Police Officer Saves a Dying Puppy—But Now the Little Dog Keeps Sulking at Him

Chapter 8

A few days later, the first real change arrived.

Declan received confirmation about a position he had applied for months earlier. It was a step he had considered for a long time — one that offered a fresh assignment and a chance to move forward professionally, the kind of opportunity a man his age did not often get a second shot at. The position was his if he wanted it.

For years, Declan had found reasons to remain exactly where he was. The house was familiar. His routines worked. Wabasha was easy to understand. Change meant risk, and risk meant the kind of uncertainty he had spent his whole adult life learning to avoid.

This time he accepted.

That meant moving.

At first, very little changed inside the house. Declan made phone calls, completed paperwork, and began sorting through closets he had ignored for years. Then the cardboard boxes appeared. He brought the first few into the living room one afternoon and set them near the bookshelf. Gus was sleeping on his fleece blanket. The sound of cardboard sliding across the floor woke him. He raised his head.

Declan opened one box and began placing books inside. Gus stood and walked toward it. Declan continued working. The puppy stopped beside the cardboard. He sniffed one corner, then the strip of packing tape. His nose moved slowly along the edge of the box, and something about his posture changed. The loose, curious puppy from a few moments earlier became still.

Declan was turned toward the bookshelf and did not see it.

Gus sniffed the tape once more. Then he quietly walked out of the room.

Over the next several days, more boxes appeared. The bookshelf slowly emptied. A stack of framed photographs disappeared from a side table and was wrapped for the move. Extra kitchenware went into another box. Nothing happened all at once. The house simply began changing a little each day, the way a river changes the shape of a bank — imperceptibly, until one day you look and the shoreline is gone.

Gus watched. He did not bark at the boxes. He did not hide whenever Declan packed something. He simply became quieter. Sometimes he sat at the edge of the room while Declan worked. Other times he disappeared into the hallway. Declan noticed that Gus was less playful, but he assumed the puppy was reacting to the unusual activity in the house. There was packing to finish, arrangements to make, a new job waiting. Declan had enough on his mind that he did not connect the change to anything deeper.

Then one evening, he brought an old suitcase down from the bedroom. He set it beside the front door so he would remember to pack it in the morning. The soft thud made Gus look up from his blanket. His eyes settled on the suitcase. Declan walked past him toward the kitchen. Gus did not follow.

For several seconds, he remained exactly where he was, staring toward the door.

Later that night, Declan sat down on the sofa and reached for his book. Only then did he notice the empty space beside his feet. The fleece blanket was gone.

He checked the kitchen first, then the bedroom. Finally, Declan walked down the hallway. Gus was beneath the small table again. The puppy had pulled the fleece blanket into the narrow space beside him. He was awake.

Declan stopped several feet away. Gus looked past him, toward the front of the house, toward the boxes, toward the suitcase waiting beside the door.

Declan did not understand what the puppy was seeing. Not yet.

The next morning, the house felt different before Declan had even carried the first box outside. Cardboard cartons stood along the living room wall. Several shelves were already half empty. And the suitcase he had placed beside the front door the night before was waiting exactly where he had left it. Gus stayed near the hallway, watching him move from room to room without his usual curiosity.

Declan noticed the puppy was quiet, but he had too much to finish that morning to think much about it. He carried the suitcase to his vehicle first, then returned for a small box of papers he needed to keep separate from everything else. Because he was moving back and forth between the house and the driveway, the small side gate had not closed completely. It rested against the latch with a narrow opening near the bottom. Declan passed it twice without noticing.

Gus did.

The puppy remained near the living room while Declan gathered another stack of documents. Then Declan reached across the kitchen counter and picked up his keys. They touched together with the familiar metallic sound.

Jingle.

Gus’s head lifted. His eyes moved toward the front door.

Declan was already walking outside. He placed the papers in the vehicle, checked something in the front seat, and returned to the house less than a minute later.

The silence struck him first.

Usually, even when Gus was hiding beneath the hallway table, there was some small sign of him — the scrape of a paw, the faint movement of the fleece blanket, the sound of his tag touching the floor. Now there was nothing.

“Gus,” Declan called.

He checked beneath the table. Empty. He looked beside the sofa, then in the kitchen and the bedroom.

“Gus.”

Still nothing.

A cold uneasiness moved through him, the kind that starts in the stomach and spreads outward. He stepped outside and looked toward the yard. That was when he saw the side gate, resting against the latch, not wide open but slightly ajar. The gap was small enough that Declan might not have noticed it on any other morning. But Gus was still a tiny puppy, only a little more than two months old, small enough to slip through.

Declan crossed the yard quickly and looked both ways along the street.

No puppy. He called again. Nothing answered. The morning air was cold, and Gus had only recently recovered from the condition in which Declan had found him. Three or four hundred yards would not seem like much for an adult dog. For a puppy this young, it was enough to worry Declan immediately.

He went to Edna’s house. She opened the door before he reached the second knock.

“Gus is gone.”

The concern on her face appeared at once. Within minutes, they were checking the nearby sidewalks and yards. Edna took the quieter residential side while Declan searched toward the main road. He checked beneath parked cars, behind shrubs, beside fences, anywhere a frightened puppy might try to hide. There was no sign of Gus anywhere.

Declan returned to the intersection near his house, trying to think rather than simply move. Gus could not have gone far. Then a memory surfaced, unwelcome and sudden: the afternoon walk. Gus stopping without warning. The little body becoming rigid. The puppy staring down one particular road and refusing to take another step.

The road leading toward the moving and storage facility.

Declan turned immediately. He hurried back to his vehicle and drove the short distance.