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The world raced by as we whizzed down the highway in the minivan. Spinning in a tight circle, I tried to find my tail, but no matter how many times I looked, it wasn’t there. I rubbed my sides against the wires of my crate, spun some more, and barked for the sheer joy of it.
I love my life! I said. I love it, love it, love it, love it... (breathe) love it, love—
“Sooner, stop,” Brandy admonished from the driver’s seat. “You’re hurting my ears.”
Perplexed, I tipped my head from side to side. She’d said something about ears. And to stop. But stop what? Stop using my ears? That was absurd. How could I listen if I stopped using my ears? I told her so.
Silly, Brandy! Silly, silly, silly—
“Okay, okay! I get it.” When she leaned her head to the side so I could see her face in the rearview mirror, she was smiling. She did that a lot. It was how I knew she was different from the others when I first saw her. How I knew she was meant to be my person. “You’re happy, huh, girl? I’m proud of you. You did good today.”
Good, yes. I am always good. Always. I am the best! The brightest! The greatest!
For emphasis, I rattled the metal bucket in the corner of my crate with my nose. Water sloshed everywhere. Had I done that? I bopped it with my head. More water spilled over the edge. I think I did. Yes, I did!
Oh, wait. She might not like that. I should cover it up. Since I had nothing to cover it with, I clawed at the newly formed puddle in the pan of my crate in an attempt to spread it around.
When we got home, maybe Brandy would let me swim in the pond just down the road from our house. I loved the pond! Loved how cool the water was, and how it smelled of algae and mud and fish. I hadn’t caught a fish yet, but I would. Someday.
Brandy shook her head, her messy red curls twisting and tangling in the wind. She had the windows down for me. Brandy always had the windows down if it wasn’t too hot or too cold. She knew I liked to smell things. If she would let me out of this metal crate, I could stick my head out the window and really inhale.
“Know what, Sooner? I’ve had six obedience trial champions, four top-level agility dogs, five different breeds—and I know you’re barely two years old, so it’s probably crazy of me to say this—but I believe you may be the smartest one yet. The day I brought home my first Australian Shepherd—you—was the best day of my life. Those other people who’d returned you to the breeder, they just didn’t understand Aussies need a job—and you’ve excelled at every job I’ve given you. You are one super amazing dog. How did I ever get so lucky?”
I had no idea what she was saying, but I kind of had to pee. I woofed at her to let her know we needed to stop somewhere.
“That’s right, girl. I’m talking about you. You are the best, Sooner, the absolute best. Don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you. You’re every dog I’ve ever wished for. Maybe I should clone you, huh, just in case?”
I woofed again. She kept driving. Humans weren’t always as smart as they pretended to be. How could she not know the difference between a happy playful bark and one that meant I was going to squat and let go of the full contents of my bladder if she didn’t get a clue?
“You like hearing your name, doncha, girl? So00o00oner, Sooner, Sooner, So00oooner.”
What the heck? Was she howling now? She was terrible at it. We’d sort that out later. I’d teach her the proper way, but right now I had to go! I stared at the back of her head, hoping she’d take a peek in that mirror and see my distressed expression, but she was now singing along to the radio, oblivious.
We were getting closer to home—I could tell by the low mountains that had risen up around us. They resembled the ones around Brandy’s house, with lots of trees covering them and sometimes a rocky bluff overlooking a river valley. But the smells weren’t familiar yet, so I knew we still had a ways to go.
Woofing again, more softly now, I tried to keep my tone sober. Surely she’d catch on that it was a different bark.
“What’s that, girl? You need to go potty?”
I barked louder, twice. Yes! Potty!
There was hope I could train her up right after all.
“Hang on, okay? We’re ten miles from the next exit. I can’t just pull off to the side of the interstate in these parts. Semis in the next lane, cars barreling past at eighty miles an hour, and practically no shoulder. Crazy drivers.” She glanced through the opposite car window. “Yup, no shoulder at all. Highway butts right up against the mountainside there. Amazing how they cut through solid rock like that so they could build a highway, isn’t it? Simply amazing. Daddy was a civil engineer. Used to build bridges. Course, he worked in an office mostly, but sometimes he’d go out to a job site, just to see how things were coming along and...”
The pressure between my legs was killing me. I shouldn’t have drunk so much water. Then again, I hadn’t known we were going to be in the van for so long. And I’d been thirsty when we’d left the dog sh—
Whoosh!
Whoa! What was that?
I watched out the window with fascination. A giant box with lots of wheels rumbled along in the lane beside us. I think Brandy had called those things semis. Or was it trucks? Humans had too many names for things. Anyway, it was big. And noisy.
Now what had I been thinking about? Had to pee. Thirsty... Oh yes, the dog show.
I brightened at the memory. It had been a good day. A great day. Brandy had started training me as soon as she took me home. Easy stuff at first: sit, lie down, stay, come, heel. In the beginning, I got a treat every time. Sometimes, honestly, I was just guessing, but I eventually began to understand that different words meant she wanted me to do different things. Then it gradually became more complicated. ‘Come’ didn’t just mean barrel in her general direction. She wanted me sitting in a certain spot, not far enough away she couldn’t touch me, but not so close my nose was shoved between her legs. When I heeled alongside her, I wasn’t allowed to lag behind where she’d lose eye contact with me, nor wander in front where I could trip her. I had to keep my shoulder by her knee—which was a tricky thing for a dog to grasp. I had to figure it out on my own. Food and play helped me learn, though. Sometimes I got things wrong, but Brandy never punished me for trying.
Folding into a sphinx position, I rested my head on the cool surface of the crate pan. I was trying to be patient, I really was, but this was urgent.
I whined.
“Just a few more—”
I howled. Aro00oo00o00o, aro00oo00o, arrrr-arrrrr-ro00o00o.
“Okay, okay, okay.”
Brandy whipped the van onto the narrow shoulder. Tires crunched over gravel. After we rolled to a stop and she’d unbuckled herself, she got out and came around to the rear where my crate was. She opened it and clipped my leash on, then gently lifted me out. I strained in her hold, eager to do my business, but she seemed frightened somehow—and that worried me. As soon as she put me down, nature took over and relief flowed from me.
“Good girl, Sooner. Good girl. Hurry up, though, okay?”
We were between mountains, the area beside the road green with grass, and a metal and wood barrier running parallel to the road. Beyond it, the earth plunged steeply. Kicking up some dirt to cover my mess, I strained to see what was down there. Trees, grass, more trees, lots of dirt, water somewhere, and—
My nostrils quivered. What smell was that? Some animal, perhaps? Curious, I lurched toward the slope.
“No!”
Brandy yanked me back so hard my collar hit my trachea. I retched.
“Sorry, girl, but you don’t want to go down there. You’d break all your legs before you got to the bottom.”
I coughed a few more times, just for effect. Brandy knelt, pulling me to her side.
Cars buzzed past on the highway. A truck roared into the distance. The ground vibrated under my feet. More cars. More trucks. Gigantic beings, hurtling over the asphalt, racing to unknown places. Hot wind blasted my face with each passing. The rumble was almost deafening.
Brandy hugged me to her chest. “Oh, baby. You’re shaking. Those great big trucks must look terrifying to little ol’ you. It’s okay. I’m here. I won’t let you get hurt. But do you see why I didn’t want to stop here?”
Her babbling was only prolonging the amount of time we remained in peril. I wanted back in the van, and I wanted to go home. Stretching upward, I placed my paws on either side of her neck, then clambered into her lap.
Grunting, she scooped me up and clutched me tightly. My gangly legs dangled from the sling of her arms. “Let’s go home.”
Upon hearing the word ‘home,’ I licked her face to let her know I agreed.
At the van, she urged me toward the open door of the crate, but I didn’t need encouragement. I jumped in. The space was safety, security. Even as much as I hated being confined in it sometimes, it was my little den—the place where I slept and ate. It was my sacred space. My quiet and comfort.
As she latched the door shut, I licked the salt from her fingers.
“You want some of my pretzels, huh, girl?”
I licked harder, not sure what she was asking, but she tasted good. She stepped to the front of the van, opened the door, and reached for something between the front seats. The plastic bag crinkled as she lifted it. I could hear that sound a mile away.
“Probably not good for you—heck, I eat so many of the dang things, they’re probably not good for me, either—but you deserve a special treat today. Maybe I’ll stop in town at the drive-thru before we go home to get you your very own cheeseburger. Would you like that, Sooner? A cheeseburger?” She returned to my crate, then slipped a pretzel between the bars. I took it gently from her fingers as she’d taught me, before wolfing it down in two bites. Her eyes sparkled as she gazed at me. “I am so, so proud of you. You got your first two legs in elite agility today. Come next spring, we’ll finish your first championship title. The first of many. We’ve got a lot more work to do, but there’s no limit to what we can do together. We’re a team, Sooner. A fantastic team, you and me.”
I’d understood all of two words: home and my name. It baffled me as to why humans were allowed to talk nonstop, but if I tried to express myself, I got scolded. There was something very lopsided about that.
“Hey, girl. Know what?” Leaning in close, she kissed the tip of my nose. I returned the affection with a big wet slurp, which made her laugh. “Aww, thanks. I love you, too. More than the sun and the moon and the stars.”
I knew that one word, all right: love. It meant a lot of things, but they all gave me the same wonderful feeling.
Brandy slipped two more pretzels between the wires of my crate before returning to the driver’s seat and pulling back onto the highway. I snarfed them down in seconds, hoping she’d toss back a few more, but she just kept on driving.
I sat upright, leaning against the side of my crate, watching the cars and trucks go by, some speeding ahead, some falling behind. Shifting, I yawned and pressed my eyes wide, but no matter how hard I tried, they kept drifting shut.
In time, I could no longer resist the pull of sleep. My feet slid forward, and my belly sank to the cool pan. The zooming became a white noise that lulled me toward nothingness. In my dreams, bees buzzed at a distance. The sun spilled down from a cloudless sky. Grass tickled my paws. I saw jumps and tunnels around me. Up above, there were planks to race over and peaks to climb. I sailed from obstacle to obstacle, my legs full of boundless energy. And beside me, Brandy ran, trying hard to keep up, to get the words out, her face alight with joy.
Team, yes. I think I knew that word, too. We were a team, Brandy and me. Together.
Brandy understood me better than any other human could. I knew this because I’d been returned to the breeder by two different owners at a very young age. The little I remembered of those places wasn’t good—a lot of yelling and unhappiness and the words ‘untrainable’ and ‘hyper’ and especially ‘bad dog’ being repeated over and over again. It had shaken my confidence and confused me, which only made me try harder to do something right. But if I ever did, it went unnoticed or wasn’t good enough. The fault was always mine for not understanding, never my owners’ for being unclear.
My dreams drifted back to Brandy and all the things about her that made me feel loved and understood. The twinkle in her eyes. The dimples in her cheeks when she smiled at me. The calming feel of her hand stroking my back. How she laughed when I played. How her voice pitched high when she approved of what I did, then sank low when she didn’t. There was far more of the former than the latter, which was precisely how I liked it.
For a while, I thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing. My mind was blank, my body resting. I was still young and needed lots of sleep, so I could wake up full of energy. For now, though... for now I rested, trusting in Brandy to take us home.
—o00o—
––––––––
The nightmare started with an abrupt jar and a rib-rattling shudder. My teeth slammed together, pinching the edge of my tongue. Then a terrifying moment flashed by in which the world tumbled and shook. At the edge of my consciousness, I became aware of an awful noise—the moaning crunch of metal as it compacted and the screech as it was twisted by unnatural forces, all followed by the drawn-out wail of a dying monster.
My eyes shot open, although they couldn’t focus in the chaos. Everything was on its side, then up, then down, then sideways again. The training bag Brandy took everywhere with us spun and flopped about inside the van, its contents spilling wildly. Bits of treats pinged on every surface. My toys flew haphazardly about. A jug of water burst open, dousing my face as I was slammed on my back, the crate upside down, the pan lying on top of me.
I tried desperately to find Brandy, but it was hard to know where to look, to see anything at all. Daylight had given way to the murkiness of nightfall, color and clarity replaced by muted tones and obscure shades of silver and gray.
For a minute, everything lurched in one direction, forward, including the crate with me inside it. That was when I saw Brandy—or at least the reflection of her face in the rearview mirror—eyes wide in horror.
The front end of the van dipped forward and down. A ravine gaped below, its slopes dangerously steep and punctuated with jagged rocks. At the bottom wound a barely trickling creek bed, its thin ribbon of water glinting in the phantasmal glow of the van’s headlights.
And then... the van tipped over the edge and plunged into the chasm far, far below.