Sheep: Chapters 5–9

In their thick rubber boots and yellow slickers, they slogged through puddles cold enough to make me shiver.

But if you were hungry, life was just a search for food. You couldn’t think about anything else. You couldn’t enjoy a good romp with a pal you met along the way, or play tag with the kids in the park, or savor all the rich odors of the great outdoors.

You couldn’t enjoy a good romp with a pal you met along the way, or play tag with the kids in the park, or savor all the rich odors of the great outdoors. Your nose had a single purpose, and that was to find food.

I’d had enough of being chased away from the places where food smell was the most enticing: kitchens, restaurants, family picnics.

Well, my permanent shoes were getting awfully weary. But my belly wouldn’t let them rest.

My first thought when I heard the train whistle was of my mom and dad. I guess because it’s lonely that sound, downright mournful.

He got up and came lumbering out of the weeds toward me, his arms outstretched.

A pretty little spaniel caught my eye. She was on a leash but didn’t seem to mind.

She walked ahead of her mistress with such an air of self-possession that you wondered who was walking whom.

We said a reluctant goodbye, and I watched her go off, her head and tail high.

Just then I heard a great commotion. People were slowing down to watch something going on across the street.

“We need to get us some money. Buy some proper food, like proper people, in a market.”

While the snow fell, we sat around that meager fire warming our paws and noses.

We went down the bank to a flat place. Snatch and Hollerin knelt in the bushes.

Begging wasn’t exactly noble or even honorable, but it was better than stealing.

“No sheep here,” he said. “Dogs is all.”
“But out there,” I persisted. “Out there in the fields. Did you ever see a flock of sheep and Bob on his horse and—”

I tried making friends with the mixed breed on the other side, but she only wanted to complain about “the accommodations,” whatever that was.

I saw the pride in his eyes as he watched me try my best to herd those sheep. He was waiting for me to learn, to grow into my craft.

The next day, and all the days after, whenever the people came, I was on my best behavior. While the other dogs carried on, I did what the sheepdog said. I sat with my head erect, my tail wagging an invitation.

But the worst part was the muzzle, a cage for my mouth.

Billy struck a match, and up loomed the cages, the sad and angry eyes, the animals, big and small.

There were yips of welcome from a couple of terriers in the next cage.

“Will you two please, please be quiet. I am so tired of your bickering!”

She didn’t care for the diamonds—velvet, diamonds, I had to ask her to stop and explain everything. She said they dug into her delicate skin.

I didn’t even know what kind of work I was going to do, some sort of herding I figured. The monkeys maybe. They couldn’t even make a decent line.

The biggest one, an old male, kept leaving dung piles behind him, like he’d been saving it up for days.

And the look he gave that trainer! It made a sheep eye seem like a puny thing.

I still dreamed about the sheep, still felt something pulling me toward my destiny.

“Dance, you mangy cur!”

Something trickled from my side, I didn’t want to think what.

Karma’s trainer poked and poked at him, trying to make him bow on one knee, his trick at the end of the elephant show. But Karma just bellowed, dancing away from the stick.

With his big checkered clown suit and painted-on smile, he looked as if he was having a great time.

The last of the people pushed through the door as Karma’s trainer came running, his costume torn and covered with soot.

I found Tiffany trying to calm a terrier with a singed paw.

Flames raced up one side of the tent, leaving a gaping hole through which I could see the sky.