Bailey's Story by W. Bruce Cameron Page A

word,” she said. “And he’s hardly more than a puppy. He didn’t know what he was doing. Tell him … tell him he’s a doodle. That’s what my mother always called me when I was a little girl and I did something wrong.”
    The boy faced me sternly. “Bailey, you are a doodle. You are a doodle, doodle dog.” And then he laughed and Grandma laughed, but I was so miserable I could barely move my tail.
    Just to show that skunk, I was going to ignore her. That would serve her right, after everything she’d put me through.

 
    9
    Over the next few days, the smells faded from my fur. And about the time I finally smelled like myself again, my family stopped behaving so strangely. They let me in the house, and I took over my job of tasting kitchen scraps. The boy called me doodle from time to time, but I could tell he wasn’t angry when he did.
    â€œWant to go fishing, doodle dog?” he’d ask, and we’d shove out in the rowboat and pull tiny fish out of the water for a few hours.
    One day a chilly breeze swept in from a cloudy sky. Ethan pulled on a shirt with a hood that covered his head, and he called me to go down to the pond. We had been fishing for a while, and I was starting to wonder when we’d be going in for lunch, when Ethan suddenly sat straight up. “I’ve got a big one, Bailey! A big one!”
    I leaped to my feet, barking. If Ethan was excited, so was I!
    Ethan wrestled with his rod for more than a minute, grinning and laughing, and then I saw it. A fish the size of a cat was coming to the surface of the water, right next to us! Ethan and I both leaned forward eagerly to see it. The boat lurched under us, and with a startled yell, the boy fell overboard.
    The boat rocked back when Ethan fell, throwing me to the bottom in a heap. I jumped up and peered over the side, down into the dark green water. I could see the dark form of the boy going down, vanishing from sight. The bubbles rising to the surface carried his scent to me, but he wasn’t coming up.
    My boy was in trouble!
    I didn’t hesitate. I dove right in after him, my eyes open as I pushed against the water, struggling to follow the trail of bubbles down in the cold darkness.
    I couldn’t see much of anything. The water flowed into my nose, smoothed my fur, and flattened my ears against my head. The boy must be somewhere below me. I paddled as hard as I could, my front legs reaching, my back legs thrashing.
    Finally I caught sight of him—a blurry image in murky shadows. I lunged, jaws open, and seized the hood of his sweatshirt in my mouth. Lifting my head, dragging him with me, I swam hard for the sunlit surface of the pond.
    We burst up into the air. “Bailey!” the boy shouted, laughing. “Are you trying to save me, boy?” He reached out and snagged the boat with his arm. Frantically, I tried to claw myself up over his body and into the boat, so that I could pull him the rest of the way to safety.
    He was still laughing. “Bailey, no, you doodle dog! Stop it!” He pushed me away, and I swam in a tight circle around him. I knew I shouldn’t go far from him. “I have to get the rod, Bailey. I dropped the rod. I’m okay! Go on! I’m okay!” The boy waved a hand at the shore, as if he were throwing a ball that way. He seemed to want me to leave the pond. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. What if he went under again?
    But at the moment, he was talking, and laughing, so I could tell that he was fine. And he kept waving me to the shore. Finally, I went and pulled myself out onto a small area of sand next to the dock to shake all that heavy water from my fur.
    â€œGood boy, Bailey!” Ethan called.
    I looked around and saw his feet go up in the air, and an instant later he vanished under the water. With a whimper, I threw myself back into the water, swimming as hard as I could, my shoulders lifting all the way out of