Puppy Tales 07 - Lily's Story

by Cameron, W Bruce

  I skidded to a stop and spun around, running after it, my mouth open. I snagged that ball on the run, lifting it triumphantly and trotting past my girl and her brother, chewing it proudly.

  “Bring it here, Lily!” my girl called. That meant she was going to chase after me very soon and try to grab the ball. Good, I was ready!

  “Hey! Bad dog!” Bryan called harshly.

  His tone brought me up short. I stared at him, confused. What was his problem?

  “No!” Maggie Rose scolded Bryan. “That’s not how you do it. Amelia says you train a dog with love and praise and treats, not by yelling at it.”

  “That’s stupid.” Bryan snorted. “My soccer coach yells all the time. It’s just how you get people to do what you say.”

  “People, maybe, but not dogs,” my girl replied.

  I wagged a bit uncertainly. Weren’t we going to play ball anymore?

  Bryan folded his arms. “Okay, let’s see. Try it your way.”

  “Bring it here, Lily!” Maggie Rose called. There was an odd note in her voice, and I cocked my head at her curiously. I was ready to have her run after me in the yard, playing Bring It Here, but she seemed upset about something.

  I let the ball dribble from my mouth and then pounced on it, trying to lure her into chasing me.

  “Please, Lily!” Maggie Rose said.

  “Stupid dog,” Bryan said scornfully.

  Maggie Rose whirled on him. “Why do you always have to be mean?”

  Bryan blinked. “What?”

  “You are always so mean to me!”

  I wandered over, ball in my jaws. What had happened to our game?

  “I’m mean to you?” Bryan repeated.

  “Yes!”

  Bryan stared at her. I went to my girl and dropped the ball. It bounced at her feet. Neither one of them seemed to notice.

  My girl folded her arms. “Mom says that the kids at school are always picking on you, and that’s why you pick on me. And it’s not fair.”

  “They do not,” Bryan said. Suddenly, his voice and face were angry. “I can take care of myself at school and everywhere else.”

  I jumped on the ball, and it skittered away when my front paws hit it. I grabbed it in my mouth. Maggie Rose and Bryan both seemed tense, which was very strange. We had a bouncy ball. What more could they possibly want?

  “And I’m not mean,” Bryan continued. “Mean is like I hit you or something. I never hit anybody.”

  “Mean is words, too,” Maggie Rose said, looking at him hard.

  Bryan put his hands in his pockets and stared at the fence for a moment. I looked in the same direction, but there was nothing to see.

  I dropped the ball again. My meaning was clear, but no one seemed to get what they were supposed to do.

  People are much more complicated than dogs, I decided. Or maybe dogs are just smarter, because I had never met one who wouldn’t be instantly delighted to have a ball bouncing at their feet.

  Bryan looked away from the fence. Maybe he’d figured out that it was not likely to do anything interesting. He scowled at Maggie Rose. “There’s nobody in this neighborhood but little kids,” Bryan muttered. “Back home, I used to get back from school and play football or basketball with Ricky and Calvin and Jason. Now when I get home from school, there’s nothing to do.”

  “What about soccer?” Maggie Rose asked.

  Bryan kicked at the dirt. “I don’t have any friends on the team.” He sighed. “I’m not very good yet.”

  “Oh,” Maggie Rose replied.

  Bryan abruptly left us, going back inside through the door. Maggie Rose crouched and snatched up the ball before I could get it. I was secretly pleased. We couldn’t really play Bring It Here unless somebody threw the ball, and I wasn’t able to do that myself.

  I tensed, crouched, my legs wide, my focus on the ball in her hand. “Get it!” she sang, tossing the ball. It hit the ground with far less force than Bryan had put into his toss, but I was thrilled, anyway. I chased after the toy, grabbing it up.

  “Bring it here!” Maggie Rose told me.

  I pranced past the fence, the ball in my mouth, ready for her to come after me. I knew she would. And she did! She ran after the ball, and we wrestled for it. I let her tug it out of my mouth after a little bit so that we could start the game all over.

  Then the door opened, and Bryan came back out. I halted and regarded him curiously; I had thought he didn’t want to play.

  Bryan walked up to Maggie Rose. “Here,” he said. He thrust something forward.

  Treat? I dropped the ball and trotted over to see what we were doing now.

  My girl took the object in her hand. When I sat at her feet, I could tell it had almost no odor.

  “I got it at the school book fair. See? It’s a journal,” Bryan said. “All the pages are blank inside. So you can write whatever you want. You can draw pictures or do poems and stuff. A lot of the girls have them in my class.”

  Maggie Rose was staring at the thing in her hand as if it were a piece of chicken. I wondered if she was going to throw it. Would it bounce like the ball?

  “Thank you, Bryan,” she whispered.

  “So, like, it’s personal. Private. That means whatever you write, nobody else can read it except you. Okay? That’s the rules for a personal journal.”

  My girl was smiling. She threw her arms wide and gave Bryan a giant hug.

  “Hey,” he complained.

  “It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever done,” Maggie Rose claimed, smiling.

  “Yeah, well, whatever,” Bryan muttered. He was looking down at the ground and frowning and grinning at the same time. He seemed both tense and really happy, and I could feel the love in him for my girl.

  At that moment, I liked Bryan very much, not just because of the peanut butter odor but because he loved Maggie Rose and I did, too.

  7

  Apparently, we were done with the ball, because we went back inside, leaving the toy forgotten in the yard. It would be there, though, next time we walked through the door!

  Bryan went off in another direction, but I stayed with Maggie Rose, who took me down the rows of kennels. Oscar meowed at us, and Maggie Rose stopped to greet him. Then she opened the door to Brewster’s pen. Brewster roused himself from his slumber and blinked at us, wagging his tail in a way that I knew meant he didn’t want to get out of bed unless a person made him.

  “Okay, Lily. Go sit by Brewster. I want to draw a picture of you. I’m going to call it Lily and Brewster. Okay?”

  I looked at her expectantly. Clearly, something wonderful was about to happen!

  Or not. Maggie Rose picked me up and carried me over to Brewster. We sniffed each other. Neither one of us had any idea what Maggie Rose wanted us to do.

  “Okay! Good dog! Stay, Lily, stay!”

  I looked at Brewster. He looked at me. Sighing, he put his head down. I looked at Maggie Rose.

  Now what?

  She was bent over the thing that Bryan had handed her out in the yard. She had a stick in her hand and was making faint scratching sounds with it. I yawned.

  The thing about Brewster was that his naps were like a leash, pulling me into the same deep sleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and soon I was sprawled out next to him. He put his head on my chest, just like my mother dog.

  I opened my eyes when Maggie Rose stirred, but Brewster didn’t. I wiggled out from under Brewster’s head, and he didn’t even notice. I bowed and stretched to get rid of the sleepy feeling in my legs, watching my girl for a sign about what we were going to do next.

  “Want to see the picture I drew?” my girl asked me. She held out the dry, flat thing that Bryan had handed to her. I sniffed at it politely.

  “Want to know what else I did? I wrote a wish, Lily,” Maggie Rose said.

  I sat and scratched at my ear with my rear paw.

  “My wish is about you, Lily. I wrote down that I want you to be my dog forever. I wrote that I hope that every day, whe
n I go to school, you’ll come here to be with Mom and Amelia. And when I get home, I’ll come straight here to the rescue, and I’ll clean the cat cages and fold the towels and do all the work I always do, but you’ll be right here with me. And when I go home, you’ll go home with me. You’ll sleep on my bed. You’re my dog, Lily. Mine, and nobody else’s.”

  I wagged because there was something so happy and hopeful in her voice, I could hear it and feel it.

  “You know what else, Lily? Bryan isn’t so mean after all,” Maggie Rose told me.

  * * *

  Several days later, we were back to playing the game with the ball where my girl would throw it, yell, “Bring it back!” and then run after me. I loved that game!

  I’d just gotten my teeth on the ball for the tenth time when the back door opened. Maggie Rose looked up. “Hi, Dad!”

  “How’s my game warden girl today?” Dad replied as he came up to us. He was smiling. I wagged at Dad. We he going to play Bring It Here? Two people chasing me with the ball would be even better than one!

  “I’m teaching Lily to retrieve, but she doesn’t understand,” my girl replied. I wagged at her because she’d said my name.

  “Well, I don’t want to interrupt your dog training, but I thought you might like to go with me to do something very important,” Dad said.

  “Can I bring Lily?” Maggie Rose asked eagerly.

  Dad nodded. “I knew you’d want to. I already asked your mom, and she said yes.”

  Just like that, we were done playing. Now, as far as I was concerned, there could hardly be any activity more interesting than a game with a ball. Even so, I eagerly trotted after my girl and Dad as they left the yard. Anything with people is better than anything with just a dog—or even a dog and a ball.

  When the leash clicked into my collar, Maggie Rose offered me a treat. Life was great!

  This time, she pushed through a different door to go to a new Outside, another yard with a vehicle parked in it. The thing smelled strongly of other places and other things, and I began sniffing it eagerly.

  “Hop in the truck, Maggie Rose,” Dad said as he opened a back door. My girl climbed into the thing called truck, patting her legs.

  “Come, Lily!”

  I jumped in, wagging. Maggie Rose unsnicked my collar—no treat for that. But sometime soon she might reattach it, and I’d get something then!

  Dad closed the door, and I watched, excited, as he went around the front of the truck and opened his door and slid in. We had the entire back seat to ourselves!

  “When do I get to sit up front with you, Dad?” Maggie Rose asked.

  “When you’re a little older, honey. Right now, you’d be in danger if the airbag went off.”

  “When I’m bigger, you mean,” Maggie Rose corrected softly. A tinge of sadness mingled in with her words.

  “You’ll hit a growth spurt soon, I promise. Look at Craig. He’s shot up a foot since we moved here.”

  I jumped down off my girl’s lap and settled below her feet. Dad’s door shut with a slam, but that didn’t bother me. When the floor began to shake and bounce, that didn’t bother me, either. I was with my girl and Dad. And coming from the far back of the truck was an animal smell I recognized. Another animal was in here with us! And I was pretty sure I knew who it was!

  “Why do you call this a truck, Dad?” Maggie Rose asked. “Craig says it’s an SUV.”

  Dad chuckled. “Right, I guess technically Craig is correct. But to me, it’s a truck. Remember that sports car I had back in Michigan? This big old Expedition is as far from a Corvette as you can get, so I call it a truck.”

  Maggie Rose was quiet for a little while. “Do you miss Michigan?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Not at all,” Dad replied. “I used to go to an office and stare at a computer screen all day, but now I get to drive up into the mountains and help animals. Your mom’s happy, too; after working in that huge hospital for ten years, she gets to do something she’s passionate about. The rescue was failing when they put her in charge, and now it’s got enough money to keep going, and the volunteers are organized. Why, do you miss where we used to live, Maggie Rose?”

  “No, I like helping animals, too.”

  “That’s my game warden girl.”

  “Bryan wishes we would move back, though.”

  Dad sighed. “I know. He’s still having some trouble adjusting.”

  “Maybe our family needs a dog,” Maggie Rose suggested.

  I wagged a little at the word dog.

  “Oh? Did Bryan say he wants a dog?” Dad asked.

  “If he did, could he have one?” my girl countered.

  Dad was quiet for a moment. “What are you getting at, Maggie Rose?”

  “Lily is the best dog,” my girl said in a rush. “She would help Bryan feel better about living here in Colorado. And me, she would help me feel better, and then I would get straight As and would do all my chores, and I would walk her and clean up after her and feed her. Please, Dad, can I keep Lily?”

  “Oh,” Dad responded slowly. “Now I get it. Have you already spoken to your mother about this?”

  Maggie Rose was silent.

  “Honey? What did your mom say?”

  “She said maybe not,” Maggie Rose mumbled.

  “Okay, well, I think we’d better do what your mom says,” Dad replied cheerfully. “Right? She’s the one who’s the expert in animal rescue.”

  Maggie Rose looked out the window. That sadness was back in her. I sat up and gave her leg a lick to remind her that with a puppy lying under her shoes, there was no reason to be unhappy, but she didn’t look down at me, and her mood didn’t improve.

  For a long time, no one said anything.

  “Where are we going today, Dad?” Maggie Rose asked finally.

  “Your mom cut the cast off the squirrel this morning, and the squirrel looks fully recovered, so we’re letting her loose,” Dad answered.

  “Sammy? Sammy’s a girl?”

  I was right! Sammy was the name of the animal I could smell in the back! She was a squirrel!

  “Sammy? Is that her name?” Dad replied with a small laugh.

  My girl was quiet for a moment. “Samantha,” she decided. “Sammy is short for Samantha.”

  The motion of the truck vibrated through my body, making me a little sleepy. I yawned.

  “Samantha,” Dad agreed.

  “Are we letting her loose in a park?” Maggie Rose asked.

  “Well, no. Samantha’s an American red squirrel, and they’re territorial. I’ve been scouting around, and I’ve found a stand of pine trees near an old storage shed that doesn’t have any other squirrels living there.”

  “So Sammy won’t have any friends to play with?” Maggie Rose asked. She sounded a little worried. “Like Bryan?”

  “No, but that’s okay. Territorial means that other squirrels wouldn’t want her moving in to their neighborhood, and they’d fight with her. When she’s ready to have babies, she’ll be very popular with boy squirrels, I promise.”

  My eyes kept blinking shut. Each time, it seemed harder to open them, so I just gave up. I jerked awake, though, when the truck lurched to a stop.

  Maggie Rose clicked a leash into my collar. Treat! She and I slipped out onto some grassy ground, and I shook and then squatted, looking up expectantly at my girl when I was done. Treat!

  When I was done with the second treat and realized my girl wasn’t going to give me another one, I examined my surroundings. I was amazed. This yard was bigger than any yard I had ever imagined. I smelled clean air, dust, and, farther away, an animal or two I had never met.

  The fence, wherever it was, was so far away I couldn’t even see it! Outside was not only fun, it was huge!

  If my girl threw the ball here, there was nothing to stop it from bouncing forever. Well, nothing except a good dog who would catch it and then run away from her.

  Dad raised the back of the truck and pulled out a cage, and the smell of Samm
y instantly filled my nose. A moment later, I saw the squirrel clinging to the wires in the bottom of the cage as Dad shut the back of the truck. My girl and I followed Dad, who walked toward some trees, carrying the cage with him.

  When we got to the trees, I could see dry sticks all over the ground. They had an odd, sharp smell. The same smell drifted down from the branches overhead.

  Sticks are some of my favorite objects, because any one of them can instantly become a toy, especially if Maggie Rose is holding on to the other end of it. But these sticks smelled so strongly that I knew they’d leave a real tang on my tongue if I chewed one. I decided to ignore them. It was hard, but I could do it.

  “See how the reddish color of the pine needles matches the tint in Sammy’s fur?” Dad asked, setting the cage down on the ground. Sammy and I stared at each other, and I wondered if she would be interested in Chase Me. “Good camouflage.”

  “So they always live in pine trees?” Maggie Rose asked.

  “This species does. They mostly eat seeds from pine cones. Have you ever seen a pile of old pine cones under a log or in a hollow by a stone? Red squirrels make those piles to store food for the winter. They’re called middens.”

  “Middens,” Maggie Rose repeated.

  “Squirrels do a lot for the ecosystem. When they gather nuts, they always forget where they put some of them, and nuts are seeds. In the spring, some of them sprout and become new seedlings. A forest with squirrels is a healthy forest,” Dad said.

  Sammy wasn’t moving much, just standing nearly frozen inside the cage. Every so often, she shook her tail a little. That tail looked like it would be a lot more fun than a stick!

  I didn’t know what we were doing, but it was fun, anyway. Plus, for the moment, Maggie Rose seemed to have forgotten about being sad. I did not believe for a moment that being with a squirrel was what was making her happy. It must be me; I must be doing something right.

  Or maybe it was just being out in such a big yard that had cheered Maggie Rose up. It certainly made me happy.