DON’S NEW HOME
Prince, sitting on the bank of the puddle of water, was howling as
loudly as he could.
“Are you getting out, Don? Are you getting out?” asked Prince.
“Well, I――I’m trying hard!” answered Don. “I guess――glub――blulp――gurg!”
and then he could not say anything more, even in dog language, for his
mouth was full of water.
“Oh, what shall I do?” cried Prince.
Don did not have any time to answer him. He was too busy swimming.
Nearer and nearer to the bank of the puddle, off which he had slipped
into the water, swam Don. He was soon so close that he could put his
paws on the firm earth, and then he knew he was safe, and could crawl
out.
But oh! What a sorrowful looking sight poor Don was. His nice, clean
coat was covered with muddy water, which dripped down and ran from him
in little puddles.
“Oh, how are you ever going to get dry?” asked Prince.
Then Don happened to remember how once he had seen his mother out in
a rain storm. She came to the kennel quite wet, but before she went
in she shook herself very hard, and the water drops flew off her in a
shower.
“That’s what I’ll do,” thought Don. So he gave himself as big and as
hard a shake as he could, and the water flew about in a shower.
“Hi! Stop! You’re getting me wet!” howled Prince.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to,” answered Don. “But that’s the way I get dry.
You asked me that, you know.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you were going to put the water on me,” Prince
replied. “I don’t care, though, as long as you’re safe,” and he went up
to his brother, and kissed him on his nose with his little red tongue,
Prince did, in a way dogs have.
So Don got safely out of the puddle into which he had fallen, but his
adventures for that day were not yet at an end.
“Let’s go home,” said Prince. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I,” spoke Don. “But which way is home?”
“Don’t you know?” asked Prince.
“No. Don’t you?”
The two little puppy dogs looked one at the other.
“Oh, I forgot!” cried Don. “Don’t you remember, we were lost just
before I fell in the puddle, and we’re lost yet. Oh dear!”
Then the two little puppies felt so badly that they just sat there, on
the bank of the mud puddle, and howled as loudly as they could.
I suppose you wonder what good their howling did, but I shall tell you.
Back in the kennel Mrs. Gurr, the mother dog, was waiting and wondering
why Don and Prince did not come home.
“I saw them go over that way,” spoke Violet, who was nibbling at a bit
of puppy cake.
“They were having a race,” said Ruby, who was practicing at trying to
catch her tail.
“Oh, such boys!” cried Mrs. Gurr. “I suppose they’ve gone so far away
they can’t find their way back. Come, Spot, we’ll go look for them.”
“All right,” said the other brother of Don and Prince. He was called
Spot because he had a white spot on him. Otherwise he was all black.
Mrs. Gurr and Spot hurried out of the kennel, and they had not gone
very far before they heard a noise.
“What’s that?” asked Spot, standing still and wagging his tail.
“Listen,” said his mother.
“Howl! Wow! Bur-r-r-r-r!” was the noise they heard.
“There they are!” said the dog lady. “Those are your lost brothers
calling. Come on, Spot. I know where they are now.”
Mrs. Gurr was very good at finding lost dogs, and this time she knew
just which way to go to find Don and Prince.
Soon the mother dog saw them sitting on the edge of the mud puddle,
their heads held up in the air, howling as loudly as they could howl.
“Oh my! What a noise!” cried Mrs. Gurr, with a dog laugh. “What is the
matter with you puppies, anyhow?”
“Oh, mamma! Is that you?” cried Don. “Oh, we got lost, and――”
“And Don fell in and swam out!” added Prince.
“Well, that was very smart of him, I’m sure,” said the mamma dog. “But
it was silly of you to get lost. See, the kennel is only a little way
off, just around that clump of bushes.”
Surely enough, they had been only a little way off from their home all
the while, only they did not know it.
“But we――we couldn’t find our way home,” said Don.
“No, and that shows you ought not to go too far off until you know how
to get back,” said Mrs. Gurr. “Now as soon as you get dry, Don, I’ll
give you all some lessons in how to find your way back home again, when
you get so far off you can’t see it.”
It did not take Don long to get dry in the warm sun, and then the
lessons began. For dogs, even puppy dogs, have to learn their lessons,
you know, just as you children do.
They have to learn to eat only the things that are good for them.
Sometimes a puppy will gnaw on a cake of soap, but he does not do it
more than once, for he finds out it makes him ill. And dogs have to
learn to come when their master calls them, and to lie down when they
are told, and to shake “hands,” and do other tricks――especially in a
circus.
So Mrs. Gurr showed Don, and his brothers and sisters, how to sniff and
smell along the ground, so they would know their way back again when
they had gone away from home. Dogs, you know, have very good noses for
smell. Even on a dark night, when a dog cannot see, he can tell, just
by sniffing the air, whether his master is coming along, or whether it
is some one else.
So, when a dog takes a new road his paws leave sort of a smell in the
dust. This smell stays there for some time, and when the dog wants to
get back, he just sniffs and smells along the road until he finds
where he has made his tracks before, and in that way he gets home
again. He can do that even in the dark.
It was this lesson that Don’s mother taught him, until he and the other
puppies could run a long way off from their kennel, even in the woods,
and could find their way back again.
“Now you will not get lost again, Don,” said his mother to him.
“And I don’t want to,” Don said. “Being lost is no fun.”
The puppy dog family lived in the kennel for some time longer. The
little doggies were all growing larger and stronger, and could run
about now without falling down so often. Don grew faster and larger
than any of the others.
One day two boys came walking out to the kennel where the puppies
lived. One boy was Willie, whose father owned Mrs. Gurr.
“Well, Willie, may I take my puppy now?” asked the other boy.
“Yes, Bob, I guess he’s big enough now to leave home,” said Willie.
“Are you sure you want the one you first picked out?”
“Oh, yes, sure. I’ll take him,” said Bob. “Don is the best puppy in the
lot.”
[Illustration: “He’s a fine dog!” cried Bob, as he patted and rubbed
Don.]
“Well, I’m glad he thinks I’m so nice,” said Don to himself. He had
begun to understand boy and man talk, you see, though he could not
speak it himself.
“Yes, I’ll take Don,” went on Bob.
“I wonder where he’s going to take me?” thought Don. “This is a funny
world.”
Bob stooped over and picked Don up from the pile of straw.
“He’s a fine dog!” cried Bob, as he patted and rubbed Don. Don liked
that. He was not afraid of the boy, for the boy was kind.
Then, without giving Don a chance to say good-by to his brothers and
sisters, and without even letting him kiss the mamma dog, Bob, the boy,
took Don away with him to a new home.
Don did not mind going away, for the boy was so kind and good to him,
and petted him so nicely, that Don liked him at once. And Don was not
lonesome or homesick, for he saw many new and strange things.
At last the boy went up the walk toward a big white house, and he said
to Don:
“Don, this is your new home.”
Though Don could not speak boy language, I think he understood what the
boy meant.