of time.
When next I glanced over at the spotted dog, there were six more puppies! They looked spindly and weak, but the mother didn’t care. She licked them, guiding them to her side, and then lay quietly while they fed.
The man came and entered the cage where the newborns lay sleeping, looking them over before turning and walking away. Next he opened the door for the furry-looking puppies in the kennel to the right of ours and released them into the grassy area!
“No, not you,” he said to the mother, blocking her way as she tried to follow. He shut her in and then put bowls of food down for the puppies, which they climbed in and licked off of each other—these idiots wouldn’t last a day in the Yard. The mother sat behind her cage door and whimpered until her brood had quit feeding, and then the man let her out to join her pups.
The hairy little dogs came over to our cage door to sniff us, finally going nose-to-nose with us after living next door for these past few weeks. I licked at the goop on their faces while one of my brothers stood on my head.
The man left the puppies running free while he departed out a gate in the wooden fence that was exactly like the one Carlos and Bobby always accessed to enter the Yard. I watched jealously as the puppies ranged up and down the tiny patch of grass, sniffing hello to the other caged dogs and playing with each other. I was tired of being inside the pen and wanted to get out and explore. Whatever was my purpose in my new life, this didn’t feel like it.
After a few hours, the man returned, carrying another dog who looked exactly like the mother of the hairy puppies who were running free, except that he was a male. The man shoved the mother back into her pen and dropped the male in with her before shutting the gate, locking them in together. The male seemed pretty glad to see the mother, but she snarled at him when he jumped on her from behind.
The man left the fence gate open behind him, and I was surprised at the feeling of longing that swept through me as I peered at the tiny sliver of outside world visible on the other side of the fence. If I were ever running free in the grass, I knew I would head right out that open gate, but naturally the puppies who currently had that option didn’t do anything about it; they were too busy wrestling.
The mother raised her paws up on the cage door and cried softly as the man methodically rounded up her puppies and carried them out the gate. Soon they were all gone. The mother dog paced back and forth in her cage, panting, while the male in the cage with her lay there and watched. I could feel her distress, and it unsettled me. Night fell, and the mother dog let the male lie with her—they seemed to know each other, somehow.
The male was only in there for a few days before he, too, was taken away.
And then it was our turn to be let out! We tumbled out joyously, lapping up the food that was set out for us by the man. I ate my fill and watched my brothers and sisters go crazy, as if they’d never seen anything so exciting before as a bunch of dog food bowls.
Everything was wonderfully moist and rich, not at all like the dry and dusty dirt in the yard. The breeze was cool and carried with it the tantalizing scent of open water.
I was sniffing the succulent grass when the man returned to release our mother. My siblings bounded over to her, but I didn’t because I’d found a dead worm. Then the man left, and that’s when I started thinking about the gate.
There was something wrong with this man. He didn’t call me Toby. He didn’t even talk to us. I thought of my first mother, the very last time I saw her, escaping the Yard because she couldn’t live with humans, not even with someone as loving as Senora. But the man didn’t love us at all.
My gaze focused on the doorknob in the gate.
There was a wooden table next to the door. By climbing up on a stool I was able to get on the table, and from there I was just able to stretch out and put my mouth on the metal knob, which instead of being round was a strip of metal, a handle.
My tiny teeth weren’t very useful in getting a purchase on the thing, but I did my best to manipulate it the way Mother had the night she fled from the Yard. Soon I lost my balance and toppled to the ground, the gate still locked. I sat and barked at it in frustration, my voice a tiny yip. My brothers and sisters raced over to jump on me in their usual fashion, but I turned from them in irritation. I was in no mood to play!
I tried it again. This time I put my front paws on the knob to keep from tumbling to the ground, and as I did so it fell away beneath me, so that my whole body hit the lever on my way down. I landed on the sidewalk with a grunt.
To my astonishment, the gate edged ajar. I shoved my nose into the crack and pushed, and it swung wider. I was free!
I eagerly scampered out into the open, my little legs tripping over themselves. A dirt path lay right in front of me, two tracks dug into sandy soil. I instinctively knew that was the way to go.
After I’d run a few feet I stopped, sensing something. I turned and looked back at my new mother, who was sitting just inside the open gate, watching me. I remembered Mother back in the Yard, glancing once at me before heading back out into the world. My new mother wouldn’t be joining me, I realized. She was staying with the family. I was on my own.
Yet not for a moment did I hesitate. I knew from past experience that there were better yards than this, with loving people who would stroke my fur with their hands. And I knew that the time for suckling at my new mother’s teat was at an end. It was just how it was supposed to work—a dog eventually separated from his mother.
But mostly I knew an opportunity was in front of me that was irresistible, a whole new world to be explored with long, if somewhat clumsy, legs.
The dirt track eventually led to a road, which I decided to follow, if for no other reason than the fact that it led straight into the wind, which was bringing me wonderful new scents. Unlike the Yard, which had always been parched, I smelled damp, rotting leaves, and trees, and pools of water. I skipped forward, the sun in my face, happy to be free, off on an adventure.
I heard the truck coming long before I saw it but was so busy trying to catch an amazing winged bug I didn’t even look up until the door slammed. A man with wrinkled, tanned skin and muddy clothes knelt down, his hands out in front of him.
“Hey there, little fella!” he called.
