A Dog's Purpose (A Dog's Purpose, #1)

by W. Bruce Cameron

I’d been accidentally locked in the garage but was more than willing to forgive them. Why were they scowling at me like that, shaking their fingers at me?

Mom spent all weekend digging in the backyard and planting flowers, the dirt smelling so wonderful that when everyone went to school I dug the flowers up, chewing the bittersweet blossoms out of a sense of loyal obligation to Mom, though I eventually spat them all out.

It sounded a little like they were eating, but I couldn’t smell any food. Not sure what was happening, I climbed up on the couch and forced my nose into the place where their heads were together, and they both burst out laughing at me.

Because failure isn’t an option if success is just a matter of more effort. I know it’s difficult, Maya. Try harder.”

Cats are like that; you can’t get their attention unless they want to give it to you.

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.

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.

horses are unreliable creatures who will leave you stranded in the forest at the first sign of a snake.

About the only thing involved with the new arrangement that was less than perfect was the fact that when Hannah started sleeping with Ethan I was summarily dismissed from the bed. At first I assumed this was a mistake—there was, after all, plenty of room for me between them, which was where I preferred to lie. But Ethan ordered me off onto the floor, even though there was nothing wrong with the bed upstairs and the girl could just as easily sleep there. In

was his dog, and he was my boy.