Ellie's Story Read Online Free

seem inclined to throw one.
    â€œGood girl, Ellie. Good dog. Find!”
    Was I being a good dog? Jakob had called me a good dog just for sniffing? I sniffed harder and walked a few steps. And there it was! The smell that meant Wally! It was strong and fresh. He’d been here not long ago.
    What was he doing, running away before I could Find him? Didn’t he know this wasn’t the way the game was supposed to be played?
    I followed the trail that Wally had made. Jakob followed me. He didn’t tell me I was a good dog again; he was silent, as if he didn’t want to distract me. But I could tell he was pleased. I must be doing this right.
    There was a delicious smell close by the trail. It smelled like a sandwich Jakob ate sometimes—bread, roast beef, a strange, spicy sauce (how could humans like that stuff?), and some odd plant things that Jakob sometimes ate, too. I glanced up. A sandwich wrapper was lying in the grass. It smelled so good, my mouth began to water.
    â€œFind, Ellie. Find!” Jakob insisted.
    I pulled my nose away from the wrapper. This was Work. I could not let myself be distracted. The rules had changed, but the game was still the same. I was supposed to Find Wally.
    So I didn’t stop trying, even when the trail got difficult. It ran around a bench, and two people sitting there smiled at me. One of them, a woman, offered me her hand. I smelled something in it, something delectable—a bite of bagel smeared with cream cheese. Yum! Sometimes Jakob dropped a piece of his breakfast bagel in my bowl. I loved it. I’d love this, too. I took a step toward the bench.
    â€œPlease don’t,” Jakob said behind me. “She’s working.”
    â€œOh, sorry,” the woman answered, pulling her hand back.
    But I already had my nose back to the ground. Bagels and cream cheese were very nice, but they weren’t what the game of Find was about. When another dog, a silly, long-legged puppy with a frantically lashing tail, bounced up to me, putting both front legs flat on the ground and asking to play, I ignored him. This was not play. This was Work. Jakob and I did Work together. We had no time for puppy games.
    Finally, the trail led me beneath some trees. I smelled several dogs who’d been there before me. Three or four had peed on a big clump of grass. I was tempted to squat and add my own contribution, just so they’d know I’d been here, too, and that they didn’t have these woods to themselves.
    But Wally was around here somewhere. The trail was stronger and stronger now, and I was getting excited. My tail started to wag. My ears were forward, straining. My nose had never been so busy before. Wally? Wally? I was almost on top of him.…
    And then I was. The trail led me around a tree with a wide trunk, and on the other side was Wally, stretched out on the grass and leaning back on a thick root.
    The minute he saw me, he jumped up. “You did it, Ellie! You Found me!”
    â€œGood girl. Good dog!” Jakob praised.
    There was the stick and I enjoyed it, but even more I enjoyed the tone of Jakob’s voice. “She’s good, huh? I was hardly here ten minutes!” Wally said to Jakob.
    â€œShe’s good,” Jakob agreed quietly.
    â€œShe could really be something special.”
    Jakob rubbed behind my ears. “I think she could.”
    After that Wally was never there when we got to the park and I always had to Find him wherever he had wandered off to. Jakob stopped following me, and I learned two new words: “Show me!” This meant taking Jakob to where I’d found Wally sprawled under a tree or sitting behind a bush. Or sometimes it even meant showing Jakob where I’d found one of Wally’s socks or a T-shirt lying on the ground. (The man was a disaster, always leaving his clothes around for us to Find and pick up.) Somehow, Jakob always knew when I’d Found something after I came running back