Just a Dog

by Gerard Michael Bauer

  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.

  10 Mister Mosely’s White Christmas

  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.

  11 The Weirdest Mister Mosely Story

  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 ol
d 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.

  12 Mister Mosely at the Vet’s

  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.

  13 Mister Mosely’s One Trick

  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.