Shortly after midnight, Wellington the poodle lies dead, stuck through with a large garden fork on Mrs. Shears’s front lawn. The narrator, Christopher Boone, touches the dog’s nose and notes that it’s still warm. 

Christopher loves knowledge, but he has trouble reading human faces. Eight years earlier, he met Siobhan, a tutor, who drew a series of simple faces on a sheet of paper, naming each face for its emotion. The sad one is how Christopher feels when he sees the dead dog.

Christopher kept the face sheet for reference when he didn’t understand someone. Siobhan suggested that this would make people feel awkward, so Christopher tore up the sheet, and now he simply asks people what they mean, “or I walk away” (3). 

Christopher loves dogs. They have simple moods and are easy to understand. He pulls the fork from the dog, lifts its body, and hugs it. Blood gets everywhere. Mrs. Shears runs toward him, angrily shouting, and she orders him to set the dog down. She thinks he harmed the creature. Christopher curls up on the lawn, his forehead on the grass.