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

by W. Bruce Cameron

Of all the things I’d ever done, making Senora laugh seemed the most important. It was, I reflected, the only thing that gave my life any purpose.

Living in the Yard had taught me how to escape through a gate. It had led me straight to the boy, and loving and living with the boy was my whole purpose in life. From the second we woke up until the moment we went to sleep, we were together. But then, of course, everything changed.

This was, I decided, my purpose as a dog, to comfort the boy whenever he needed me.

Any reluctance I might have felt to attack a human being was overridden by the sense that whatever Todd was doing, it was causing harm to the boy and to the family I was there to protect. There was no stronger purpose than that.

My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn’t want to cause him any unhappiness now—in that way, I decided it was probably better that he wasn’t here to see this, though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly.

Because failure isn’t an option if success is just a matter of more effort.

The deep aching grief I knew I would feel would come soon enough, but at that moment mostly what I felt was peace, secure in the knowledge that by living my life the way I had, everything had come down to this moment. I had fulfilled my purpose.