Ethan Montgomery Quotes

“As for me: I loyally remained right where I was, remembering the first time I had ever seen the boy and then just now, the very last time—and all the times in between.”

“One of my favorite things to do was to learn new tricks, as the boy called them, which consisted of him speaking to me in encouraging tones and then feeding me treats.”

“The boy needs a family around him while he rebuilds.”

“I knew who he was: I would recognize that scent anywhere. Unmistakably Ethan. I’d found the boy.”

“My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy.”

“I understood it now, why I had lived so many times. I had to learn a lot of important skills and lessons, so that when the time came I could rescue Ethan, not from the pond but from the sinking despair of his own life.”

“I didn’t want to cause any unhappiness now—in that way, I decided it was probably better that he wasn’t here to see this, though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly.”

″‘No!’ Mom or Ethan would shout when I wet the floor. ‘Good boy!’ they’d sing when I peed in the grass. ‘Okay, that’s good,’ they’d say when I urinated on the papers. I could not understand what in the world was wrong with them.”

“I had fulfilled my purpose and there was no reason for me to be a dog anymore. So whether it happened this summer or the next didn’t matter. Ethan, loving Ethan, was my ultimate purpose, and I had done it as well as I could. I was a good dog.”

“I guess I had never bothered to consider that there might such a thing as a boy, but now that I had found one, I thought it was just about the most wonderful concept in the world. He smelled of mud and sugar and an animal I’d never scented before, and a faint meaty odor clung to his fingers, so I licked them.”

“I felt anger and fear and pain coming from him, but I didn’t back away, I stayed right there, and knew I had done the right thing when he buried his face in my neck and cried some more.”

“When I thought about Jakob, I realized that his cold dedication to Find helped me get over my separation from Ethan—there was no time for grieving. I had too much work to do.”

“He crept over to the doghouse and arranged the blanket on the thin pad inside. I climbed in next to him—we both had two feet sticking out the door. I put my head on his chest, sighing, while he stroked my ears. ‘Good dog, Bailey,’ he murmured.”