way. We’re not sure what happened—Bella and the sire are both AKC poodles, but that one sure doesn’t look like a poodle. We’re thinking … Well, there was this afternoon when we forgot to close the back door. Bella could have gotten out. Maybe another male got over the fence,” the Man said.
    “Wait, is that even possible? Two different fathers?”
    I had no idea what they were talking about,