One day a tall male human came to my cage and looked at me. He asked the shelter human where I came from. She told him I was a trained hunting dog whose owner had been killed in a hunting accident. The tall human said his name was Ronnie and asked if he could take me for a walk. The shelter human said that would be okay. I didn’t smell any treats in his pocket but I went along anyway.
I thought he might be a circus human like I saw at Dan’s house on the moving picture box where animals did tricks because he asked me to sit, stay, lay down, heel and other things. I did everything he asked. The circus animals I saw were not happy. I thought the shelter looked a lot better. But I waited to see what would happen.
When we got back to the shelter, Ronnie asked the shelter human more about me. She said I was a good dog and asked Ronnie how he would take care of me. Ronnie said he was a forest ranger and I would be a helper dog for him. He said the rangers had a cabin in the woods in the mountains. That sounded a lot better than a circus.
Ronnie told the shelter people he would take me home with him. I was OK with that because I didn’t smell anything bad about Ronnie. He smelled strong and good. Dogs can tell whether a human is good or bad. I didn’t know what a forest ranger was but I could tell Ronnie was a good human.
I was beginning to feel pretty good about all of this. Then I looked up and saw Peanut and Daisy looking at us from their cages. They smelled happy and sad at the same time. Peanut said he hoped I would find lots of trees to pee on in the mountains. Daisy just said she would miss me. I had never been missed before and I didn’t know what to do with that. I told them they were good dogs and that someone like Ronnie, maybe even with treats, would come some day and take them home. Ronnie had to tell me three times to come to get me away from their cages so he could take me out. I don’t think he understood.
When we got outside Ronnie took me to a big truck that had a picture of a tree on the side. I like trucks and I like trees. He opened the door and said up. I jumped in all the way to the seat. Ronnie seemed to like that. When he got in I noticed he had a picture of the same tree on his shirt. I figured it was some famous tree. Its name was US. Ronnie had a bag of treats in the truck and he gave me one. I was liking him better all the time. He made the window go down in the door and I stuck my head out.
There was a box in the truck that human barks came through while we were driving. Ronnie talked back to them even though we couldn’t see them. While I was looking around the truck, i saw a hunting stick like the one Dan used. I was worried for a minute because I really didn’t want to hunt birds anymore after the bad thing happened, but I didn’t see any of the other stuff Dan had in the truck when we went hunting. And Ronnie didn’t have the kind of clothes Dan wore when we went to kill birds.
I really liked the picture of the tree named US on Ronnie’s shirt. And it smelled like Ronnie had something else in mind. Something good. I settled in to see what would happen.