Social Short Story – MY LIFE AS A DOG
Photo credit: irkengirdib from morguefile.com
Life as a dog has been very hard for me. Most humans always believe that we dogs have an incredible easy life, but I’m going to tell you this that it is not really true. You see, not every dog that you’ve seen has a home to called as their own because not every dog has been treated with respect and valued as a pet. Most dogs have been abandoned when they were pups, but they have suffered tremendously.
Finding food to eat, just for survival, was not an easy job either. But we had to seek out garbage bins and bags to see if we can find anything that has been left behind by the humans. Most foods have already been decaying but it’s all what we can get to eat if we have to survive. But it has been a cruel world outside there. Most human beings do not really care about us dogs anymore. They’re just cruel and harsh and merciless.
My mom had always tried to some great leftovers for us pups. Sometimes, we’re lucky if a human just threw us some fresh chicken bones to eat. By the time, I’ve grown up into a full grown sized dog, I have to try to make it on my own. There were several times when I would sleep out in old card boxes which have been left outside of restaurants. Until the garbage trucks comes rumbling by to pick them up and carry them very far away. Now I have to seek somewhere else to slumber for the rest of the cold nights.
But I always have to be on the constant alert for when the dogcatchers are around. They will be driving through the neighborhood, trying to see if they’re lucky enough to catch any stray dogs. I always believed that they’re dog’s worst enemy yet. But one day, I got so unlucky with one of these dogcatchers that they’ve caught me in their large nets and put me in the back of their trucks with the other stray dogs. They took us took a building where they’ve already prepared several cages for other stray animals. We were given food and water on a regular basis.
As the days turn into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, I noticed that several humans and their young ones are always in and out from the dog pound. But it wasn’t long enough when I found that humans were adopting dogs as their own personal pets because I can see through the mesh of my cage that they were carrying out other animals, wearing chains and some leather material around their necks. I was happy that other animals were getting homes and a human who can love them and care for them. But as for me, I was totally depressed because no human had ever looked at me once whenever they come into the building, looking for good pets. I have never felt so lonesome in my life yet.
Soon, I have started noticing that the dogcatchers were decorating the building with all different kinds of strange lights and strange ornamental decorations. They were singing strange songs that I couldn’t even understand. Then I heard them greeting another with, “Have a merry Christmas.” But yet still I didn’t understand anything about this “Christmas” that the humans were talking about. When I thought that things couldn’t be much greater for me for the next couple of days, I woke up one day to find a small human child staring at me through the cage mesh. He was smiling at me.
I raise my head and looked him back in his small smiling face. A woman, whom I believed to be his mother, joined him by my cage. He turned sideways at his mother, pointing at me.
“Mommy, mommy, can I have this one? Pretty please, Mommy?” begged the little boy, looking at his mother, hopefully.
His mother looked at me and then back at the little boy.
“Are you sure that this is the dog that you want for Christmas, Joseph?” inquired his mother.
“Yes, mommy, I’m positively sure,” replied the boy, eagerly.
“Okay, then, you can have him,” said his mother. “But you have to help feed him, clean after him and walk him, and bathe him.”
“Okay, mommy,” said the boy, reassuringly to his mother.
Well, it had to be the greatest day of my entire life when the dogcatcher unlocked my cage and took me out from it, and then hand me over to the happy little boy. It seemed that I was going to be this child’s Christmas present. But I was happy all the same when they took me to their home. Since then, I’ve tried to be good pet and loving companion for the little boy who’s been called Joseph. I had finally found a home in which I had found love and respect. Life couldn’t be any sweeter for me.
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