Is There More Than One Purpose To One’s Life?

Is There More Than One Purpose To One’s Life?

Mariana Fry

A Dog’s Journey

by : W. Bruce Cameron

W. Bruce Cameron writes stories of many dogs’ lives. He writes about their challenges through life, and how they find their purposes using their challenges. However, he also includes the dog’s owners’ lives. The owners are included to demonstrate the dogs’ purposes. Without owners, would dogs even have a purpose? If they did, how did they walk through their journey without a person in charge?

Just like dogs die, humans do too. This can happen from natural causes, such as dying of old age or going to bed and never waking back up. It can also happen from illnesses such as cancer. At the end of W. Bruce Cameron’s A Dog’s Purpose, Ethan, Buddy’s owner, tragically leaves the world from cancer. Continuing on from A Dog’s Purpose, A Dog’s Journey begins 2 years after the first book ended. Buddy says “This was the second summer without Ethan.”(9) He still lives on the farm with Hannah, Ethan’s lover before he died, and their daily life is still the same. Every once in awhile, Ethan’s daughter in law and granddaughter will come and visit the farm. Clarity, Ethan’s granddaughter, enjoys spending time on the dock with her mother Gloria, and Buddy. However, Gloria does not like dogs. She’s always blaming problems on Buddy. One day, Clarity gets herself into a troubled situation, and Buddy saves her. Gloria takes this situation the wrong way and stops coming to the farm with her daughter. Shortly after, Buddy grows very old and unfortunately passes. He begins his next life saying “images were just starting to resolve themselves in my bleary eyes when I remembered everything. One moment and I was a newborn puppy with no direction or purpose…”(37). Now Buddy is called Molly, for she is a female. She has a brother named Rocky who she plays with everyday. Soon enough, Molly and Rocky are adopted by two best friends. Rocky goes home with a boy named Trent, who happens to be Clarity’s best friend. Molly is adopted by Clarity, Ethan’s granddaughter. The two best friends grow up together happily, along with Rocky and Molly. Molly discovers that her new purpose is to love and look after Clarity, who is also known as CJ. She has to protect her from scary boyfriends, and her awful mother Gloria. The majority of this book is written about Molly’s life, but CJ gets in a car accident to end Molly’s narrative. In the car, When Clarity bends over to grab her phone Molly says “something slammed me so hard I lost track of everything. I heard CJ scream and a shock of pain went through my body and I couldn’t see.”(190) This tragically ends Molly’s life, transforming her into a little boy pup again. His name is Max, and he believes his only job is to find Clarity again. Luckily, he does! She is all grown up and together they live great life. Trent is still a part of Clarity’s life, however Rocky has passed. Living on her own, Clarity constantly has money issues and health issues, for she has an eating disorder. Trent and CJ get married, and CJ continuously grows weaker. Soon enough Trent does too when he is diagnosed with cancer. Along with the couple, Max grows weak because of old age and passes. He enters his last life as a therapy dog named Toby. He spends his days in the hospital, sitting with dying patients, helping them let go. Toby is reunited with a familiar face. They spend the rest of their lives together. Read this book to discover the rest.

Overall, Cameron’s first book to this series focused on Ethan’s relationship with Bailey and Buddy. This book focused on CJ’s life with all of the dogs in this book. I think reading about each dog’s journey with Clarity was really touching because CJ had a special connection with each of them. Every dog entered CJ’s life at a different stage, causing them to help her through all different stages. For example, Molly was CJ’s dog when she was a teen, facing struggles with her related to things like school, whereas Max found CJ as an adult, facing struggles with her related to things like work and money. Therefore the bonds built were all touching, because it showed that a dog can always help their owner.

I’d recommend this book to dog lovers especially because after reading this, your relationship with your dog changes. You will look at them in a different way than you used to because you’ve most likely never thought about their perspective. I’d also recommend this book to anybody who has previously read A dog’s Purpose because it takes off right from where it ended and this book is also heartwarming, but not as much of a tearjerker. I personally found this book filled with more humor than words to cause tears. This being said, read the first book first because the second won’t make that much sense otherwise.

I would probably rate this book 9/10 stars, only because A Dog’s Purpose was so good that I was expecting more. All in all, READ THIS!