Just a Dog (4 page)

The vet we took Mister Mosely to when he got the fish hook stuck in his gum was a lady vet. She kept saying how beautiful Moe was and she called him ‘Big Boy' all the time. I liked her a lot.

When we got there she took us into this special room and asked Dad and me to hold on to Mister Mosely while she tried to get the hook out. She said a dog with a fish hook stuck in his gum was ‘a first' for her. Moe was really scared. I could tell because he kept whining and licking me and putting his head down low, which is what he always did when he was frightened or worried. I was a bit scared too, because I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

The first thing the vet did was give Mister
Mosely a needle in his jaw right near the hook so he wouldn't feel any pain. He jumped a bit when she did that, and Dad and me had to hold on tight so he wouldn't run away. Then she got out some sort of pliers to pull the hook out. They looked just the same as the ones in Dad's toolbox.

At the beginning I wanted to watch everything the vet was doing because it was pretty cool, like seeing a real operation up close, which I'd never done before. But after a while I didn't feel too good. I think it was because of all the bad smells in the room – the weird medicine smells and the farty smells coming from Mister Mosely, who couldn't help it because he was just so frightened.

As soon as the vet started grabbing on to the hook with those plier things, I started to feel really bad. I was trying not to look at the blood in Moe's mouth or the blood on the rubber gloves the vet was wearing. Then the vet gave up with pliers because they weren't working and she went to the table where all her vet stuff was. When she came back she had a really pointy, sharp-looking knife in her hand.

Straight away I started to go all cold and sweaty. It felt like something had sucked all the blood from
my head and some big blob was rolling around in my stomach. The vet told me I looked ‘as pale as a sheet' and she thought maybe I should go outside and get some fresh air and a glass of water. I thought so too, so that's what I did.

When I got to the girl at the front desk I tried to ask her for some water, but I didn't really get to finish asking because my head went all heavy and swirly like when you go upside down in a roller coaster loop. Then I passed out. I remember starting to fall and then I remember hearing a bell ringing. Then nothing. When I woke up Dad was looking down at me and he was holding something cold and wet on my head. It turned out to be a wet hanky.

The receptionist girl told me that I fainted right on top of her desk and my head hit the little bell that you ring to let someone know you're there, which is kind of funny I guess as long as you're not the person fainting and hitting your head. I ended up with this big bruise on my cheek just under my eye from the desk, and the vet had to put a bandage around the cut on my forehead from the bell to stop it bleeding all over the place.

After that I just lay down on the bench in the reception area and Dad and the vet went back to try and fix Mister Mosely up. They were gone a while. When they came back, Moe was with them and he had these black spiky stitches in his gum where the vet had to cut the hook out and a plastic bucket thing tied around his neck to stop him scratching at the stitches with his paws. He looked like a half-dog, half-vacuum cleaner, especially when he sniffed along the ground. It probably would have made me laugh if I didn't think I was going to throw up any second.

When it was time to leave the vet's Dad had to carry me to the car because he was worried I was going to faint or vomit or both. He had to carry Mister Mosely too. That was because Moe couldn't see where he was going too well with his bucket helmet and he kept bumping into everything. The gas the vet gave him for the operation made him a bit wobbly too. Lucky Dad was pretty strong, because not many people could pick Mister Mosely up. The only other person I ever saw do it was Uncle Gavin when he was showing off one time.

Dad said me and Mister Mosely were ‘two peas
in a pod' that day. I guess that was pretty right, because neither of us could walk properly and we both had stuff on our heads and even the bruise on my cheek matched that black tear spot thing under Mister Mosely's eye. It was even on the same side.

So like I said, I reckon that's the weirdest Mister Mosely story ever. Dad used to love telling it. Once he called it ‘the day Moe thought he was a fish' and he said Uncle Gavin must have got it wrong about ‘Moe's secret ingredient'. It wasn't Rottweiler or Great Dane at all. Dad reckoned it was groper.

I loved it when Dad told that story. He made it sound so funny and it always made me laugh. Except maybe for the bit where Mister Mosely has the hook in his mouth and I keep calling him to come home and he keeps trying to come every time, even though he knows he can't. That bit's never funny.

Some dogs can do heaps of tricks, like those circus dogs or the ones in the movies, but Mister Mosely only ever learnt one trick. It was a pretty good one but, and it just sort of happened by accident.

It all started because of the paper man. He drives an old VW with the top cut off. It sounds like a motor mower and you can hear it coming from way down the road. The paper man chucks the newspapers from his car. He's a pretty good shot too, because he doesn't slow down too much and he hardly ever misses. He can land our paper right on the front lawn.

One time when I was out the front getting the mail for Mum, I heard the paper man's car
coming down our street so I waited for him. When he threw the paper into our yard I tried to catch it before it hit the ground. I almost got it too, but it was spinning a lot and it hit my hands and bounced out.

After that I wanted to see if I could catch the paper, so I started listening for the paper man. Most of the time I'd be mucking around with Mister Mosely in the backyard after school when we'd hear him coming. Then me and Mister Mosely would run around to the front of the house and I'd be trying to catch the paper and Moe would be jumping around trying to get it too. It was a lot of fun.

The very first time I caught a paper on the full the paper man tooted his horn and gave me the thumbs up. I felt pretty good about that. It was like we were a team or something. My record ended up being five catches in a row without the paper hitting the ground once.

But there was one little problem. If I missed the paper and it did hit the ground, Mister Mosely would try to knock me out of the way and beat me to it. A few times I ended up doing a somersault across the grass. Moe wasn't trying to hurt
me or anything – it was just a game to him and he didn't know how big and strong he was.

But the real problem was, if he got to the paper first he'd be so excited he'd run off with it and slobber all over it. Sometimes he'd rip it up a bit before I could get it away from him. Moe didn't really understand the whole reading thing. But Dad wasn't too happy. So I had to teach Mister Mosely not to wreck the paper if he got it before me.

The first thing I taught him was not to run off with it but just to pick it up and bring it to me and drop it at my feet. That took a while. Lucky for me the paper was wrapped in plastic, so as long as Moe didn't chew it up too much or go crazy with it, none of his slobber got on the actual pages. Next I taught him to carry it in his mouth while I walked along beside him. Later on he learnt to bring it all the way around the house and up the back steps and drop it on the porch.

But one day something happened that I didn't expect. Just before the time the paper man normally came, Mum called me upstairs to tidy my room, which she reckoned was a ‘pig sty' even though it really wasn't that bad. When I finished doing that I went back out the front, but Mister
Mosely wasn't there any more. I hadn't heard the paper man come, but when I checked the back porch there was Moe wagging his tail at a million miles an hour with the newspaper in his mouth. He'd brought it up all by himself. I thought that was pretty good, so I gave him one of his favourite biscuits as a reward.

The next day I tested Moe to see if he would do it again. I stayed inside this time while he sat in his usual place on the porch. He must have heard the papers hitting the ground down the street or the sound of the paper man's car before me, because all of a sudden his ears stuck out like wings. Then he tore off down the stairs.

Pretty soon he was back at the screen door, whining and wagging his tail with the paper in his mouth. I gave him two biscuits that time. Dad always reckoned Mister Mosely wasn't ‘the sharpest tool in the shed'. That meant he didn't think he was too smart. But when I showed him what Moe could do, he was pretty impressed. He said, ‘Maybe the old Moe's been holding out on us. Got a few brains after all, big fella.'

Dad changed his mind about that after what happened on Saturday.

I don't really think it was all Mister Mosely's fault. The thing was, the Saturday paper didn't get delivered in the afternoon. It came really early in the morning. Anyway, when Dad got up and went to get the paper to read in bed with Mum like he always did, it wasn't there. Then he remembered Mister Mosely and his new trick, so he went to check the back porch to see if Moe had already brought it up. Moe had the paper all right. But he had eight other newspapers as well.

Dad got pretty angry at Mister Mosely, mainly because not everyone got their paper delivered and he had to go all around the neighbourhood trying to find out who was missing one. I heard him say, ‘Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed!' as he went off with all the papers tucked under his arm.

I don't think Dad was being very fair. I know Mister Mosely made a mistake and everything, but he didn't do what he did because he was dumb. I reckon he did it because he was smart. He must've figured if he got two biscuits for one paper, then the more papers he brought up, the more biscuits he'd get, which is pretty clever if you think about it. And the other reason why
I reckon Mister Mosely was smart was because after Dad went mad at him that morning for fetching other people's papers, he never did it again. Not even once.

I quit waiting out the front for the paper man or trying to catch the paper in the air or beat Moe to it, because fetching the paper became his special trick. He did it every day and he never forgot once. Mister Mosely loved fetching the paper so much, I reckon he would have kept on doing it even if he didn't get two of his favourite biscuits every time.

In the end, it took something even bigger than Moe to stop him. But that's a story for later.

One of the worst days ever was the day Mister Mosely just disappeared. He was there in the afternoon, because I played with him after school, but at night when I took his big silver bowl out to feed him he was gone. And he was still gone the next day.

Dad and me checked all the places he could be hiding like under the garage but he wasn't anywhere. Then we went around asking all the people in our street if they'd seen him. Everyone said no except for Mrs Jarman down the road, who said she thought she saw a big white dog going past her house in the middle of night when she got up to go to the toilet. But then she said she couldn't be sure, seeing as how it was dark
and she didn't have her glasses on and maybe she imagined it anyway because she was half-asleep, so that didn't really help that much.

We drove all around the streets looking for Mister Mosely. Whenever we saw someone we asked them about him and we'd describe him and everything, but no one was any help at all. I started to get really scared. I was thinking that maybe something bad had happened to him like he'd been run over by a car and he was hurt somewhere or even worse. Mum and Dad kept saying that he would ‘turn up any minute' and they said not to worry, but I could tell that they were probably thinking the same thing as me.

The next day when Dad went to work Mum and me made little posters on the computer and printed them off. We put a picture of Mister Mosely on them and up the top we had
LOST – Have you seen our dog?
Underneath the picture we put Mister Mosely's name and how he was big and just about all white and how he was friendly and wouldn't hurt anyone and our telephone number and email address.

I wanted to put
BIG REWARD!
in capital letters too but Mum said we couldn't afford to do
that because Dad was really worried about losing his job at the electrical store on account of some recession thing. Mum told me that people would help us anyway, even if we didn't give them money. I was really hoping she was right.

We put the posters in people's letter boxes and on telephone poles and in shops and on the big noticeboard at the supermarket. But it didn't work. Only one person ever phoned us up and that was two days later. They told us that there was a white dog in the park across the road from their house. It was a long way away but Mum and me got in the car and went straight there. When we got to the park, the dog was only about half as big as Mister Mosely and the people who owned it were right there having a picnic. It was just a big waste of time. It made me feel worse than ever because I thought we'd found him.

Mister Mosely was gone nearly two weeks and I didn't think we were ever going to get him back. It was so bad. Dad couldn't believe how a dog as big as Mister Mosely could just disappear. Me either. Sometimes I'd forget Moe was gone for a second and I'd go outside to play with him or I'd start to get some food out for him. Then I'd
remember. I had to stop myself from crying when those kinds of things happened.

But then one night when we were having tea we heard all this scratching and whining coming from the back door. When we looked, Mister Mosely was standing there on the porch wagging his tail like crazy. None of us could believe it.

Mum and Dad and Amelia and me ran over and just went mad patting and hugging him. Dad reckoned Mister Mosely was ‘back from the dead'. We were all laughing and asking Moe where he'd been even though there was no way he could tell us. He didn't care. He just kept on licking all our faces and whipping us with his tail and we just kept on talking and laughing and joking together.

If I had a special super power or something and I could do time travel, that would be one time I'd go back to for sure. It was one of the best days ever. And that's not even the end of the story, because when Mister Mosely came home that night we found out he'd brought some things back with him.