A Dog's Purpose

“It’s a great name, honey, but then what do we call him? You are my Albert, my Al.”

“We could call him Bert.”

“Oh, honey.”

“Well, what are we going to call him, then? Your family has so many people in it, you’ve used up every name there is. We can’t call him Carlos, Diego, Francisco, Ricardo—”

“What about Angel?”

“Angel? You want my son to be named Angel? I think maybe we shouldn’t trust the naming of this child to a woman who named her cat Tinkerbell.”

The cat, who was sleeping against me, didn’t even raise her head at the sound of her name. Cats are like that; you can’t get their attention unless they want to give it to you.

Maya was laughing. “How about Charles?”

“Charley? No, my first boss was named Charley,” Al objected.

“Anthony?”

“Don’t you have a cousin named Anthony?”

“His name is Antonio,” Maya corrected.

“Well, I don’t like him. His mustache looks silly.”

Maya collapsed into giggles at this. I thumped my tail once in recognition of all the hilarity. “George?”

“No.”

“Raul?”

“No.”

“Jeremy?”

“Of course not.”

“Ethan?”

I jumped up, and Al and Maya stared at me in surprise. “I guess Ellie likes it,” Al said.

I cocked my head at them, uncertain. Tinkerbell was giving me a surly look. I trotted over to the door, lifting my nose.

“What is it, Ellie?” Maya asked.

There was no sign of the boy, and I was no longer sure I had heard right. Outside, some children rode past on bicycles, but none of them were Ethan. What was I thinking, that Ethan, like Jakob, would suddenly reappear in my life? I knew instinctively something like that would never happen to a dog. Still, Maya had said the boy’s name, hadn’t she? Why would she do that?

I went to Maya for reassurance, then eased down with a sigh. Tinkerbell trotted over and pressed up against me, and I glanced away from Al’s knowing look, a little embarrassed.

Before long we had a new person in the house: little Gabriella, who smelled like sour milk and seemed even less useful than the cat. When she first brought the child home, Maya carefully held Gabriella for me to sniff, but I wasn’t too impressed. From that moment on, Maya would get up frequently during the night and I would go with her and she would clutch Gabriella to her chest while I lay at her feet. The unrestrained love flowing from Maya during those moments always nudged me into a deep, peaceful sleep.

The aches in my bones were familiar to me; I’d felt the same way when I was Bailey and spent most of my time helping Grandpa do chores. Sights and sounds became dim, and this, too, was familiar.

I wondered if Maya knew that the day was soon coming when I would no longer be with them. It only stood to reason that I would die, the way Emmet and Stella died, because that was what happened. When I was Toby, when I was Bailey, it was the same thing.

As I lay in a patch of sun, pondering this, I realized that I had spent my life as a good dog. What I had learned from my first mother had led me to Ethan, and what I had learned from Ethan had enabled me to dive into those black waters and find Geoffrey. Along the way, Jakob had taught me to Find and Show and I had helped save many people.

This had to be why, when I left Ethan, I was reborn as Ellie—everything that I had done, everything that I had ever learned, had been leading up to being a good dog who saved people. It wasn’t as much fun as being a doodle dog, but I now knew why these creatures, these human beings, had so fascinated me from the moment I saw them. It was because my fate was inextricably linked with theirs. Especially Ethan—that was the bond of a lifetime.

Now that I had fulfilled my purpose, I felt sure I was at the end, that there would be no rebirth after this, and I was at peace with that. As wonderful as being a puppy could be, I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone but the boy. Maya and Al had little Gabriella to distract them, making me sort of an afterthought in the family, except, of course, for Tinkerbell, who thought I was the family.

I wondered briefly if cats also came back after death, then dismissed the thought because as far as I had ever been able to tell, cats do not have a purpose.

Embarrassingly, I had started to have trouble containing myself in time to make it outside and was more and more frequently leaving messes in the house. Even worse, Gabriella had the same problem, so that the trash can often contained both of our bowel movements.

Al took me on several front-seat dog car rides to see the vet, who petted me all over while I groaned with pleasure. “You’re a good dog; you’re just getting old,” Al said. I wagged at being a good dog. Maya was very busy with Gabriella, so more and more it was just me and Al, which was okay by me. I could feel his tender affection every time he helped me up so we could take a car ride together.