Prologue

As the title of the book says:
My name is Henley .
Not only is my name Henley, but I’m an Old English Sheepdog.
A Shaggy Dog… The Shaggy D.A. … A Disney Dog… I hear all those names.
Actually the thing I hear most is, “Can he see?”
For the record, I see rather well.
As for my ‘Old’ status in the Old English Sheepdog title, I’m ‘gettin’ up there’ according
to my vet, Dr. Vaughn.
Now I realize I’ll be ten years old next March, and most of my fellow sheepherders bite the dust
around that time… but not me. I have plans!
I guess maybe it’s because my life started out in such a scary way that when things finally turned around for me, I embraced everything that came along… even cats!

Chapter One

I was born on March 10th, 1998, in Lancaster , Pennsylvania , in a place I heard them call a puppy mill. The people who ran the place weren’t very nice, but my parents were wonderful. Dad was a proud herder who used to talk about being related to many a famous AKC champion. He was magnificent looking. Mom wasn’t from such strong lineage, but she sure was beautiful, and better yet,
she was very kind and loving to all of her pups.
I was taken from my parents when I was barely six weeks old and although there were eleven other siblings that went along with me, I really felt the loss of my mom and dad. I had nine very rough and tumble brothers and two very aggressive sisters, so I was kind of the odd dog out, if you know what I mean – sensitive… needy… the baby… something the puppy mill people called, ‘the runt.’
On April 22nd of that year, we were all sent to a place that looked like a nice farm house from the front of the dwelling, but we didn’t get to live there. We got stuck in the back yard
in what I can only describe as a mud pen.
The water was never clean, the food was hard and tasted terrible, my baby teeth hurt,
and my skin was always really itchy.
I’d cry for help when I’d see Cedra, the farm owner’s wife, but all she ever did was tell me to,
“Hush,” and, “Be quiet, or Ralph will come out here and give you a whippin’!”
I wasn’t sure what a whippin’ was, but by the tone of her voice it didn’t sound like
something I’d particularly care for.
Now that I think about it, my brothers and sisters were starting to look a bit scruffy, too. But, every now and then, Cedra or Ralph would come and take three or four of my siblings and disappear back into the nice house. A few hours later, they would come back to the pen, their hair all nice and clean… but one member of my family was always missing.
My youngest sister said to me, “Cedra gave us a bath and fed us some good food.”
“ She did?”
“ Yup. And… and then Ralph invited people to… to come by and visit with us.”
“ Visit?”
“ Yeah! And those people were great! They played ball with us, and held us, and…”
“ Wow! Then what?”
“ Well, then… then, one of those people said, ‘We’ll take him.’”
“‘ Take him?’”
“ Yup. And then the new people left, they took our brother along with them,
and the rest of us came back here to the pen.”
“ And that’s it?”
“ Yup. That’s it.”
Day by day this would happen until finally there was only me and two of my brothers left.
Both of them had already been to the house, they had played ball, seen the new people and had some really good food and a nice, warm, sudsy bath.
I never did. I was still too scraggly, still too itchy, and, as Ralph would always say when he looked at me, “Too ugly. Ya never make a dime off the runt!”
One chilly spring morning my two brothers were taken into the nice house and we said our goodbyes to each other. I really expected to see at least one of them, if not both of them, come back to the pen so we could play together and be as much of a family as we could, considering how our numbers had dwindled… but neither one came back.
Not one.
I was alone in that mud pen for over two weeks.
The water got dirtier.
The food had bugs crawling around in it.
And my once beautiful shaggy sheepdog fur was all but rubbed right off my body.
I was itchy from my head to my toes.
And I was so lonely I felt as if my heart would break.
Sixteen days into my exile came a horrible thunder storm. I was in the mud pen and it was getting muddier by the minute. I was afraid I would drown. Ralph had tied me to the old wooden fence with a fraying rope collar and a rusty chain. The collar was tight and it was hard to swallow sometimes. I could barely move two feet in any direction.
I cried and howled and howled and cried.
I heard Cedra yelling at Ralph to bring me in, but he wouldn’t allow it.
“ IT’S JUST A DUMB ANIMAL!!!!” he yelled back at her.
I cringed at the sound of his voice.
I cried all night long.
I was so scared.
The thunderstorm passed away in the middle of the night, but I could still hear it in my head.
The day after the storm, Cedra and Ralph went for a ride in their truck. I was hoping they would come back with some good food for me, change the rain water in my bowl, and bring me some medicine for my itchy skin… but I never saw them again.
I had been abandoned and left to die.
I tried not to cry at night, but it was hard not to. I drank dirty water, slept a lot, ate a few bugs out of the mud, and thought about the nice days I had had with my mother and father…
those days when my family was together… a loving, happy, and healthy pack.
Two days later I woke up to the sound of a kind voice.
“ You poor little thing.”
I looked up and saw a woman with a kind face and big blue eyes staring down at me.
I sat up as straight as I could and did my best to look like the dignified sheepdog that I was, but that was kinda hard to do with red and pink blotchy skin, no hair, and mud caked all over my feet.
She started to pick me up.
I talked to her inside my head. Noooooooo!!!! You’ll get all dirty and then you’ll get mad
and won’t take me out of here! Put me down!!!!
I squirmed and wiggled but somehow she didn’t care about the mud all over her pretty eyelet dress.
“ There, there, little boy… you’re going to be all right now.”
She looked at me with those soft blue eyes, and somewhere deep within my soul,
I really believed that I would be.

Educational Testimonials