学进去

   Being an animal doctor, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old dog named Belker. The dog’s owners, Tom, his wife Lisa, and their little boy John, all ____ Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle （奇迹）.

I examined Belker and found it was dying of cancer. I told the family we could do ____ for Belker but perform the euthanasia （安乐死）for the old dog in their home.

As we made preparations, Tom and Lisa told me they thought it would be a good idea for six-year-old John to ____ the process. They felt as if John might learn something from the ____ .

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker’s family were around it. John seemed so silent, ____ the dog for the last time, that I ____ if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker died peacefully.

The little boy seemed to ____ Belker’s death without any difficulty or confusion （困惑）. We sat together for a while after Belker’s death, wondering why animal lives are shorter than human lives.

John, who had been listening quietly, said, “I know ____ .”

We all turned to him ____ . What he said next shocked me but made us not so sad at the same time.

He said, “People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life 一 like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?”

The six-year-old continued, “Well, dogs ____ know how to do that, so they don’t have to live long.”