A Dog's Purpose

A Dog's Purpose is a 2010 American novel written by W. Bruce Cameron, author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter and How to Remodel a Man. The book chronicles a dog's journey through several lives via reincarnation and how it looks for its purpose through each of its lives. The novel stayed a New York Times bestseller on the charts for forty-nine weeks, garnering critical praise from such sources as Temple Grandin, famous for her study of cattle behavior, Kirkus Reviews, and Marty Becker, resident veterinarian on the early-morning television show, Good Morning America. A sequel followed in May 2012, titled A Dog's Journey, following the same dog after the events of the previous book. The film rights of the book were bought by DreamWorks.

Plot

The novel begins with a dog, who also serves as the narrator, realizing that "the warm, squeaky, smelly things squirming around" were in fact his brothers and sisters. A few weeks later, after being nursed by their mother, a feral dog, and developing a social order between the litt ersssssssermates, the dogs, whom the narrator calls "Fast," "Sister," "Hungry," and himself, go outside of their den at the base of a tall tree to explore the woods around them. After another few weeks where their mother has taught them how to hunt in the woods and to stay clear of humans, Hungry falls ill and eventually dies, a result of being the runt of the litter. Soon after, a truck pulls up close to where the dogs are living and manages to capture all of them except for Sister, and they are put into cages in the back of the truck. Two men, who appear to be of Mexican ethnicity, inspect the puppies, including dead Hungry, and their mother, before going on their way to the destination.

The dogs arrive at a place called the Yard, where dozens of abandoned dogs reside under the guidance of a gentle old woman who the narrator calls Señora. The narrator, who is soon named Toby by Señora, gets along well with the other dogs, except for one, who is the alpha male of the Yard pack. Toby especially finds company in a girl dog named Coco, with whom he plays games and spends most of his time with. He especially finds a game where, unbeknownst to Toby, is really a position used for mating in canines, amusing, although Coco thinks otherwise. Soon after, the two men appear back with Sister, who they had found extremely weak and on the verge of starvation. That night, Toby's mother escapes from the Yard by gripping the doorknob to the gate with her mouth and pulling on it, allowing her to go free. Toby follows reluctantly, but after careful consideration, decides to stay where he is, in the Yard.

One day, many of the newer dogs at the Yard, including Toby, Coco, Fast, and Sister, are whisked off to a building (a veterinarian office) to have a surgical procedure done to them. However, before being put under anesthesia, Toby overhears a conversation between one of the men who works for Señora, whose name is revealed to be Bobby, and the veterinarian regarding the number of dogs who are living at the Yard. The vet, who Toby calls the "nice woman," is concerned that she may have to alert the law enforcement to close the Yard because of concerns over poor living conditions. Bobby tries to comply with this, but argues that there is nothing wrong with the conditions in the Yard. The vet says that if he can come up with a solution for the problem, then she won't have to call anybody.

A while later, Toby wakes up in the Yard to find that he has a cone around his head and that the lower part of his body is aching, revealing that he had gotten neutered, and is far less interested in playing his "game" with Coco. A new dog arrives, named Spike, who is a former fighting dog, and is very aggressive towards the other dogs, particularly the alpha male. Bobby and the other man express their concerns about Spike to Señora, but she only responds by saying that "there are no bad dogs, just bad people," and that she intends to keep Spike no matter what. Not very long after, the very agents that the veterinarian was afraid would come to the Yard arrive, with orders to shut down the place due to poor sanitation and welfare conditions. Señora, teary-eyed, tries to negotiate with the agents, but they are relentless and shut down the place anyway.

Toby, Spike, Coco, and many other dogs are put into the back of Bobby's truck and arrive at the veterinarian's office again. They are all put into the operating room, where, one by one, the vet inserts a needle into the dogs' backs. Soon, it is Toby's turn, and darkness slowly creeps up on him as he is being euthanized.

Toby wakes up again to see that he has been reborn as a Golden Retriever and is feeding off of a new mother. Using experience from his previous life, Toby tries to claim the title of alpha male by trampling on all of his siblings, whose numbers are much more numerous than his first life, to get to the teet. However, his littermates view this as a game and trample one another also, leaving Toby in the same position he was in before. A few weeks after birth, when the puppies have matured enough, Toby and the others are allowed to play outside of the cage that they were born in, revealing that they live in a puppy farm where dog's are bred solely for the gain of money. Remembering what his original mother did to escape the Yard, Toby climbs up onto a table and bites the doorknob, successfully opening the gate to the outside world and leaving him to explore the real world.

After wandering around country roads, Toby is picked up by a truck driver who lets him sit on the front seat of the truck. The man drives to the bar, where he promises to only have one alcoholic beverage, but hour upon hour passes by without the driver returning, leaving Toby dying of heat exhaustion in the cab. A woman suddenly appears looking angry with Toby, leaving him initially scared, but she then opens the sunroof of the truck, pouring water onto him, replenishing him of his health. The woman then picks up Toby and brings him to her car, where she returns home with the puppy. The woman introduces Toby, renamed Bailey, to her son, Ethan, who is overjoyed and excited to finally have a puppy of his own. Ethan's father returns home from work and reluctantly allows Ethan to keep the dog, but only if he promises to take care of Bailey.

Over the summer, Bailey has the time of his life playing with Ethan everyday, but school soon begins, and Bailey must stay in the garage during school hours. On the first day, he relieves himself and defecates all over the garage, destroys the contents of a garbage can, and rips up a bag full of clothing. When the family discovers what Bailey has done, they dog-proof the entire garage and install a doggy door so Bailey can go in and out of the garage, which he soon picks up on and goes out to play outside.

Over the course of many years, Bailey lives a much fuller life with Ethan than he did as Toby, including a developing romance between Ethan and a girl who lives near his grandparents' farm named Hannah, a failed friendship between Ethan and a destructive boy named Todd, and getting lost in the woods with Ethan, barely making it out if not for a rescue team.

Later, when Ethan has grown to be a teenager, Todd, angry with Ethan over a dispute with Hannah, comes to Ethan's home, pours gasoline over the lawn, and sets fire to the entire property. Bailey, angry that Todd was trying to harm Ethan and his family, as well as previous bad experiences with him, instinctively grips Todd's ankle with his teeth, causing him to bleed. Ethan appears to be dead inside his room from the flames, but soon appears out of his window and jumps out. Instead of flying over the bushes, though, Ethan lands in the flaming bushes, permanently injuring his leg. Thanks to Bailey, the police are able to track the blood trail to Todd's house, and interrogate him, with Todd finally admitting that he had burned the house. His fate is left unclear.

Ethan goes to live with his grandparents at their farm in Michigan so he can be with Hannah, who he is openly dating, and to finish his senior year in high school. Soon after moving, he goes off to college, and Bailey's health starts to decline, with him taking naps very often and being weak. Ethan's grandparents and mother take him to the vet and begin crying as he lays on the operating table. Ethan storms into the room, and Bailey licks him one last time to reassure him that everything will be okay. He then passes away, sure that he had fulfilled his purpose by keeping his master, Ethan, company.

However, Bailey wakes up once again as a German shepherd, unsure why he has been reincarnated once again. Bailey, who realizes that he is now a girl, is picked out and named Ellie by a police officer, named Jakob, and trained to be a police sniffer dog. After assisting Jakob in finding an Alzheimer's patient who has wandered, as well as recovering an abducted child and the kidnapper, a wounded Jakob gives Ellie away to his colleague, Maya, a woman who comes from a large family. Ellie begins to be a search-and-rescue dog, but during a mission following an earthquake, her sense of smell fades away from a chemical spill. Ellie dies once again, sure that she has finally fulfilled her purpose.

Much to her surprise, however, she is born again, this time as a male Labrador retriever. He is picked out by a man for his girlfriend, Wendi. Wendi is ecstatic at her new pet, which she names "Bear," but is unable to keep him because of a no-pet rule in the apartment building she resides in. Instead, she gives him to her mother, who is dating an alcoholic. The mother's boyfriend, fed up with the dog for no particular reason, ditches him on a country road. Bear soon picks up Hannah, Ethan's old girlfriend's, scent, and is eventually able to track down the Farm where he once visited with Ethan. Ethan, now an elderly man, decides to keep Bear, renamed "Buddy," and gets married to Hannah. One day, while Hannah is out doing errands, Ethan has a seizure and begins to believe that Buddy is Bailey. Within hours he dies, and Buddy stays by him, loving the alone time he is finally having with his old master.

Reception

Publishers Weekly called it "a tail-wagging three hanky boo-hooer" and "delightful". The Long Beach Post praised Cameron's ability to get inside a dog's psyche. It was also a reader recommendation in Christian Science Monitor. However the Washington Post criticized Cameron for "exploiting dogs' selflessness for his own mawkish ends"

Sequel

The book was followed up by a sequel, A Dog's Journey. Library Journal called it a "multi-hanky read".