Just a Dog (2 page)

I don't remember that much about Mister Mosely when he was just a puppy, probably because he didn't stay little for very long. I know he made heaps of puddles and messes on the floor, which Mum didn't like. That's how come we got the ‘no dogs inside' rule.

I do remember what happened on the first night we brought Mister Mosely home. Things didn't go too well. What happened was, Dad made this great place for Moe to sleep downstairs in the laundry, but Mum didn't think it was such a good idea. She reckoned Mister Mosely was a real ‘people puppy' and he'd be too scared and lonely down there by himself.

She was right. Every time we left Mister Mosely alone he went crazy with all this howling and whining.

That's why Dad tried this thing he'd read about. He got a big teddy bear I used to have when I was really little and an old wind-up clock that was his dad's and he put them both in with Mister Mosely. The bear was so Mister Mosely wouldn't feel alone and the clock ticking was supposed to sound like a heart beating. Dad said it would make Moe think he was still with his mum Madonna.

I thought Dad's idea was a pretty good one. Except it didn't work. When we left Mister Mosely in his bed with the teddy bear and the ticking clock he just whined and carried on the same as before. Mum wanted to go straight back downstairs and get him, but Dad said we had to give his plan more time to work. So we stayed upstairs and waited.

We never did find out for sure if Dad's plan would've worked or not. That was because he forgot to turn the clock alarm off and when Mister Mosely was in the laundry all by himself still whining and everything, it went
BRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIING!

It was really loud. Moe got such a fright he wee-ed all over the place and howled worse than ever.

After that Mum said there was ‘no way in the world' we could leave Mister Mosely downstairs by himself, so Dad had to make a brand new place for him. He made it on the porch at the top of the stairs just outside the back door. Dad said it was only a ‘short-term measure', but it became Moe's spot from then on. That's where he always sat waiting around for us to come outside or looking in on us like he was on guard or something.

I think the reason why Mister Mosely didn't stay little for long was because he ate so much. Mum used to joke that he was ‘eating us out of house and home' and Dad reckoned he had ‘hollow legs', which meant that that's where all the food was going.

All I know is, Moe grew up way faster than me. I used to tie ropes to his collar and sit in a cardboard box and he could drag me across the grass no trouble at all. Sometimes I'd climb up on his back and pretend he was a horse. Mum made me stop doing that horse stuff. She said I might hurt him. I don't think he minded one
bit. Nothing ever seemed to bother Moe, not even all that terrible stuff my little sister Amelia used to do to him.

That's another story I'm going to tell you about. But not now. First I have to tell you what Mister Mosely looked like when he got to be a full-grown dog.

You couldn't miss him, that's for sure.

First of all, Mister Mosely was big.

Not when we got him but. He was smaller than a lot of the other puppies, but Uncle Gavin said that didn't mean he would stay small. ‘Big paws, big dog'; that's what Uncle Gavin reckoned, and Mister Mosely's paws were BIG all right.

They were so big he used to get all tangled up in them. Sometimes Dad called him ‘Un-co Moe' when he did that, which I didn't think was fair. I figured that Moe was just born with his adult dog feet and he had to wait for the rest of him to catch up.

He didn't have to wait too long. Moe got big extra fast. Pretty soon he was so big he had to put his front legs apart just so he could eat from
his food bowl. One time when we went to the zoo I saw a giraffe do the exact same thing. Dad ended up putting Moe's bowl on top of some blocks so he didn't have to bend all the way down to reach it. And we've got this photo of Moe standing on his back legs with his paws on Dad's chest and Moe's head is as high as Dad's. That shows you how big he was.

Uncle Gavin said Mister Mosely must've had some other kind of really big dog in him. Maybe a Great Dane or a Rottweiler. Uncle Gavin called it ‘Moe's secret ingredient', just like in that recipe for fried chicken. He reckoned a lot of ‘secret herbs and spices' must have gone in to make Mister Mosely. Uncle Gavin always thought that was really funny.

The second thing you couldn't miss about Mister Mosely was his colour, which, I already told you, was mostly white. Mr Lafranchi from down the road called Moe ‘The Unholy Ghost'. That was because one night when he was walking home really late Moe came running out of the dark. Mr Lafranchi said he almost had a heart attack because all he could see was a big white shape floating towards him. Mum said knowing
where Mr Lafranchi spent most of his evenings it was a wonder he didn't see two Mister Moselys coming for him.

But the thing is, Moe wasn't pure white like a ghost is anyway. He had a few black bits on him too. The bits of Mister Mosely that were black were half of his left ear, his nose, some little dots you could hardly see on his back legs, a spot under his right eye that looked like a black tear coming out, and a few big black spots on his chest that all joined together and made a wonky heart shape. Mum said those spots on his chest were there because Mister Mosely's heart was too big for all of it to fit on the inside. The only other dark bits of Mister Mosely were his big round eyes. The rest of him was white.

That's why Mister Mosely didn't end up looking much like a proper Dalmatian at all. He was just too big and too white. And according to Uncle Gavin, Moe's fur was longer than it should've been and his head was too ‘boofy' and ‘boxy' and it didn't have the ‘classic Dalmatian curves'.

But I didn't care about any of that stuff. I liked Mister Mosely just the way he was and if I had to
choose between him and a real Dalmatian – even one that cost a lot of money and won heaps of prizes and ribbons at stupid dog shows – I'd pick Mister Mosely every time. Same as I did when he was a puppy.

The only thing I hated Uncle Gavin saying was one time when he called Mister Mosely ‘Frankenstein's dog'. He said that because he reckoned Moe was big and scary the way Frankenstein was and he said they'd both been ‘thrown together from spare parts'.

That was a stupid thing to say. Moe wasn't any kind of monster. Nobody who knew him properly was ever scared of him. Not even Amelia. Not even when she was so little she had to stand on her toes and stretch right up just so she could pat him on the back and Moe could have swallowed her in about two gulps if he wanted to.

Amelia was never scared of Mister Mosely. But I reckon Mister Mosely definitely should have been scared of her.

My sister Amelia was always doing terrible stuff to Mister Mosely.

It started when she was little and she used to climb all over him and hold his ears up in the air and turn him into a ‘wabbit' or pull the skin out around his mouth and eyes just to make him look stupid.

It got worse when she was a bit bigger. That's when she started dressing him up. She made Moe wear all these wigs and dumb hats and scarves and she put big plastic earrings on him and decorated him with flowers and tinsel and all sorts of stuff. Moe always let Amelia do whatever she wanted. He just sat there and waited till she got bored or someone came and rescued him.

One of the worst things Amelia did was the day she found a packet of glitter in Mum's scrap-book drawer and covered Mister Mosely with it. Then she brought him in to show everyone how ‘sparkly' he looked. Wherever Moe went he left a trail of glitter behind him, and before we could get him outside he did one of those giant shakes he does after you give him a wash and all this glitter sprayed everywhere. Dad said it was better than the Sydney Harbour Bridge fireworks on New Year's Eve.

Mum wasn't happy at all about the glitter going everywhere, but Amelia told her it was fairy dust and that Mister Mosely was a magic fairy dog and he was spreading his ‘good-luck doggie magic' all around the world.

But it wasn't very good luck for Mum and Dad and me. They had to clean up all the mess inside and I had to give Mister Mosely a bath to try and get the glitter off him. That wasn't easy. Even after two washes he still sparkled a bit. So did I, on account of halfway through his first wash he did another one of his giant shakes and I got totally soaked.

But the glitter wasn't the worst thing Amelia
ever did to Mister Mosely. What she did with the marking pens was way worse. What happened was, one day when no one was looking, Amelia got some thick marking pens and drew all over Mister Mosely with them. She drew big round black glasses and bushy red eyebrows and a weird-looking moustache and some spiky hair on top of his head. Then she tried to draw a tie and collar around his neck, but they didn't turn out too good.

We only found out what Amelia did when she came and said she had a ‘big surprise' to show us. Then she made us all come downstairs, and she brought Mister Moe out from under the house and said, ‘Ta-daaaa!', like she'd done some kind of magic act or something.

Mum and Dad tried to go cross on her, but when they looked at Mister Mosely's face, they both started laughing and then they couldn't stop. They laughed so much they had tears coming out of their eyes and Mum had to run to the bathroom because she said she was going to be sick. Every time she tried to come back, Mister Mosely just had to look at her and make his drawn-on eyebrows go up in the air and Mum would run
away again holding her stomach. She laughed so much, one time I think I heard her make a little fart noise, and I didn't think Mum even did that kind of stuff.

Moe had no clue what was going on that day. He just stood there wagging his tail and half-barking, half-whining at us, trying to figure it out. He probably thought everyone had gone crazy. Then Dad got a mirror and held it up so he could see what Amelia had done to him. When Moe saw himself in the mirror, his ears and his new bushy eyebrows stuck up in the air. Then he twisted his head right around one way and then the other, like he couldn't work out what he was looking at. That made Mum go tearing off to the bathroom again.

It was only after I gave Mister Mosely a bath to clean him up that we found out the pen Amelia used for Moe's red eyebrows was a permanent ink one. After his first wash, when the eyebrows didn't come off, Mum said, ‘Poor old Moe – what has she done to you?' Then she got
another
fit of the giggles.

It took a long time and lots of washes and scrubbing for those eyebrows to come totally off,
so Mister Mosely went around for ages looking really surprised all the time.

It was bad what Amelia did, drawing all that stuff on Mister Mosely, but she was only little and I guess it didn't really hurt Moe at all. Besides, it was sort of good too because of how it made Mum and Dad laugh so much they cried. Afterwards Amelia said she was sorry and Mum made her promise not to do anything like that again. But Dad said if we ever needed any extra money we could always rent Mister Mosely out as a whiteboard.

Mum gave Dad a punch on the arm for that. Just a pretend one though.

Mister Mosely didn't ever scare Amelia but he did scare some people, even if he didn't mean to.

Like there was this one time when I was pretty little and we all went to a big fair thing down in the park. There were lots of stalls and rides and stuff and heaps and heaps of people. We took Mister Mosely along too because there was a dog competition. Moe won two prizes, one for Biggest Dog and one for Friendliest Dog. That just shows how people shouldn't have been afraid of him. Sometimes they were but, and there were two people at the fair that day who Moe really scared.

It all started when I got lost in the crowd.
Mum was taking Amelia to the toilets and Dad was talking to someone about Mister Mosely. I was supposed to ‘stay close and not wander off' but I went to have a look at this donkey that was taking kids for rides. I followed it around for a while without really thinking and then I couldn't find my way back. I must have headed off the wrong way, because I ended up at some part of the park I hadn't even seen before.

When I couldn't find Mum and Dad anywhere I got really worried. It was getting dark and some people were starting to pack up to go home. I thought maybe I'd been left behind and I might have to sleep in the park all night. Pretty stupid, I know, but that's what I thought. I remember I cried a little bit. I couldn't help it. Then this man and lady found me.

I told them how I was lost and they said I could come with them. They gave me something to drink and some hot chips, which made me feel a lot better. Their car was parked on the road near where we were and they said there was a police station right around the corner and they would drive me there and then the police would phone Mum and Dad up and they'd come and get me.
They said I should hurry up and go with them straight away, because Mum and Dad would be really worried about me. They seemed nice, so that's what I did.

Their car was a pretty bomby-looking one though. The lady got in the front to drive and the man said he would sit with me in the back so I wouldn't be alone. He had a blanket there too in case I got cold. He opened the door for me to get in and that's what I was going to do when I heard Mister Mosely barking. I knew it was him straight away because his bark was so deep and he sort of howled a bit when he barked too.

It took me a while to spot Moe because there were still plenty of people walking about everywhere. Then I saw him and Dad. They were right across the other side of the park so I shouted out at them as loud as I could. Dad didn't hear me because I could see him still looking around everywhere trying to find me. But Moe heard me all right and as soon as he did he yanked the lead from Dad's hand and came charging across the park swerving his way in between all the people and nearly knocking some of them over.

I was really happy to see Moe charging at me
that day and I could tell he was really happy to see me too. But I guess the man and the lady didn't know Moe was just being happy. I guess he must have looked pretty scary to them with his white face and his dark eyes and him being so big and running full speed straight at them and barking and howling with his mouth flopping around everywhere.

Anyway, before I could tell them it was just old Moe happy to see me, the man jumped into the car and slammed the door shut and wound up the window. Then the lady drove off so fast the tyres spun round and dust and dirt went everywhere. They were already gone when Moe got there, so he just barked a bit at the car when it went down the road and then he licked me half to death.

When Dad found us he was pretty cross at me for not staying where I was supposed to, so I didn't tell him about the man and the lady. I figured he wouldn't like me talking to strangers and I knew he definitely wouldn't be happy if he found out I was going to get into their car.

The end of this story is that after, when we were driving away from the park, I asked Mum where the police station was and she said there
wasn't one. She said the nearest one was miles away in the next suburb.

I didn't ask any more questions after that. I just sat in the back seat and held on to Mister Mosely all the way home.