Ruby the Foster Dog E-Book

Jimmy Wayne

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 162

Beschreibung

Be a star that shines for others. Abandoned in an animal shelter, Ruby, an adorable mixed breed puppy with an underbite, wonders if a family will ever adopt her. When a goofy looking, scruffy-faced man stops by the shelter, he adopts Ruby. Mr. James is not the family she was expecting—but could he still be the answer to her prayers? Mr. James (known as Jimmy Wayne to his country music fans) is walking halfway across America to raise awareness for the thousands of foster children who desperately need our help. Ruby realizes that she's not so very different from these kids: she's scared and alone. If she doesn't have help, she can't have hope either. But Mr. James wants to change all that, for her and for every foster kid in the United States. On their adventure together, Mr. James teaches her about integrity, honesty, loyalty, faith, forgiveness, and trust, but mostly how love can rescue someone and forever change lives. As they walk along historic routes and locations throughout the Southeastern United States, Ruby quietly helps Mr. James overcome the issues he's been struggling with too. By the time they get to Phoenix, both of their lives are changed for the better. But just when Ruby accepts Mr. James as her new family, an unexpected phone call challenges her to redefine family—and love—all over again. Ruby the Foster Dog will leave readers with a full heart, a desire to help foster dogs (and foster kids) find homes and forever families, and motivation to be a star that shines for others. Ruby's story parallels the plight of the more than 400,000 children in foster care, the 30,000 who age-out annually at 18-years-young, and the 100,000+ children waiting to be adopted. To find out more, please visit Project Meet Me Halfway at ProjectMMH.org.

Leseprobe

BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

Ruby the Foster Dog

Copyright © 2017 Jimmy Wayne

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5408-9 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5439-3 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Editorial services provided by Ginger Garrett and Jackie Marushka Cover and interior by Garborg Design Works at garborgdesign.com Illustrations by Muza Ulasowski at muzadesigns.com

Printed in China17 18 19 20 21  5 4 3 2 1

For Ruby

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER ONE

The tornado siren screamed.

The small farming community just outside of White Deer, Texas, was under attack. Violent, whirling winds roared as rain slammed against the window in the dark office across the hallway. A bazillion bright bolts of lightning lit up the greenish-yellow sky.

I could see flashes of the fat funnel spinning in my direction. The employees at the animal shelter had already escaped. They had run for cover in a nearby underground cellar.

I couldn’t escape. I was locked in a small cage, just like all the other dogs trapped inside the shelter. All I could do was curl up under my towel and close my eyes.

There were more lightning strikes, followed by deafening booms that shook the walls. The tornado roared toward us like a speeding freight train, the eerie sound of a phantom engine screaming past.

The floor and walls all around me squeaked and cracked. I peeked out from underneath my towel, almost expecting to see a ghost train bearing down on us. I saw only darkness and lightning strikes clawing at the earth.

There was a loud crash, and wind rushed through the broken window in the office across the hall, filling the shelter with warm air, causing the roof to lift off like a balloon. I could see the beams straining to hold on, to resist the overwhelming force fighting against them. What gave them their strength? How could they hold on?

The howls and cries from the other dogs scared me. The dog in the cage next to me frantically clawed at the door, desperate to escape.

The window blinds flapped then ripped free from the window. They slammed against the wall and fell. The wind yanked my towel away, trying to yank it through the bars of my cage.

The wind continued bullying the roof, pushing and pulling it like bullies do, but the nails would not give in. They held on to the rafters with all their might.

Finally the wind gave up. The roof relaxed. The walls stopped bending and the floors stopped moving under me. The tornado was gone. Bright sunlight split the dark sky.

I stood up and shook the glass and debris off my body, then looked around.

Carefully walking to the cage door, I stuck my nose through the wire as far as it would go. The air smelled like diesel fuel and sawdust. I looked up and down the hall. Was anyone out there? All the other dogs were sticking their noses through their doors and looking up and down the hall too. Every dog in the shelter was terrified and confused—even the older, bigger dogs. We needed our people.

Hours went by. Finally, I heard someone opening the front door of the shelter.

It was one of the employees. We were safe! We all barked and yelped, wagging our tails. One by one, the employees entered the shelter. They slowly walked past our cages, glancing inside to see if we were alive.

We were, but we were quivering and in shock. We needed to be held.

The phone rang. An employee answered. Someone’s family was calling to make sure everyone was okay. All afternoon, the employees called their families, and their families called them. Each employee shared a story and even reenacted their near-death escape from the tornado. Each described how they had made it to the underground shelter just in time.

All the dogs stood at their cage doors, eavesdropping.

“We’re lucky to be alive,” one employee said. “I can’t wait to go home and hug my family.”

I barked, but they weren’t listening. The dogs were lucky to be alive too! Why hadn’t they taken us to the underground shelter? Didn’t they care about us? No one even seemed to notice we needed comfort. No one remembered we didn’t have families. We felt invisible, and in some ways, that scared us more than the tornado.

The employees gathered in the office across the hall, complaining about the broken window. Glass was everywhere. The tornado had left them with a big mess.

I looked down at my paw. A little piece of glass had blown into the cage and cut my toe. I hadn’t felt any pain when it happened, but now I did.

No one noticed that, either.

An employee grabbed a broom and started cleaning.

“At least no one got hurt,” he said, then whistled as he worked.

Within a few hours, things seemed back to normal around the shelter.

But life inside a shelter is anything but normal.

A musky, vinegary smell constantly lingered throughout the room. It was always cold as a cave but not nearly as quiet. Dogs begged for attention night and day. The thin, light-blue towel I was given to lie on barely kept me warm. I shivered whenever I tried to sleep.

I wanted out of here. I wanted a family.

The second hand on a big clock near the fire exit ticked, sounding like a sledgehammer slamming down on a steel railroad spike. Each tick echoed down the gray hallways where the cages were stacked. One on top of the other, we were stuck inside the cages like containers on cargo ships, as if people wanted to get rid of us one way or the other.

Inside each cage was a sad, innocent dog. Not one of us had done anything wrong. None of us deserved this.

This place was called a shelter, but we didn’t feel protected. My cage had a big lock on the outside of the door. The cage’s ceiling, walls, and floor were made of dark metal bars that made a fence all the way around. I was a prisoner, not a pet.

The cage wasn’t just ugly. It hurt. My little toes got trapped in the fenced floor when I tried to walk. My paws hurt if I stood too long too. I tried to stand anyway, though, staring through the bars at visitors whenever they walked by.

I overheard one of the employees at the shelter saying he’d visited Alcatraz Island. He said it had a prison on it, and the prisoners were allowed to leave their cells, go outside, and get a breath of fresh air from time to time.

I envied them. The only sunlight I ever saw was through the office window when the blinds weren’t closed and pulled down. On a good day, the blinds were open and the sun was out. Then I could see the green trees covered with leaves. In the distance, I could see green grass and people smiling as they walked by with their dogs on leashes.

I wish I had someone who loved me. If I had a family who loved me, I would be the best dog in the world. We would go on long walks and live in a big house.

I continued standing on the fenced floor, staring through the window, daydreaming. Sometimes I dreamed of escaping to freedom. Most days, though, I just dreamed about having a family.

The hardest part about making up a good daydream? You have to know exactly what you’re dreaming of.

I didn’t know what families were like. I didn’t know what it felt like to be loved. Sometimes I wondered if my daydreams would ever come true. Part of me knew that wishes weren’t nails. Wishes never held anything together.

I wondered how many things I didn’t know. And there was one mystery that troubled me more than all the rest combined.

Every day, dogs disappeared from this place.

The luckiest dogs left the shelter to join a family.

Every day, someone new visited the shelter looking for a dog to adopt. People usually came in with ideas about who the perfect dog would be. Two sweet grandparents wanted a furry, friendly sheepdog for their grandkids. One nice man wanted a sweet lab pup to surprise his wife for an anniversary. An elderly gentleman wanted a calm, older dog to keep him company while he worked in the yard.

Visitors like that always walked slowly up and down the hallway. They stopped in front of each stack of cages, looking at the dog in the cage on the top and then looking at the dog in the cage in the middle and then in the bottom cage. They acted like they were in the produce department at the grocery store. I’m surprised no one squeezed us to see if we were ripe.

The worst part of the experience? Listening to what they said. They always made comments about our appearance.

“How cute!”

“How pretty!”

“That’s one ugly dog.”

“We want a boy, not a girl.”

They commented on each one of us, then moved on to the next stack of cages and did the same thing all over again. They wanted a dog just like the one in their imaginations. No matter how high I jumped or how hard I wagged my tail, no one wanted a dog like me.

Sometimes people came to look at us, but they didn’t even plan to adopt anyone. They’d just look at us, sigh, then mosey on out of the shelter and go on with their lives. We always wondered why they came to look at dogs they didn’t want to help.

Waiting to be adopted was hard. It was like waiting to see a shooting star or waiting for Christmas morning. I’d heard about Christmas from the shelter employees. I wanted to open presents someday too.

Every day, every minute, and every second dragged on like a three-toed sloth.

Actually, I think a three-toed sloth would move faster.

Rocks would be more affectionate than the shelter’s employees were. I wish I could call them by their names, but they wore their badges high up on their shirts. I was never a very good reader anyway.

They didn’t want to be friends with us, though. They were like big, weathered trees on top of a high, lonely mountain. They kept themselves out of reach in every way.

When a new employee started to pet me, another guy, an employee with a bald head and long neck, stopped him. “Don’t get attached!” he warned. Then he nodded to the big, black door at the end of the hallway.

Dogs disappeared through that door. The employees knew all about it, I realized.

“What’s behind that door?” the new guy asked.

“We call it the ‘room of no return.’ Sometimes the cutest dogs are sent to a bigger shelter where they have a better chance of being adopted. But other dogs … ” His voice lowered and he looked around.

I strained to hear what he said, but I couldn’t. The new guy shuddered and walked away.

The bald guy with the long neck grabbed a card off a cage and sighed. “Two more days for you, fella. Too bad you’re so ugly. Your eighteen days are almost up.”

I growled. That guy was no beauty himself.

That’s when I noticed the cards above the cages. Each card had two numbers: the dog’s identification number and a date. The date was the day that the dog went into the cage.

Until now, I hadn’t realized why that date was so important.

A dog only had eighteen days to make it out of here. After that, he disappeared behind the black door.

I pushed my nose against the metal bars of my cage, desperate to see the number written on my card. How many days did I have left?

That night I tried to sleep, but I kept crying for all the innocent dogs that would never see day nineteen.

What would make any human being treat an innocent dog like that? A dog always loves unconditionally. Doesn’t everyone want to be loved? Don’t they know what they’re missing?

I rolled over, trying to get comfortable on my towel. The room was cold, and I could hear dogs whimpering in their sleep. They were having bad dreams, too, I guess.

I fell back asleep, dreaming about dogs taking over the world and licking every kid’s face off. That was a good dream. Except that I liked kids. And I didn’t know if I wanted to lick anyone’s face off. I’d heard that kids were dirty. I don’t mind licking my paws, but at least I know where they’ve been.

In the darkness, I waited for the sun to rise, and thought about life. When God created this world, He didn’t make roads, shopping centers, and dog shelters. He made beautiful places to live and a blue sky to run under.

Humans built all those ugly concrete things, sticking them everywhere. So why should dogs be locked in cages or chained and not allowed to roam free? It’s our world too. And we do a pretty good job with it. When is the last time a dog started a war between two countries over religion? When is the last time a dog judged someone for the color of his skin? Plus, dogs don’t just love; they are smart and brave too.

Dogs are great. It’s people that need a little work.

CHAPTER TWO

The shelter employees gave me three things: a light-blue towel to lie on and cover up with, a collar, and a tag inscribed with the number 127. The tag was scratched and bent, and the collar was so long the end of it flopped over and nearly touched the floor. A bigger dog than me once wore it, that’s for sure. I wondered how that dog’s story ended.

After the employees had gone home for the night, I asked around about the dog whose days were up. No one admitted knowing who he was or what happened to him. But once I started asking questions, everyone started to talk.

During the day, we had to focus on trying to be adopted, so we didn’t converse much. And with the metal dividers between each cage, we had to stretch our necks to get a good look at each other. But tonight, everyone felt like a friend. We were companions, not competitors.

First, Parker the Barker introduced himself. He was a black-and-white dog in the cage to my left. In his youth, he’d had black hair. Old age had given him plenty of white hair. His number was 117, but I called him Parker the Barker because he barked all the time. He barked at his tail. He barked at the volunteers. He even barked in his sleep.

“You’re probably wondering how a dog as handsome as me could be brought so low,” he said, looking around his cage. I was actually wondering if he ever stopped barking, but I just nodded.

“My owner was an elderly woman who passed away. Her children sold her house and dropped me off at the shelter. Can you imagine? Dropped off, just like a donation to Goodwill!” He growled, reliving the memory. “I’ve been here ever since, waiting for someone to adopt me. The problem is, I only appeal to people with excellent taste. They tend to be few and far between.”

The dog to my right started laughing. She wouldn’t stop, and then I started laughing even though I tried to stop. Parker the Barker barked at us, and we girls laughed even harder. Finally, he started laughing too.

“I’m Stella,” the dog to my right said. “Around here they call me 823. I hope that’s a good number.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, trying to be helpful. I already liked her, even though we had never talked before.

“I didn’t have an owner, not like Parker. I did have puppies, though, lots and lots of them. New litters every year … until … ” Her voice wavered.

“Until what?” I asked. My stomach felt funny, as if her story mattered more than I knew.

“I got old.” She sighed a big, loud, long sigh. “I tried not to, but it happened anyway. Then the breeder didn’t want me anymore.”

I craned my neck around and got a good look at her. She was a Chihuahua, just like me! Her ears were pointy, her legs were short, and her tail curled up. She would have been just perfect, except she didn’t have an underbite like mine.

She was so sweet and very humble too. All the dogs talked for hours and told wild stories. Stella didn’t talk a lot, but when she did, it was always about how much she missed her pups. They were all taken from her and sold to strangers by the puppy-mill owner. Even though it hurt my paws, I stood up in my cage and pressed my nose against the bars. She did the same.

As dawn drew close, Stella and I curled up in our cages. Parker the Barker still wanted to talk, though.

“Let me tell you about the good old days. In the summer, I used to roll in the mud and jump into a kiddy pool every day. At Christmas, I’d rip open my presents with my teeth, and when the snow came, you’d find me lying by the fireplace. I looked just like this.” He struck a royal-looking pose, his head held high, his black nose twitching.

Stella stifled a giggle. She must have had a better view of him than I did.

“And I traveled too. First class, always. I’ve walked the streets of New York City and visited Central Park. There was a thing called a carousel that went around and around, and children rode on the backs of horses, tigers, giraffes, and all kinds of other animals that had been frozen in time.” He lowered his voice and whispered to Stella and me, “Can you imagine? Who would freeze an animal in time and let kids ride it in a park?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh, and did I tell you about the pretzels?”

I didn’t know what a pretzel was, but if I asked questions, he’d talk longer.

“They’re delicious! The vendor parked his cart on the sidewalk in front of the Hearst building. You know the Hearst building, of course. It’s the height of elegance. And I must really suggest you try the pretzels.”

“Parker,” I asked, “haven’t you ever done normal stuff, like chase mailmen or growl at cats?” I clapped my paw over my mouth, but it was too late.