Cynthia Rylant's Stray

When you have a problem, it may seem easy to solve it by passing off to someone else. In “Stray”, a short story by Cynthia Rylant, Doris finds a stray puppy wandering in the snow outside of her house. She wants to care for the puppy, but both her mother and father won’t allow her to keep it because they don’t have enough money to pay for the puppy’s expenses. But as Doris’s dad learns, wanting to get rid of the problem by passing it off to someone else, which is bringing the puppy to the pound, can cause troubles. At the start of “Stray”, we see Doris bringing the stray puppy into her house and attempting to care for it. Immediately after Doris’s dad sees the poor puppy, he infers that in their circumstances, the best and easiest solution would be to bring the puppy to the pound. “I don’t know where it came from...but I know for sure where it’s going,” Doris’s dad commented. …show more content…
For example, it makes Doris feel miserable and depressed when her dad wants to bring the dog to the pound. A week after Doris found the stray puppy and cared for it in her house, she attempted to persuade her parents to allow her to keep the puppy. During a quiet dinner, Doris tried to talk to her parents about keeping the stray puppy. “She’s a good puppy, isn't she?” Doris asked her parents. Trying to avoid the conversation about keeping the stray puppy, her parents continued eating their food and remained silent. Since Doris was persistent, she tried to convince her parents again. “She’s not much trouble,” Doris said, waiting for her parents to reply. A few more times, Doris asked again, but her parents ignored her desperate pleas. Since her dad was focused on passing the problem off to the pound and was not open to any other ideas, he made Doris very depressed. At this point in the text, passing your problems to someone else can hurt the feelings of