So time would pass, and new animals would join him on the shelf. First a stuffed elephant with a tunk spilling out stuffing. He was a kind felow and he always would talk to the dog if he wished to have a conversation. But he was soon taken by an old lady and a young boy. As he was pulled off the shelf by The Man, he offered his last words "There will always be someone who is destined to have you. You just have to wait." So the dog waited, and more animals came, a tiger, a chicken, then a clown, and finally a baby doll. She was an old doll, one who had a crack in her head and a face painted on the pink porcilen, one who had old rag clothes and a silver spoon cluched in her hand. At last she too, was taken by a young girl, and the dog knew he would miss her old time smell and her quirky humor. "Goodbye, friend..." He whispered. "Goodbye, friend. Someday you'll be taken too..." She whispered back.
A late summer day, 5 years after the doll was taken The Man's nephew came in. He was immediatly draw to the shelf behind the counter. "Could he want me?" The dog wondered to himself as the brown haired boy began to reach around. But alas, no, he grabbed the baseball beside the dog. "A good choice." The Man told the boy, as they walked out the door.
The following winter a young woman came in, toting a sewing bag. She peered around, looking at every shelf, and picking up the items and examining them closely. Finally she reached the shelf behind the counter. She picked up each object in turn, and as her hand grew closer to the dog he thought "She could fix me! She could love me." But the woman did not pick him up and keep him, instead she set him down, and brought the pincushion farther down the line and brought it to the check out.
Two years later spring came. A young girl came in, she was about five and had little dirty blond ringlets that bounced as she skipped in. She took one look at the dog and bolted out the door. "I'm hopeless. I'm hopeless." He thought. But the the bell on the door jingled again. The little girl ran back in, cluching a dog bone in her small hand. "Could she...want me?" He wondered. "Doggy want bone? You want the bone? Do you like bones?" The girl asked, pushing the bone closer to his face. She grabbed him suddenly and pulled him off the shelf. "Why you have pins doggy? Why you have pins?" Her face was confused as she grabbed out the pins, throwing them around the store. Just the her mother walked in. "Mama! Look at doggy! Look at doggy!" She said, proudly holding him up to her mother's face. "He's wonderful!" Her mother exclaimed, and the girl sat back down and pulled out the last pin. "I'm free!" He thought! "I'm free. I'm almost whole! No more cursed life!" He wanted to jump for joy, but being a stuffed dog he could not. He watched the mother pay, and the girl walked out the door, with him slung over her arm.
When he arived to the girls house she took him up the stairs, and what appered to be her room. Sitting at a small table his eyes ajusted to the bright light streaming in from the window. Blinking, in his own stuffed dog way, her realized there was someone else there. "Hello?" He murmered, trying to see who it was. As his eye began to see through the light, he realized exactly what was across the table. A patchwork dog. "Welcome home." She said to him.
