Toby's Story Read online

  4

  The boy stood up, still holding me, and carried me securely in his arms as he and Mona went inside. I dozed while he took me down the hallway, around a corner, and into a new room.

  “Hi, Grandad,” he said. “Look, they’ve got a dog here!” And he put me down on a bed.

  I was still sleepy, but I perked up to meet yet another new person. This one was an old man, sitting on the edge of the bed in a room with boxes on the floors and a suitcase open on a chair.

  “Well, hello there,” the new person said as I crawled onto his lap, the better to sniff at his soft shirt and worn, wrinkled hands. He smelled of tobacco and soap, and he was chewing on something minty. I licked his chin, which was covered with gray whiskers. I’d not yet met a person with fur on his face, just like I had!

  “He’s Toby,” said Mona, who was standing by the door, holding her hands together in front of her and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  “That’s Mona,” the boy said. “She’s training Toby. He’s going to be a therapy dog.”

  “Glad to hear it,” the old man said. “Nothing like a dog to make a place feel like home.” His voice was low and raspy, but kind. “A person who trains dogs has to have a good heart,” he said, looking keenly at Mona. “Tyler doesn’t have a girlfriend, you know. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Mona got even hotter than she had outside, and her face turned a different shade.

  “Grandad!” the boy groaned. That must be the new person’s name, I decided. He was “Grandad” and the boy was “Tyler.”

  “No harm in asking,” Grandad said.

  “You’re embarrassing her. And me. Geez, Grandad. Look, Mona, this box has Grandad’s trophies. He used to be a track star in college. I could put them up on this bookshelf. Want me to?”

  “Long, long ago,” Grandad said, chuckling. “Sure, put them up there.” Tyler began pulling clumps of paper out of a box. He pulled the paper off bright, shiny statues and began arranging them on a shelf. Mona came over to help, her face still hot.

  Tyler dropped a wad of paper on the floor, and I shook myself and jumped down from the bed. Grandad’s room had carpet on the floor, and it felt rough and prickly against my sore feet. I shook them out, one after the other, but it didn’t help much.

  “Oh, Toby, what are you doing?” Mona laughed. “You look so funny!”

  Even though my feet were bothering me, the crunchy, rustling paper was so interesting I put that aside for a moment. The paper didn’t need to be chased—it just lay there. Still, those noises it made! Exciting! I stalked toward a clump, crouched low, paused to make sure it wasn’t about to run away, and leaped. Once I had my teeth in the paper, I shook it hard, and it made more of that noise. I growled to show it who was boss.

  Tyler and Mona laughed. Grandad chuckled.

  “Tyler’s going to be a track star, too,” he told Mona. “Following in his grandfather’s track shoes!”

  “Yeah, well…” Tyler’s voice trailed away as a woman came into the room, wearing jeans and a jacket.

  “Dad, how about heading down to the cafeteria for lunch?” she asked.

  “Sure thing, sure thing. Hey, this lovely young lady helping with my trophies is Mona. She’s a dog trainer, so I hear.”

  “Hi,” Mona mumbled.

  “Well, nice to meet you.” The woman went to a sort of metal cage that was against the wall and brought it over to the bed for Grandad. I had started to learn that people in my new home leaned on these cages sometimes when they walked. But they could go in and out of the cages as they pleased, so the cages were not like the pen where I’d once lived with my mother. People, I was already starting to learn, can do many things that dogs cannot.

  “We’ll just finish up the trophies,” Tyler said. “I’ll come after you in a minute.”

  The woman and Grandad left the room. I stayed with Tyler and Mona and the paper balls.

  “So you run, too?” Mona asked, setting the last trophy in its place.

  Wrestling with the papers had tired me out. I flopped down on the floor. It was a relief to get my itchy paws off the prickly carpet. I didn’t have the energy to chew on them at the moment. I closed my eyes again.

  “Yeah … kind of.” Tyler sounded worried. I opened one eye for a quick peek at him, but I could not see any threat, so I closed it again.

  “The thing is, I’m not good at it, really,” Tyler went on. “I get tired so quickly. But Grandad likes the idea of me running, so I don’t really tell him … Anyway. Want to come to lunch with us?”

  “Um. Maybe another time?” I felt Mona reach down and scoop me up. I didn’t even open my eyes as I snuggled deeper into the warmth of her soft T-shirt. “Toby’s so calm right now, there’s someplace I want to take him. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Mona carried me out into the hallway, where she went one way and Tyler walked off in the other direction. I drifted off to sleep as she carried me and stirred when I could tell that she had stopped moving.

  “Toby? Wake up, little guy,” she whispered to me.

  I could smell that we were in a different part of my home, a place I had not explored yet. Everything here was very quiet. When I opened my eyes, I could see that there were no people in chairs sitting in the hallways. Nobody was walking around using the metal cages or the long sticks they called canes.

  There was a new smell in the air. My nose twitched. I did not know what this smell was, but it was different from anything else I had ever encountered. It did not smell delicious, like something to eat. It did not smell harsh enough to make my nose sting, like the water that people used here to wash the floors. It did not smell as if it needed digging, like the dirt and grass outside, or as if it needed chasing, like other furry animals.

  It smelled … quiet. That was all I could think of. And that quiet smell was all around.

  “This is the hospice wing, Toby,” Mona told me. Her voice was quiet, too.

  She began walking up and down the hallway with me. Sometimes we passed open doors. Each room had a bed. People were lying in some of the beds. They were very quiet, too.

  “People come here when … when it’s their time, Toby,” Mona told me. “My mom explained it to me. It’s not as sad as you think, really. It’s a peaceful place. Families can be together while they’re waiting for the end.”

  She walked a little, while I lay in her arms.

  “I just wanted you to see this, to start getting used to it. You’re going to do good work here, Toby. I know it,” Mona told me. She kissed the top of my head. “It’s not just how calm you are. It’s the way you love people. You love everybody you meet, and that’s what the people here need.”

  I yawned.

  “Sleepy little puppy.” She hugged me. “Okay, I’ll take you back to bed.”

  The bed that Mona carried me to was a round cushion in a small room near the front desk. There were shelves in that room, with boxes and containers on them, and people came in and out all day to get what they needed. There was a bowl of water there, too, and another for food, and Mona would make sure they were both filled up before she rubbed me behind my ears and kissed me and went away for the night.

  That was the strange thing, though. She always went away for the night.

  As my new home grew quiet around me, someone would turn out the light in my little room, and I would lie there in the dark, wondering where Mona had gone. What about her mother, Patsy? What about the new boy, Tyler, and Grandad? Or even Fran, who sometimes frowned at me and almost never smiled?

  With no people and no treats and no fascinating new smells to distract me, this was the time when my feet itched the most. I lay in my bed and gnawed at them as I thought about all the people I had met in my new home.

  Which one did I belong to? Who was my new human family?

  At first, I’d thought I belonged with Mona and to her mother, Patsy. That seemed to make sense. They were the ones who’d taken me away from the Ranch and my mother. They spent the mo
st time with me, and I always felt love in their hands and heard it in their voices.

  But they went away and left me at nighttime, and I was sure that a family was not supposed to do that.

  What about all the other people? What about Tyler and Grandad? What about Fran? Did I belong to them? I lay in the dark and thought and thought, and I couldn’t understand.

  Night after night, I chewed harder and harder, nibbling on the tough, leathery pads of my feet, tugging with my teeth at the tufts of hair that grew between my toes. It didn’t make the itching go away, but I couldn’t stop.

  One night, a few days after Mona had taken me on a visit to the Quiet Place, I chewed so hard that I tasted blood.

  Now my feet didn’t just itch. They hurt. But I still couldn’t stop my teeth from gnawing on them. Blood dribbled onto the pillow that I slept on, and I wondered if Mona or Patsy or Tyler would be angry about that. People didn’t seem to like things that spilled on the floor. Every time I left a puddle, someone would fuss over it and come and wipe it up and hustle me outside.

  But no one was here to do that now.

  I wished my mother were nearby, to curl up around me. I wished Mona were here, with her gentle hands, or Patsy, or Tyler. I wished I were not alone.

  I whimpered a little bit, but no one was there to hear me.

  5

  In the morning, I found out that I’d been right. People did get upset about the blood on my bed. Patsy cried out in worry when she came in to see me, and she called to other people, and they clustered around. Someone took my bed away to be washed, and Patsy wrapped long white bandages around my front feet.

  Fran came and watched, too. She stood a little way off. “What’s wrong with the dog?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Patsy answered as she taped the white wrappings securely around my paws. “Why would he do that to his feet? He must have been chewing on them all night!”

  Fran made a sound like hummmph in her throat.

  I did not like the things Patsy had wrapped around my feet! They snagged on the carpet and made me skid on the tiles. More than once, all four paws slipped out from under me and I ended up on my belly. Sometimes people laughed. Sometimes they came and helped to pick me up.

  But even worse than that, the bandages kept me from chewing on my feet. My pads itched and itched and itched inside the wrappings, but I could not get at them! It was so frustrating that I limped back to the little room where I slept at night. My bed was back where it belonged, but it did not smell right. It had a harsh, soapy smell that I did not like at all. I rolled and squirmed around, trying to fix the problem, and then I lay down and put all my effort into getting those pesky things off my feet.

  People kept coming in to look at me. “No, Toby,” they’d say. “Leave the bandages alone, Toby.” Sometimes they tried to pull my mouth away from my feet.

  I’d lick their hands to show that I still liked them, but I was busy. I had a job to do.

  “Oh, Toby, don’t!” Mona cried out when she came into the room. “You’ll make it worse. Oh, poor thing. Mom, what’s wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Patsy said from the doorway. “But I got him an appointment at the vet’s this afternoon. We’ll figure it out, honey.”

  Mona filled up my food and water dishes, but I was not very interested. I just wanted to get at my feet so I could bite them and stop the itching.

  Mona sat next to me and said my name a lot. “Oh, Toby. Oh, Toby,” she murmured. I gave her as much attention as I could spare. I could tell she was unhappy, too.

  Maybe her feet itched and ached like mine did.

  That afternoon, Mona picked me up and carried me to a car. She sat in the back seat with me, and Patsy drove, just like the time they had come to get me and taken me away from the Ranch to my new home.

  Were we going to a different home now? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that idea. It was always great to meet new people and discover new smells, but I’d miss Tyler and Grandad and some of the other people.

  I couldn’t give it much thought, though. I was tired from no sleep all night and tired of my feet burning inside their bandages. With a long sigh, I lay flat on Mona’s lap.

  “Oh, Mom,” she said, and her voice vibrated with anxiety. “Something’s really wrong.”

  “I know, honey,” Patsy said from the front seat of the car. “I know.”

  I did not like the new place they took me to. It smelled of harsh chemicals and cleanness and fear. A lot of dogs had been here, and they had not liked it at all.

  Mona carried me to a small room with a metal table in the middle of it. I was so tired and discouraged that I lay down flat on the tabletop, even though it was hard and cold. It did feel good on my paws, though. I tugged at a strip of bandage with my teeth. I’d almost gotten it undone!

  After a little while, a man with a white coat came into the room. He talked to Patsy, and then he came over to me.

  “Let’s see what’s wrong, boy,” he said to me.

  His scent was very strange. I could smell that he’d petted lots of other dogs before me and most of them had been scared. A clean, chemical odor clung to his clothes, instead of something comforting, like dirt. But he talked to me kindly and his hands were gentle, so I wagged the tip of my tail a little.

  He seemed to understand what the problem was, because the first thing he did was to take the bandages off my feet! Wonderful! My paws were so sore, though, that the moment I started nibbling on them, I yelped with pain.

  “What could make him do that?” Patsy asked, worried.

  The man checked all my feet. I followed his hands with my nose and tongue. “Well, I’ll have to do some bloodwork to be sure,” he said, “but I have an idea. I think Toby may have a gluten allergy.”

  “Can dogs get that?” Patsy asked, surprised.

  “It’s rare, but it does happen,” the man answered. “And it can cause itchy skin, especially on the paws, just like we’re seeing here. Ever since this little guy started eating dog food instead of nursing, he probably hasn’t been feeling well at all.”

  “Oh no,” Patsy said. “I had no idea!”

  “There was no real way you could have been able to tell,” the man told her. “It’s a tricky thing to diagnose. Let me wrap Toby’s paws back up so he won’t make them worse, and then I’ll take a blood sample.”

  It turned out that the man had not understood at all how to help me, because he wrapped my paws back up in more of that frustrating bandage, and then he poked me with a thin, sharp stick! I yipped from the pain and confusion. Why was he doing all this to me?

  “Oh, poor Toby,” Mona said, and she picked me up and held me as soon as the man let me go. Patsy had to do more talking with the man and some other people. People seem to like doing that a lot, instead of more interesting things like running or smelling or chasing or chewing. But Mona held me and cuddled me gently, which made me feel a little better.

  Not much, though.

  Finally, we got into the car again. Mona held me on her lap some more as I got my teeth into a bandage and yanked.

  “I just feel so bad,” she said. “We should have realized something was wrong with him. All this time, he’s been so unhappy!”

  I let go of the bandage and looked up at her. Drops of water were sliding down her cheeks. I squirmed around so that I could reach her face and lick the water off her chin. It tasted salty and sad.

  Mona was sad.

  I felt sorry for her. I knew how it felt to be sad. I licked her some more and leaned against her, tucking my head under her chin. Just like my mother, Sadie, had comforted me with her touch once, I tried to comfort Mona.

  “Oh, Toby. You’re so sweet,” she said.

  “That’s what’s so wonderful about dogs,” her mother said. The car stopped, and Patsy reached an arm back to stroke my head. “His allergies were awful, but he doesn’t hold any kind of a grudge, does he? He’s trying to tell you not to feel bad. He’s forgiven us already. Would
n’t the world be a better place if people forgave each other as easily as dogs do?”

  Over the next few days, Mona spent a lot of time with me. Patsy did, too. They talked to me and petted me, which I liked very much. What I did not like was the way they kept fixing the tape on my bandages whenever I finally managed to get it loose. I could tell they were trying to help me, but they just didn’t understand that what I needed was to get those bandages off!

  Mona started putting a different kind of food in my bowl, too, which was even tastier than the last kind. She talked to me while I ate it, and that was nice. “Good boy, Toby. This will help,” she’d say. “That’s right. You’ll be better soon.”

  Even though Mona and Patsy didn’t understand about the bandages, my feet weren’t bothering me as much as they used to. They still itched at night, but less and less during the day. Even with my feet wrapped up, I felt good enough to make my way around my home, visiting all my friends.

  A few days after my visit to the strange man who had poked me with the sharp stick, I was going about my business, getting petted and licking hands and sniffing shoes, when I spotted Tyler and Grandad at the end of a long hallway.

  My new friends! It felt like a long time since I had seen them. My feet were feeling particularly good that morning, so I broke into a run.

  It was not easy to run down the tiled hallway on my bandaged feet! My back feet slipped out from behind me, and I ended up flopping on my belly. I got up, shook my head, and tried again, with a slower start. That worked better. Soon, I was trotting. That was good! I felt ready to run!

  “Here comes Toby!” Tyler called out. He was not very far away now.

  I wanted to see him so much! Eagerly, I put on speed. I was running! It was working!

  “Good boy!” Grandad said. He was leaning on his metal cage and chuckling.

  I aimed myself at Tyler’s white sneakers and braced myself to stop. But it didn’t work quite as I expected. The bandages were slippery, and I could not use my claws for grip. I skidded right into Tyler’s feet, and my whole body ended up piled on his shoes. But I was so glad to see him that I didn’t mind at all, especially when he sat down on the floor and petted me all over while I wagged and wiggled with happiness.