Shelby's Story Read online

  I forgave her. Then a buzzer sounded.

  I tipped my head and looked up at Teresa. Why was the buzzer going off? That was for Dig, not for Pick It Up!

  “Dig, Dig, Dig!” Teresa told me. She pointed to a spot on the ground where the dirt was loose and soft.

  Oh! Now I knew just what to do. Dig wasn’t just for sand or snow—it was for dirt, too. I ran to where Teresa pointed and dug as hard as I could. Gusto was not here to help, this time. The job was all mine.

  My claws almost immediately scratched something strange. Not the buzzer or the treat container. I looked up at Teresa in surprise. This was not a treat! Why was I digging it up?

  “Cut!” somebody yelled. And I was right—“Cut!” did mean “Give Shelby a treat!” because Teresa came and gave me one and told me I was a good dog for doing Dig.

  I knew I was.

  Bruce turned to Cathryn. “Tell me again why Shelby has to dig up the fake mule deer?”

  “Because cougars bury their prey. In this scene, Shelby has been led to the deer and digs it up.”

  Bruce nodded, then frowned. “It’s so big, though—bigger than Shelby! What’s next, an elephant?”

  Cathryn laughed. “Really? An elephant in the Rocky Mountains?”

  “Well,” Teresa said, “I’m a little worried Shelby won’t understand. We’ve never practiced this before. But it’s similar to digging up the dummy in the avalanche scene, only with dirt instead of snow. So maybe she’ll get it. Right, Shelby?”

  I heard my name and a question, and I wagged. If she was asking if I wanted my squeaky toy back, the answer was yes!

  Then the people pointed their cameras at me again and Teresa smiled down at me. “Okay, Shelby. Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  She pointed down in the hole.

  Oh! I was supposed to do Dig first and then Pick It Up whatever I’d found! Now I understood what Teresa wanted. I went back to digging, just a little more, so I could get a good look at the strange thing in the hole.

  What was it?

  It was big. Bigger than me! It had something like a long, skinny face and four limp things that stuck out like legs. There was fur on it, so it ought to have been an animal, but it didn’t smell like an animal. It smelled like rubber. It did not smell like anything I was interested in doing Pick It Up with. I stopped digging.

  I backed out of the hole. I shook my head to get dirt off my muzzle.

  “Cut!” somebody yelled.

  I looked over at Teresa. Treat?

  Teresa shook her head and looked over at the person who’d yelled cut. “Let’s try again,” she said. “Ready? Okay, Shelby. Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  This was very odd. Usually I did Pick It Up with small things—toys or bones or ham. This thing was enormous! It wouldn’t even fit in my mouth!

  “Dig, Shelby! Pick It Up! Shelby, Pick It Up!”

  Everyone was watching me and I felt their tension. But I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d already done Dig—a little bit, anyway. And there was no buzzer and no treat, so I didn’t see the point of doing Dig anymore.

  I sat—doing a very good, treat-worthy Sit, I might add—and stared at them hopefully.

  “Cut!”

  Still no treat. People are always changing their minds about what words mean! It’s one of the reasons I preferred to be a dog.

  Teresa came and knelt down and took my face in her hands. I gazed at her adoringly, wagging.

  “Please, let’s try again. Okay, Shelby girl?”

  Several times Teresa told me to Dig and Pick It Up. I tried grabbing a stick, but that was not good Pick It Up, apparently. Finally, Teresa turned to all the people who were standing around. (Why didn’t they Pick It Up? Why did I have to do all the work?) “She needs a break,” Teresa said.

  Some people groaned. I was led back to the tent and took a very satisfying nap, drowsily conscious of Teresa talking to Bruce and Cathryn.

  “We still have plenty of daylight left—and if we need to, we could shoot this tomorrow,” Cathryn said.

  “Yes, but the day of the avalanche scene we will only have a few hours. She doesn’t seem interested in digging up the mule deer. They’re such similar stunts, I’m worried this will happen on the mountain as well.”

  When I awoke, we went back to do more of the same. I decided to try digging a little more, see if that made everyone happy. I scratched up the dirt so that more of that strange, rubbery object poked out of the hole. Teresa gave me a treat! Yes!

  “Good job, Shelby! Now Put It in There!”

  I edged back into the shallow hole. Gingerly I took one of the leg-things between my teeth and tried tugging a little. It wouldn’t budge.

  I dropped it and backed away. Surely we could do a different job now? How about Go Mark?

  “Cut!” the same person yelled. Again, nobody gave me a treat.

  “Shelby,” Teresa said in the voice she used for Training. “Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  Well, if I had to.…

  I went back to the hole and took the strange object in my mouth by what ought to have been the neck. I tried to Pick It Up.

  It was heavy! I’d never be able to get it off the ground. And it tasted so strange!

  “Pick It Up!” I heard Teresa call.

  I gripped hard with my teeth and braced my feet in the soft dirt of the hole and dragged. It took all my strength! The muscles in my neck trembled. I took one step backward, then another. Finally, I had the thing out of the hole. At least some of it. What would have been the head if it had been a real animal was out, but the rear end and legs were still in the hole.

  I dropped it and looked up at Teresa. That must be enough.

  “Cut!” the person shouted.

  “Good dog, Shelby. Good dog!” Bruce told me. “You got it halfway there. You can do it! Good girl!”

  He was very enthusiastic. If he thought this was so exciting, why didn’t he come and help me Pick It Up this strange, heavy thing?

  And why wasn’t Teresa giving me a treat?

  “Let’s go again,” Teresa said. “Ready? Shelby, Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  She pointed at the box.

  I sat down. I’d gotten the weird thing out of the hole. That should be enough.

  “Shelby,” Teresa said again. Her voice was not stern. It had so much love in it that my tail started to stir, even though I didn’t like this job. “Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  I looked up at Teresa. She smiled at me.

  Teresa wanted me to do Pick It Up. She wanted me to do it because she loved me and this was our job, the one that we did together.

  I loved Teresa, too. If she asked me, I’d do it.

  Even though I’d rather go back to the campfire and do Training with the ham some more.

  I lowered my head and gripped the rubbery thing by its leg. Slowly I backed across the ground toward the box. The thing resisted me, almost as if it were playing Tug-on-a-Stick. But Tug-on-a-Stick was fun, and this was not.

  Still, I kept going. Step by step I got closer to the box. Everybody was watching me. Cathryn had her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Teresa was nodding at me and smiling, but I knew I wasn’t done yet.

  At last I got the strange object over right next to the box. There was no way I could get it up high enough to go in the box, so this would just have to do.

  “Cut!” somebody yelled.

  “Good dog, Shelby!” Teresa called out. “Good girl!”

  She came right over and gave me a handful of treats. But even better, she bent down and hugged me and rubbed her face on the top of my head.

  Bruce and Cathryn patted me, too, and so did a lot of the standing-around people. I still didn’t understand why they hadn’t helped if they’d wanted that thing in the box so much. But I didn’t really mind.

  I was a good dog. I was Teresa’s dog.

  That was enough.

  12

  A few days later, Teresa took me to a parking lot and I met a new do
g pack! Instead of Luke and Bode and Hercules and Angel, there were three new dogs I had never met—a big shaggy one, a large muscular one with short, sleek fur, and funny teeth, and a small one with wiry hair that went every which way. She was as small as Angel!

  Teresa let us meet each other and sniff. They all smelled fine, although Shaggy Male wanted me to know he was in charge. He put his head up higher than mine and kept his eyes on me.

  I didn’t mind if he wanted to be in charge right now. I lowered my head to let him know that I was okay with that—for the moment.

  Things might change later.

  That was a strange and silly day! At home Teresa would be frustrated if Bode or Luke or Hercules knocked over the trash can. (Angel tried sometimes, but she was too little to move the can even if she tried.)

  Teresa didn’t even allow me to knock over the trash can at home, and I was her most special dog. (Why do people put things in the garbage that smell so good if they don’t want dogs to knock it over?)

  But here in the parking lot, the big male dog with the short fur kept knocking over a tall plastic trash can, and Teresa never even told him no! Trash spilled out every time, most of it crumpled pieces of paper. Hidden among the paper were tiny treats that tasted like chicken, and my new pack and I were allowed to get them all!

  We pawed at the paper and shoved it aside with our muzzles and gobbled up the treats. I was the fastest. I’d had lots of practice at digging through trash and finding the tasty things hidden inside it.

  Shaggy Male did not like that I could eat so many treats in such a short time. When my muzzle came close to his as we both burrowed after the same treat, he lifted his lip and growled at me.

  I ignored him. He wasn’t in charge now! I snatched up the treat and got it.

  “That’s enough,” Teresa said firmly.

  “Cut!” someone yelled, and Teresa called to me to come to her, so I did. She snapped my collar around my neck with my leash attached to it.

  “I don’t like the way that other dog’s acting around Shelby,” she said, pointing to Shaggy Male. “I can’t risk her safety.”

  I looked up to see if she was talking to me—her voice said, “Cut that out!” Maybe it was bad to be getting things out of the trash after all? But I wasn’t the one who’d knocked the can over!

  To my relief I saw that Teresa was not talking to me. She was directing her words at another person, one with a clipboard.

  The man nodded, and that was the last time we were allowed to eat chicken treats out of the trash can. Maybe “Cut!” meant “No more treats from the trash.” If that was true, I didn’t like “Cut!” as much as I used to.

  In the evening, that Angel-sized dog stood in front of a house and spun in a circle, while I stood and watched. She was given treats, even though it was so much easier than Dig It Up and Put It in There that it hardly even counted as a trick.

  * * *

  Late one afternoon, Teresa and I went on to another house. The new dog pack didn’t get to come. They were just not as good at hard tricks as I was. I lay down next to Teresa in the car and put my head in her lap to show her that I understood I was her best dog.

  At the house, I met an old friend—Gusto! He came out of the door to meet me and we ran around the yard before coming together to sniff faces and under each other’s tails. I pranced away and put my front legs low on the ground with my rear end up high, tail wagging, to invite Gusto to play, but he turned his head and looked toward April. I saw that Gusto was doing Training with April and had no time for play.

  I understood these kinds of things better than Bruce did.

  Teresa and April took me and Gusto inside the house, and there we met two nice men. They called each other Gavin and Taylor. I liked Taylor the best. His hands smelled particularly good—he’d been eating a turkey and cheese sandwich when we arrived.

  Teresa handed my leash to Taylor, and April gave Gusto’s leash to Gavin. “Okay, time for a walk!” Teresa told us.

  “Walk”? I knew that word. It was a good word! My tail wagged happily.

  Gavin and Taylor walked Gusto and me out of the front door. The watching people were all around, as usual; I noticed Bruce and Cathryn were there, too. I glanced at Bruce, hoping he’d figure out that Gusto and I were doing Training now. This was serious work.

  Gavin and Taylor may have been nice, but they didn’t know the first thing about taking a dog for a walk! Once we got to the front yard, they turned around and took us right back inside! “Cut!” somebody yelled.

  Did “Cut!” mean “Take the dogs for a very short walk!”?

  Gavin and Taylor took us for a lot of walks, but they never got it right. We always went right back inside as soon as we reached the front yard. They were as dumb as Bruce.

  “This is the scene after the avalanche,” I heard Cathryn say to Bruce on one of our trips back inside the house. “When Gavin and Taylor take the dogs off the mountain and bring them to the house.”

  “But we haven’t even filmed the avalanche yet,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “It’s impossible to keep all the scenes straight!”

  “Good thing you’re just a screenwriter and not the director, then,” Cathryn told him. “Remember what he told us? The avalanche is going to be the last thing they shoot.”

  “Good thing you’re a director and I’m not. I’d rather just play with the dogs.”

  “Well, next movie I direct, I’ll make sure there are dogs, so you’ll have something to do.”

  “The avalanche is Shelby’s big day,” Bruce said. “I hope she can do it.”

  “Oh, Bruce,” Cathryn said, “she has to do it.”

  * * *

  Going for very short walks with Gavin and Taylor was a pretty boring job, so I was glad when that was over. What happened the next day, however, was not boring at all.

  Teresa and I drove to a park, like the one where I’d met Lucas. Lucas wasn’t here this time, though. Instead, there was a family—a mother and father, two kids big enough to slide down slides and swing on swings, and a baby sitting on the mother’s lap.

  I got to say hi to them all quickly. The older kids talked to me and petted me gently, but the baby just stared at me with very wide eyes. I licked at her bare toes; they tasted excellent, almost sweet. She squealed with surprise, and I looked back at her with equal surprise. I’d never heard a human make a sound like that before!

  Then Teresa called me over. The family sat at a picnic table and didn’t pay any more attention to me—except the baby. She never took her eyes off me.

  Brian was there, too. He put a big piece of steak on a grill near the picnic table. I was as interested in that steak as the baby was in me! How odd that none of the family paid any attention to it. They were talking to each other and looking in the other direction. Why would anyone ignore a steak?

  “Okay, Shelby,” Teresa told me. She pointed to the steak. “Pick It Up!”

  Excellent! I would be very happy to Pick It Up the steak.

  I raced to the grill, grabbed the steak by a corner, and snatched it. None of the family was watching, except the baby! She squealed again with surprise and made funny sounds that were not words, but no one paid attention to her, any more than they did to me.

  I took the steak right to Teresa, and she had my squeaky toy ready in her hand. A little reluctantly, I dropped the steak and took the toy. The toy was good, of course—but why did I have to give up the steak when I’d just done such a good job of Pick It Up?

  Then Teresa took me (I took my squeaky toy) to another part of the park. There were trees and rocks here, no picnic tables or playgrounds. There, she lay down on the ground. What fun! I loved it when Teresa got down to my level.

  I lay down with her and rolled over so that she could scratch my belly. She scratched better than anyone. I didn’t even mind when she took the squeaky toy away and handed it to April.

  April handed Teresa something, and I sat bolt upright, excitement quivering all through my body. It was t
he steak!

  Teresa put the steak on the ground and gripped one end of it between her fingers. The other end of the steak was mine! I got to tear off big chunks and gulp them down. Steak is delicious! Even better than ham.

  “There isn’t a scene in the movie where the dog gets to eat steak with a person,” I heard Bruce say to Cathryn.

  “No, this is the scene where the dog and Big Kitten share the steak,” Cathryn told him. “Obviously they’re not going to put Shelby right next to a young cougar, so Teresa’s filling in for her. They’ll paint in Big Kitten later, and it’ll look like the dog and the cougar are in the same scene.”

  I didn’t know what they were talking about. Why were they mentioning kittens when there weren’t any kittens here? But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the steak. I finished it up and licked Teresa all over her face as the person yelled, “Cut!”

  I didn’t even try to figure out what “Cut!” meant this time. I was beginning to think that the humans didn’t understand that word any more than I did.

  * * *

  I guessed that Teresa had enjoyed the job with the steak as much as I did, because our next job involved food, too. We went to a house with a car in the driveway and a bag of groceries sitting in the car.

  Teresa had brought the big Put It in There box, so I knew what was coming. But we had to wait a little, while all the watching people got ready to see me work. Bruce came over to talk to Teresa while everyone got in place. “This is going to be a fun scene,” he said to Teresa. “I can’t wait to see her carry off the bag of groceries. Every dog who sees this movie will be inspired!”

  Teresa smiled. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t run off with my groceries when I get her home,” she told him. “Okay, Shelby, it’s time. Pick It Up! Put It in There!”

  I ran to the car, jumped up, and seized the bag. To be honest, I would have done that even if Teresa hadn’t told me to. It smelled wonderful. There were tangy oranges in there and a bunch of carrots and apples. Those were not too interesting to me, but I loved the smell of a long, skinny loaf of bread. There was some bacon in a package, too! Bacon and steak in one day?