How It All Goes Down
- Toby wakes up as a puppy again.
- What?
- Toby's been reborn. He's a new dog, with a new family, in a new home. He's blond instead of brown. Do blond dogs have more fun?
- The experience of resurrection leaves Toby wondering, could his existence have a purpose?
- It's in the title, so we bet it does.
- This new puppy is being raised by a breeder.
- The conditions are much nicer than they were in the ditch he grew up in during his first life, but the man who owns the dogs clearly doesn't love them.
- The dog formerly known as Toby decides to employ a trick he learned in his first life—opening the door to his cage and escaping.
- Former-Toby runs for freedom, and a nice man picks him up, observing that he's a "purebred retriever" (5.48).
- The man smells like smoke and alcohol, but he seems nice, so former-Toby allows him to pick him up and put him in his truck. And leave him there.
- Uh-oh.
- As the day gets hot, former-Toby gets thirsty, tired, and woozy.
- This life might be a brief one…
- But just as former-Toby can no longer bear it, a woman breaks the truck's window and rescues him. She should name him Nick, for just in the Nick of time.