A Dog's Journey by W. Bruce Cameron

Author:W. Bruce Cameron [Cameron, W. Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dogs, Human-Animal Relationships, Fiction, Family Life, General
ISBN: 9780765330536
Google: _-wY1T91mRQC
Amazon: 0765330539
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

I was scared and, despite the constant din from all the dogs, I had never felt so alone. I curled up on the towel on the floor in as tight a ball as I could manage. I was given food and water, served in paper bowls. The dog in the cage across from me ripped up his bowl, but I did not.

After a long time had passed, a man came to get me. He led me out of the cage and put straps on my face so that I could only open my jaws a small amount. He took me into a cold room with the same slippery floor. It was quieter in there, but I could still hear barking.

I could smell many dogs in the room, and their scent carried with it fear and pain and death. This was a place where dogs had died. The man led me over to a hole that was covered with a metal grate. I stood, my legs trembling. I tried to press into the man for comfort, but he backed away from me.

I recognized the scent of the other man—he had been in the room the day before. I wagged my tail at him a little, but he did not say my name.

“Okay, this the first time you’ve been in here?” the man who had led me in said.

“No, I loaded out the bodies of the ones we euthanized yesterday,” the man I knew said.

“Okay, well, this is the aggression test. They fail this, they’re short-tracked. That means they only get the four days before we put them down. Otherwise, we give them longer if we’re not crowded.”

“Are you ever not crowded?”

“Ha, yeah, you’re catching on. Sometimes we’re not completely packed, but usually it’s like this.” The other man went to a counter and grabbed a bowl full of food. “What I’m going to do, here, is let her smell this and get used to the idea that it’s her food. Then I start to pull it away using this plastic hand. Okay? If she turns to snap at the hand, that’s aggression. If she growls, that’s aggression.”

“How does the dog know it is a hand?”

“It’s shaped like a hand and it’s kinda flesh colored. It’s a hand.”

“Well, all right. Looks more like just a wedge of white plastic to me.”

“So growl at it.”

Both men laughed.

I did not know what was happening, but I had never felt so miserable. The man in front set the food down in front of me. I started to salivate—were they planning to feed me? I was hungry. I put my nose down and the man came at me with a big stick.

I’d learned from being with CJ in the car that when times were scary sticks could be bad, so as the man poked the stick at my nose I growled, too frightened to do anything else.

“Okay, that’s it,” the man with the food said. “Aggressive. Short track.”

“But the owner said she was coming back,” the other man objected.

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