This is the intro to The Danforth Puppy, available on Smashwords. It’s based on an actual abandoned dog, evolving into stories about another actual dog.
The people had left him, and even taken the kids with them! He was lost! Apart from a general idea to go home, the puppy really wasn’t too sure how to do that.
He followed the road, being careful to stay out of sight of the cars, which he didn’t trust anymore, after being left alone.
Dogs and even puppies have incredible senses of smell, much better than any human. The puppy’s problem was that he was too young to know what many of the smells meant.
All he really knew was that some smells smelt “right”, and others smelt “Yuk”, which is dog language for really awful.
Actually, he was heading in the right direction, but it was a really long way back to town, and it was a very long walk for a little puppy.
The cold wasn’t much help, either. It was making him tired, and he still needed to find something to eat.
He discovered that humans made a habit of leaving food lying around like they’d dropped it or thrown it away.
He found some very strange things. He found some sort of sticky thing that tasted sweet, and some things that looked like dog biscuits, but turned out to be human biscuits.
Not really his idea of food, but he eventually found something partly wrapped up in paper, with bread and meat. It was actually a hamburger, which someone had thrown away, and it had an egg with it.
That was a good find, because although the puppy wasn’t too keen on the vegetables, it was a lot of high-energy food, just what he needed.
He soon realized that keeping warm and out of trouble was the real problem.
He smelt something very strange, like a gigantic dog. He was scared and hid under some snow-covered branches.
There was a sort of shuffling sound, getting louder and louder, and soon after a monster appeared!
It was enormous, bigger than the car!
It was a moose. The puppy hadn’t watched much TV, but he knew after getting a whiff of the moose that it wasn’t a puppy-eating monster.
That was a relief. He didn’t want to get stepped on, though, so he moved away from the moose.
He soon picked up another, very different, smell. This thing, whatever it was, smelled much more hungry, as far as he could tell. He was sure it was dangerous.
He hid again, this time in a small rocky area with trees, which seemed to have places made to fit puppies perfectly.
There came past a big, alert-looking, animal.
It wasn’t a dog or anything like a dog.
It looked fierce, and it was.
This was a cougar, and it was hunting. The animal smelt like it was really dangerous, and The puppy stayed very quiet and motionless as it went past his hiding place.
After a while, when The puppy couldn’t smell the cougar, he ran as far as he could in the other direction from the one the cougar had been going.
Which got him away from the cougar, but also got him lost.
He had to go looking for the road, and luckily for him, found it before nightfall.
He was learning how to look after himself very quickly. He had also discovered he could always find nice, snug, puppy-sized places where he could sleep safely and not have to worry about monsters.
This time he found a little cave. It was quite warm, compared to the snow-covered world outside, and he wrapped himself up in his tail and had a good sleep.
The cave was a nice place, and he stuck his nose outside to see what was going on, before venturing out.
Just as well he didn’t go out, because his nose informed him that there were a lot of animals around, which smelt much like dogs, but there was something different. He could hear them soon after he smelt them, and there were quite a few of them.
Noses don’t lie. He could soon see them, down below his cave. There were about six of them, big, fast-moving, dog-like things.
They were traveling together, heading across the road, not along it.
These were wolves, relatives of dogs, but very wild. Wolves don’t often even go near big cities, but they can sneak in pretty close when they feel like it.
The Danforth Puppy could understand some of what they were saying, which seemed to be about hunting that moose he’d seen:
How could we lose a moose?
That blizzard last night didn’t help.
Yeah, perhaps we should go ask the humans to find it for us.
That last comment, apparently, was an insult. The wolf who’d been talking about the blizzard snarled and snapped at the one talking about asking the humans.
It turned into a very scary fight, teeth flashing in the winter sun, and a yelp indicated someone had received a real bite, not a play bite like puppies make.
After some further remarks about asking the humans really nicely, the wolves moved on, trying to find the moose.
The puppy was glad they’d gone. He also realized that he was lucky they’d been fighting among themselves and hadn’t investigated his cave. Most dogs sniff around in areas where they stop traveling, to see what’s around.
If they had, he’d have been trapped. The cave was big enough for them to get in, and they could move faster than him in the snow if he’d run away.
He needed to find very safe places to hide, obviously.
Life can be very dangerous for the young, and the trick is to learn very fast.
The puppy was learning, but he was now also very aware that he had a lot more to learn.
He decided to be extra careful and cautiously sneaked along the road, sniffing for food and danger.