Just a Dog (3 page)

I guess Mister Mosely frightened some people because he was so big and maybe kind of scary-looking. But there were lots of things that frightened
him
too.

Way back when he wasn't fully grown, the first thing that scared him was thunder. One night we had this big storm. It started with just a bit of lightning and stuff. Mister Mosely was out on the porch and he was already shaking and whining a bit. Then a big boom came. I thought a plane or something had crashed on to the roof.

Anyway, Mister Moe forgot all about Mum's ‘no dogs inside' rule and bolted straight in through the back door. He was going really fast, and when he tried to stop, his feet skidded all over the place
like he was a cartoon dog. Then he ran into my room and hid under my bed. He was shaking so much and he looked so scared that Mum said he could stay there ‘just this once' until the storm was over.

I guess Mum forgot about the ‘just this once' bit because after that, whenever there was a storm with even a tiny bit of thunder, Mister Mosely ran inside. And it was always my bed he hid under. When he got bigger he had to squeeze himself flat just to fit, and the bed would lift up on one side. I don't think we could have got him out then even if we'd wanted to.

When I was little and Mister Mosely was under my bed I used to crawl under with him, especially when there was a bad storm and the thunder got really loud like someone setting off bombs. I'd pretend we were hiding in a cave together.

I liked being under the bed with Moe. I used to put my head on his chest and listen to him breathing and his heart beating. He was so big and strong I didn't think any storm would ever be bad enough to blow him away. I just held on to Moe's neck and I felt safe. The first time Mum and Dad found me like that I told them I was
looking after Mister Mosely so he wouldn't be too frightened. I guess they probably knew it was really the other way around.

But it wasn't just thunder that frightened Mister Mosely. Dad's electric leaf blower was another thing he hated. He hated it so much he wouldn't go near it even when it was turned off. All you had to do was pretend you were going to pick it up and Moe would run away with his tail between his legs. One day just as a joke Dad started saying, ‘Leeeaf-blower. Leeeaf-blower. I'm going to get the leeeaf-blower,' in a sort of slow and scary way and Mister Mosely got the shakes. Mum reckoned it was cruel and made Dad stop, but I could tell she was trying not to laugh because Moe looked so funny.

Even Tiger scared Mister Mosely. Tiger was the skinny cat from next door that didn't even come halfway up one of Moe's legs. Tiger belonged to the Contis. They called it Tiger because it had orange stripes. Tiger was a she, and the weird thing about her was, she was totally deaf.

Mister Mosely wasn't always scared of Tiger. But one day when she was in our yard just licking her paws Mister Mosely came up behind her and
sniffed her. I guess Tiger didn't hear Moe coming on account of her being deaf, because she got this giant fright and sort of frizzed up and shot straight into the air like she'd stepped on a landmine or something. When she was still in the air Tiger twisted round and turned into some kind of a ninja cat and started hissing and whacking into Mister Mosely's face with her claws.

If Moe almost gave Tiger a heart attack when he came up behind her, I reckon Tiger gave Moe a triple heart attack. After that, whenever Tiger came into our backyard Mister Mosely would tear up the back stairs and bark at her from the porch. It didn't bother Tiger though, because she couldn't hear a thing. She just walked around our yard as calm as anything. It drove poor old Moe nuts.

One day Uncle Gavin was over at our place and Mister Mosely started barking at Tiger from the top of the stairs. When he saw Moe up there hiding from Tiger Uncle Gavin called him a ‘sook' and said he needed to ‘fire up more'. Uncle Gavin was always saying things like that about Moe and always trying to make him angry by teasing him and roughing him up and boxing him around the
head a bit. It never worked. Moe just used to wag his tail and wait for Uncle Gavin to get tired of it and give up, same as he did with Amelia.

It made me angry when Uncle Gavin did that kind of stuff. If Mum or Dad was there they made him stop, but if it was just me Uncle Gavin would keep doing it. Sometimes I used to wish that Mister Moe
would
‘fire up' and really teach Uncle Gavin a lesson, but he never did. He always just waited till it was over. Mister Mosely was good at waiting. Mum said he had ‘the patience of a Job'. Job was some guy from the Bible who had heaps of patience. At least that's what Mum told me.

There was only one time I can remember when Mister Mosely ever got really angry with someone. On that day he was so ‘fired up' it was scary. But it wasn't at Uncle Gavin. I'll tell you all about that soon, but first I have to tell you about the thing that scared Mister Mosely the most, even more than thunder or the leaf-blower or Tiger.

I have to tell you about the Pink Panther.

Dad got the Pink Panther for Mum way back before they were even married. It's this giant stuffed toy that's almost as big as a person and looks just like the Pink Panther in all those cartoons. We call him Pinkie for short.

Just about every Christmas Dad would tell the story of how he got Pinkie for Mum. What happened was, Dad took Mum to this fete thing and the Pink Panther was the big prize at the Knock 'em Down stall. Mum loved the Pink Panther as soon as she saw it, so Dad really wanted to win it for her. All he had to do was throw some balls and knock down a pile of wooden blocks.

Dad played heaps of cricket, so it should have
been easy, but he reckoned the whole thing was rigged. He said the balls were all light and wobbly and out of shape and some of the blocks must have ‘weighed a ton' or been ‘nailed down' because he said he hit them but they didn't move. Dad spent all his money trying to win the top prize for Mum but he couldn't do it. Mum wanted him to stop because she was worried about him losing all his money, but he kept going. Mum says that just shows Dad's ‘stubborn streak'.

Anyway, Dad ran out of money so Mum didn't get her prize, but the next time they went out, Dad told Mum he'd hired a chauffeur for the night. Mum didn't know what he was talking about. But when she looked in the front seat of Dad's car, she saw the Pink Panther sitting there like he was the driver. Dad had sticky-taped his paws to the wheel and put one of those driver's caps on his head.

How Dad got the Pink Panther was, he borrowed some money from his boss and he went back to the fete the next day and just bought it. He never told Mum how much it cost him but he said he had to do a ‘mountain' of overtime to pay his boss back. Dad reckoned it was worth it.
He said that the Pink Panther earned him lots of ‘brownie points'.

So that's how come we had the Pink Panther at our place. I thought he was pretty cool because he was so big, but Mister Mosely didn't think he was cool at all. He wouldn't go anywhere near him. And you could tell Moe was really scared, because when he barked at Pinkie he was always shaking so much that the bark came out all wobbly like someone was strangling him at the same time.

Mum blamed Dad. She said Mister Mosely probably had an ‘inbuilt fear' of stuffed toys after that teddy-bear alarm clock thing when Moe was a puppy. I just think Mister Mosely thought the Pink Panther was some kind of scary-looking person.

Most of the time the Pink Panther didn't worry Moe, because he was locked away in the cupboard. But at Christmas we brought him out and dressed him up as Santa Claus. We used to sit him on a chair next to the Christmas tree in the lounge room. Mister Mosely could see him from the back door. He'd just stare and stare at Pinkie. I think Moe was terrified he was going to move.

One Christmas the Pink Panther did move.
Sort of. It was when Uncle Gavin was over at our house and he snuck around behind the lounge so Moe couldn't see him. Then he got in behind Pinkie and lifted up his arms and made it look like he was getting up from the seat. When Mister Mosely saw Pinkie moving he almost killed himself trying to get away down the stairs.

Uncle Gavin almost killed himself too, only with laughing. After that we had to hide Pinkie in the next room where Moe couldn't see him, otherwise he wouldn't come back on the porch. Mum wasn't very happy with Uncle Gavin.

We had to stop dressing Pinkie up as Santa because of the thing that happened a couple of Christmases ago.

One Christmas all of us were in the lounge room watching TV and Pinkie was sitting in his usual place next to the tree. Amelia was playing on the floor just in front of him with some toys. While she was playing she must have bumped into Pinkie's stool or something because he toppled off it and fell right on her. Amelia got a fright when that happened and sort of squealed.

Mister Mosely must have been watching everything from the back door, because as soon as Pinkie landed on top of Amelia, he came charging into the lounge room. I guess he thought she was being attacked or something, because before we could stop him, Moe grabbed Pinkie by the throat and dragged him away. Then he started shaking
him so hard that Pinkie ripped all the way down one side and his head almost tore right off.

Everyone was shouting and yelling at Moe to stop, but he just kept shaking Pinkie like crazy until millions of those little white styrofoam balls started pouring out of him and they got blown all around the room because the ceiling fan was going full blast. Dad tried grabbing Pinkie from Moe but he wouldn't let go and they had a kind of tug-of-war for a while. Moe won, because the leg Dad was holding on to ripped right off and he went crashing to the floor.

When Mister Mosely finally realised that Pinkie wasn't fighting back he just stood there. You could tell he knew he'd done something bad, because he let Pinkie drop out of his mouth and put his head way down near the floor and his big eyes started looking around at us, all worried. His tail started wagging too, but only a tiny bit.

Then the little white balls that were flying around everywhere began sticking to Mister Mosely's nose and that made him sneeze. Then he sneezed again. And again. We were being spattered with spit and snot. I had to help Dad drag Moe outside before we all got drowned.

It took forever to clean up all those little styrofoam balls. They were everywhere, all over the carpet and in between the lounge cushions and in the light shades and in our hair and on our clothes. Even the Christmas tree was covered in them. Dad called it Moe's White Christmas.

No one was really too mad at Mister Mosely for tearing up Pinkie. Mum even called him Amelia's ‘knight in furry white armour' because of how he came to rescue her. One time Dad told me you were only brave when something scared you but you faced up to it anyway. He told me that when I didn't want to swim the whole length of the pool in the swimming carnival and some kids at school called me a chicken. So maybe Mum was right and maybe Mister Mosely was brave when he saved Amelia from the Pink Panther, even though she wasn't really being attacked in the first place.

Anyway, Mum bought all this new stuffing for Pinkie and she sewed him back together, but every time we tried to put him back on the stool Mister Mosely went crazy. Even if we closed the screen door he just kept barking and scratching at it and banging his head against it trying to get
inside. So that's how come we had to put the Pink Panther back in the cupboard for good.

I don't really care that much about Pinkie being locked away – except it meant that Dad stopped telling the story of how he got him for Mum. But maybe it wouldn't have made any difference anyway because pretty soon Dad stopped telling all his other stories too.

When he did talk, it was only about work and money and bills and stuff.

That time Mister Mosely ripped up the Pink Panther was pretty weird, but it isn't the weirdest story about Mister Mosely. That happened one morning when I found him next door in Mr Taylor's yard.

That was the first weird thing, because Mister Mosely never went next door even though there's this big hole in the fence where a couple of palings are broken off. He was acting kind of weird too. He was just wandering around near the old shed in Mr Taylor's backyard like he couldn't make up his mind where to go.

I was up on our back porch when I saw him, so I called out to him. That's when it got even weirder. Moe started to come home, but
something really strange happened when he got about halfway across Mr Taylor's yard. All of a sudden he just sort of stopped dead and jerked back round and wouldn't come any further. I thought maybe he heard a noise behind him or something, but he just stood there whining for a bit and then he went back to the shed.

I knew something was wrong with him, because Moe always came when I called him. So I tried again, but the exact same thing happened. He got halfway across the yard and wouldn't come any further. Even when I clapped my hands and shouted at him it didn't make any difference. There was something in the middle of the yard that was stopping him, like an invisible wall or one of those force fields they have in
Star Trek
. I kept calling and calling him but he did the same thing every time.

Then Dad came out to see what ‘all the racket' was about. When I told him what was happening, he did his really loud whistle thing that I wish I could do and he shouted out to Mister Mosely in his serious, ‘I'm not mucking around' voice.

But the same thing happened for Dad that happened for me. Except this time when Moe started
to come home he was going a bit slower and his head was hanging way down near the grass. When he got to that same spot his head just twisted slowly around and he stayed there making that whiny kind of noise he makes when something is really upsetting him.

‘What's wrong with him?'

That's what my dad said. I just shook my head because I didn't have a clue. Dad said we'd better go and ‘check him out', and that's what we did. Dad climbed over the fence first then he lifted me over. I knew something was definitely wrong when we got into Mr Taylor's yard because I really thought Mister Mosely would come running over to meet us but he didn't. All he did was wag his tail a bit and stay where he was. I just kept thinking, what's going on?

It was Dad who saw it first. I only saw it when I got right up close to where Moe was standing. There was something like string coming out of his mouth. Only it wasn't string, it was fishing line, and it went from out the side of Moe's mouth right across the yard and into Mr Taylor's shed. We couldn't see it at all from back in our yard because it was so thin and clear.

Dad told me to hold Mister Mosely to quieten him down and keep him still. Then he got Mister Mosely by the head so he could open up his mouth. Old Moe wasn't too happy about that. He was watching Dad and breathing really fast and whining at him. You could tell he was scared, but he let Dad open his mouth anyway.

That's when we saw the big fish hook. It was stuck right in the side of Mister Mosely's gum. Dad told me to go and see where the other end of the fishing line went. I was pretty happy to do that, because looking at the fish hook in Moe's gum made me feel a bit sick in the stomach.

I went into the shed and found that the other end of the line was on a fishing rod which was lying on the floor. It was caught in the doorway. What Dad and me worked out was that the hook probably had some old bait still on it, because Mister Taylor was retired and he went fishing all the time. Moe must have smelt the bait and tried to eat it and got himself hooked just like a fish would. Then when he tried to come back home he must have pulled the fishing rod over and it got stuck in the doorway. And that's why Mister Mosely always stopped halfway across the yard,
because the fishing line was pulling tight on the reel and yanking the hook even deeper into his gum.

‘Poor old fella,' Dad said.

Mister Mosely looked up at both of us. His big dark eyes were jumping around everywhere and he was making a really high whiny sound. It was the same sound he made whenever he did something wrong. The spot under his eye really could have been a big black tear that day. All I could think of was how many times I called poor Moe to come home, and how he kept trying to come even though he knew it was going to hurt him every time. I felt really bad when I thought about that.

Anyway, what happened then was, Dad said that the hook was in too deep for him to get out, so he cut the fishing line with his pocketknife and we drove Mister Mosely to the vet. Like I said, it was one of the weirdest days ever.

But it wasn't over yet.