Shelby's Story

by W. Bruce Cameron

  She jumped back up to bark at me, and I let my ears droop to show her that I had not meant to be disrespectful.

  She forgave me and licked my nose. I licked her ear. Then she raced away to show how happy she was to meet a new friend, jumped into the air, and soared right over Luke’s back.

  What? I had never for a moment supposed a dog could do a trick like that!

  I barked with excitement. How wonderful to be out in a yard with these new friends! And things got even more wonderful when darkness started to fall and Teresa called us in.

  It was hard for me to believe, but we did not have to go to our pens! At all!

  In the biggest room of the house there was a couch, and all of the dogs piled onto it together. Angel jumped up last and snuggled down into a crevice between Luke’s back and Hercules’s rump. Teresa patted us all and rubbed our ears. “Shelby, you’re going to fit in here just fine,” she told me when it was my turn. “You’re going to be a wonderful dog.”

  I wriggled down among them as if I had been sleeping with them my whole life. It felt good to be lying in a heap of dogs. We were together. We were a pack. I used to have a family, with a mother and littermates, but a pack was even better, because dogs in a pack get something dogs in a family do not.

  Our own bowls. Our very own bowls!

  Teresa lined the bowls up on the floor near the couch and filled them with food and we all ate! There was enough for all of us!

  I gulped down my food until my stomach was wonderfully full, and then I looked around. All the other dogs were still eating, so I stepped back and went to the water bowl and took a drink.

  “Good girl, Shelby,” Teresa said, and stroked my head. “You’ve got lovely manners.”

  Teresa went into another room and shut the door, and I spent my first night sleeping together with my pack. My stomach was not angry with hunger. There was a roof over my head, so that even if it rained, I would not get wet. I had friends to play with and to curl up next to at night. I could not remember ever being so happy before.

  * * *

  In the morning, I woke up before any of my pack and squirmed out from under Hercules’s muzzle, which was planted in the middle of my back. The big dogs all shifted and sighed and went back to sleep when I jumped to the floor. Angel yapped irritably when she fell off Bode’s back and landed on the cushions of the couch, but she curled back up against Luke’s flank and settled down.

  I was restless and wanted to explore, but the door to outside was closed, so I paced from room to room. I found a room that smelled very strongly of Teresa, but its door was firmly shut as well. I stood outside it for a while in case Teresa came out, but she didn’t, so I went on.

  Next I found a room that smelled delicious, but that kept its odors hidden behind cupboard doors and inside a big white cold box. I later learned that this room was called a kitchen.

  Beside the kitchen was a small sunny room with lots of windows. In a corner of this room was a small pen, even smaller than the one I’d been in for my long car ride. And inside the cage was … something.

  It looked like a lump of feathers, yellow and tan and blue. And it smelled like a bird. I knew about birds. I’d seen them on trees and in the sky and on the ground, where sometimes it was fun to run at them and bark because they’d flap up into the air and make interesting sounds.

  But I’d never seen one in a pen before. I stepped closer. And the bird did something extraordinary.

  It pulled its head out from under one wing, and I saw that it had an enormous beak—bigger than any bird I’d ever seen. It looked at me grumpily. And then it let out the loudest squawk I’d ever heard in my life.

  It was almost as though the bird had barked at me! I was so startled that I barked back! Bode and Luke came barreling into the room to see what the excitement was about. They looked around, saw no threat, and raced back out to run in circles around the couch and bark some more, because it was morning and we were all awake and our pack was together.

  “All right, all right,” I heard Teresa groan. I heard footsteps on the floor, and a door opened.

  Teresa! I wanted to run to her and greet her and check to see if she’d stuffed any treats in her pockets. But I didn’t. The bird was still staring at me through the bars of its pen.

  I put my rump on the floor and stared back.

  What else was there to do? I couldn’t chase this bird. I couldn’t make it fly up into the air. But it didn’t seem right to leave it alone, either. It was strange and big and it had barked at me!

  It was important to keep an eye on it.

  That’s what I did until I heard food being dumped into our bowls. Naturally I had to go and eat. But I did not forget the bird. I’d be back later.

  Once Teresa had fed us and petted us and talked to us, she let us all outside into the yard. Wonderful! Games! I showed Hercules how my sister and I used to play I’m-Bigger-Than-You and You-Can’t-Catch-Me. Then he jumped into the pool, but I didn’t feel like following him.

  I’d never seen so much water all in one place before, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. Water was for drinking, in bowls or puddles. Jumping into it reminded me of how the rain used to come out of the sky and soak me, and how cold I’d be afterward.

  It wasn’t cold here at Teresa’s house; the sun was fierce and warmed my skin up through my fur. Playing in the yard made me pant and gulp down water from the bowls Teresa kept filled outside. But I still didn’t want to go in the pool.

  As I watched Hercules swim, something tiny and scaly and low to the ground darted close by my feet and slipped into a crack between two stones. I came over to investigate while Hercules climbed out of the pool, shook hard, and jumped back in again.

  Why had he bothered to get out, then?

  I put my nose to the crack between the stones and sniffed. Something smelled interesting in there. Animal, but not with fur. I could not get to it. The crack was too small.

  I pawed at the crack for a bit, but I could not get a foot inside.

  Angel raced up to me and ran beneath my belly. A few feet away, she paused and looked back. I knew she wanted me to play Chase-Me, but next to her was another one of those little scaly creatures sitting on top of a flat rock.

  It flicked a tongue at me, as if it wanted to lick me. I moved toward it.

  It leaped off its rock and dashed away among the sparse grass of Teresa’s yard.

  So of course I chased it.

  The scaly thing ran between blades of grass and I ran after it, but it moved so quickly! Even quicker than the rats I used to meet back at the place of plastic bags. And it shifted directions as if the wind were blowing it from side to side, making my feet slip and skid on the ground as I tried to keep up.

  It zipped beneath the fence around Teresa’s yard and was gone. I was so close behind it that my nose banged into the boards of the fence. I sat down and barked in frustration.

  Bode ran up to me with a ball between his teeth, so of course we had a good game of It’s-My-Ball-You-Can’t-Have-It. But right in the middle of the game, another scaly creature actually ran between my paws!

  Even though we were in the middle of a game, I had to chase it. Bode dropped the ball to bark at me, but I was too busy to respond. This time I was so close to the creature that I knew I was going to snap it up any moment! I dove forward and tried to close my teeth on it, but all I got was a mouthful of dirt.

  The little thing had raced under Teresa’s house and vanished! So unfair!

  I heard laughing. Teresa had come out of the house and was watching us play.

  All the other dogs rushed over to her and she talked to them and stroked heads and rubbed ears and scratched backs. That looked nice. I hurried over to get my share of attention.

  “That’s a good girl, Shelby. Good girl, Shelby,” Teresa told me, and she nudged Luke aside so that I could squeeze in close to her legs. She crouched down so she could look right in my face and put her hands on each side of my neck to rub my fur with her strong f
ingers. That felt marvelous! I licked her chin.

  “You like chasing lizards, huh? Well, there are a lot of them, so you’ll be busy. We’re going to get along just fine, Shelby,” Teresa told me. “You’ll learn to be my dog in no time. And then we can really get started.”

  I began to understand something then, as the other dogs scattered around the yard to keep playing and I stayed with Teresa for more petting and talking. I didn’t just have a dog pack now. I had a person, too. I had Teresa.

  That was such an exciting thought that I wiggled all over, from paws to head to tail. Teresa laughed, and I pushed my head under her arm so I could snuggle as close to her as possible. I leaned into her until she nearly fell over. She had to sit down on the ground with me to hold me.

  I was like all those other dogs at Megan and TJ’s house with all the pens. People had come for me, and now I had a home. This was why those dogs had been so delighted. They were going to a place where they would be loved by a person, and there was nothing more wonderful than that, not even chicken!

  A person was even better than a dog pack. A person could scratch behind ears and fill up bowls with food.

  And a person did even more than that. A person could give a dog somewhere to belong. I was here with Teresa, in the place with the pool and the lizards and the couch for sleeping, and it was my place, in a way my pen had never been, or my spot in the clearing, or even the room with the bed.

  Those had been places to stay, but not my places. I’d moved on from all of them. But this place—this was mine. Because this person was mine.

  I pulled my head back out from under Teresa’s arm and licked Teresa’s face and hands and enjoyed the taste of her skin—salty from sweat, sweet from some honey she’d eaten for breakfast. “Oh, Shelby!” she told me. “What a love you are, Shelby!”

  That was the first time I understood why people kept saying that word around me. “Shelby.”

  It was my name. I had a person and a pack and a name.

  That made me so happy that I had to race around the yard and knock Hercules into the pool and chase three lizards before I ran back to Teresa again.

  That night as I lay comfortably on top of Bode and Hercules, something occurred to me. I raised my head and Angel did the same, watching me curiously.

  I now understood that when dogs went with Megan to the place of kittens and barking they eventually left and were happy, because they wound up in a home just like this, with people and dogs to love them.

  Splotch had been in that same place before I even arrived. That meant she was out there somewhere, curled up on a couch just like this, sleeping on another dog’s head just like me. She had her own Teresa. She was safe and happy and loved.

  Angel crawled forward and touched her nose to mine, worried something was wrong and keeping me awake. I wagged to let her know that everything was very, very right.

  7

  So many wonderful things happened in those first days with Teresa, it was hard to keep track of them all. Food in (my own) bowl. Lizards to chase. Lots of petting and talking and chances to hear my name in Teresa’s voice. Teresa gave me a present—a collar to wear around my neck with a tag that jangled.

  It felt a little funny around my neck at first, and I shook my head hard to see if I could get it off. But it stayed. And I noticed that Luke and Bode and Hercules and Angel had collars like this as well. It must be something that our pack did. After a day or two I got used to it and did not notice it so much anymore.

  The collar was a little strange, though I came to like it. But when Teresa showed me something new—something she called a toy—I knew I’d found the best thing in the world.

  “Look, Shelby!” she told me on my third or fourth day at her house. She pulled something out of a rustling paper bag and tossed it into the air. “Here’s a toy for you. Catch!”

  I jumped up and grabbed it. Of course I did! It was soft and furry and looked a little like a squirrel. Although it did not smell anything like one.

  When my teeth closed around the toy, it made a noise. It squeaked!

  I was so startled I dropped it and took a few paces back, in case it was going to do something else unexpected. But it just lay there on the floor.

  Luke was interested in it, too. He ambled over to sniff at it, and I jumped forward.

  That toy was not Luke’s. That toy was mine!

  I snatched it up right in front of his nose and it let out another squeak. This time I was expecting it, though. I didn’t drop it.

  I danced away from Luke and shook the toy hard. I don’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

  It was quiet. Had I killed it? It didn’t smell like something that was alive, but it had made that noise. Often things that made noises were alive. I’d noticed that.

  I let the toy drop to the ground. It just lay there. Dead?

  I picked it up again. Squeak!

  This was amazing! It was so exciting that I honestly didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad one. A threat? A game? I couldn’t tell! I raced around the house with the toy gripped tightly in my teeth. Luke and Bode chased me, but I never dropped the toy so that one of them could have a turn.

  My toy! Mine!

  After a while Luke and Bode gave up the chase and I jumped up on the couch with my new toy. I curled up with it and chewed and chewed and chewed.

  Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

  It wasn’t a threat, I decided. It was a game. It was the perfect game. I bit hard and the toy squeaked at me.

  “I may regret this,” Teresa said, watching me. But she came over and sat on the couch next to me, stroking my back while I chewed.

  How marvelous. My person and my new toy, both at once.

  Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

  * * *

  A few weeks after I’d met Teresa, we started to do something new. She called it Training.

  Training was confusing sometimes.

  On our first day, Teresa came out to the backyard, where I was just about to catch a lizard. She whistled sharply. Every dog’s head turned to look at her, including mine.

  The lizard dashed through a crack in the fence and vanished. Frustrating! But Teresa was here, and that was even more important than lizards.

  She was holding some long ropes in her hands. Later on I learned that those ropes were called leashes, but I didn’t know that the first day I saw one.

  I ran to Teresa, along with Luke and Bode and Hercules and Angel. When the other dogs saw the ropes, they danced with excitement. Hercules tore himself away from Teresa to race in a big circle around the pool and come back to her feet, panting. I was so fired up I yipped aloud, though I truthfully had no idea what was going on. Bode jumped up to put his front paws on Teresa and grinned in her face.

  “No, Bode, Off!” Teresa said sternly. She backed up and he dropped to the ground. I could tell from the droop of his ears and his head that he felt ashamed of himself.

  Teresa clipped a rope onto my collar. I was startled and remembered the woman who’d grabbed my sister. She’d put a loop over my sister’s neck, attached to a stick.

  I knew this was not the same thing. Teresa was holding a rope, not a stick. And Teresa was one of the good people. I trusted Teresa. I loved Teresa.

  But something attached to a loop around my neck still made me nervous. I pulled away from Teresa. I lowered my head and shook it, trying to let my collar slip off over my ears.

  “No, baby, it’s okay,” Teresa said gently. “I know you haven’t been on a leash before. Look, Luke will show you. It’s okay.”

  Her voice was gentle, but I was still uneasy. My tail was low and didn’t stir.

  She clipped one of the ropes onto Luke’s collar. Luke didn’t seem worried at all. He barked happily and leaned into the rope, trying to pull Teresa over to the gate in the fence.

  “Just Luke and Shelby this time,” Teresa told the other dogs. “Your turn later.”

  She tugged gently on the rope around my neck. I braced
my feet and didn’t move.

  “Shelby, Shelby,” Teresa said gently. “Come, Shelby. This is okay. Come with me.”

  I liked to hear my name in Teresa’s voice. I moved toward her. Maybe she’d say it again.

  “Good girl, Shelby,” Teresa said. Luke and Teresa and I all moved together. We walked around the yard slowly. I stayed close to Teresa, and the rope did not tug at my neck.

  Luke trotted happily at Teresa’s side. The rope that connected his collar to her hand danced in the air.

  Oh! A new idea came to me, and it was so surprising that I stopped walking.

  The rope connected Luke to Teresa. And it did the same thing for me! When one end of the rope was on my collar and the other was in her hand, she could not go away from me.

  Teresa turned to look at me. She pulled very gently on the rope, and I went at once to her side. My tail had started to swish back and forth.

  “See there? It’s fine. What a smart girl you are, Shelby,” Teresa said.

  I wagged even faster. I liked Teresa very much. I even liked the rope if it kept Teresa and me close together.

  That was the first day of Training. I slowly came to understand that Training was a job.

  When I’d been living in the world with my sister or when I’d been at the place of plastic bags, my job had been to fill my complaining stomach with food. It had been such a difficult job, and had taken all my time and attention.

  Then Megan had found me and taken me to the building where there were many barking dogs in pens. Food had appeared in my bowl, every day. The job of filling my stomach was taken care of.

  Later I had become Teresa’s dog. That meant I had new jobs to do. Playing with my pack. Chasing the lizards. Staring at the bird in the cage who sometimes barked at me. And, of course, chewing my toy that went squeak!

  These were all very important jobs, and I did them as well as I could.

  But Training was something different. It was better. Because Training was a job that Teresa and I did together.