Jason's Dog

• Joseph Moss, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

Jason’s dog was not an ordinary dog, his name was Max and he was a very cat-like dog. Max never ate, he was always full and never wanted to play! Jason was the opposite of Max, he loved to play and he ate, a lot! He asked his mother Sarah if he could get a new dog but they couldn’t because their family was poor. His dad was a newspaper deliverer and got ten dollars an hour and his mum didn’t have a job and was a full time mum.
After dinner and homework, Jason would go down to the laundry and try to feed Muff. The next morning Muff tried to get out of bed. He slowly put one paw in front of the other and began to walk, Jason saw this and took a video using a flip up phone. When Max saw Jason, he barked. Jason rushed to give Max a hug but Max ran away, Jason couldn’t believe it, Max actually ran. He went to the pantry to get food to feed Max, he got his favourite, raw sausages. When he went to the laundry to feed Max he wasn’t there.
He searched the house for hours crying “Max, here boy” until he heard a bark coming from the back window. Jason slowly pulled the curtain back from the rusty old window and saw a happy playful mutt digging in his backyard. “IT’S MAX!” shouted Jason. His mother rushed to the window to look and saw him, they went outside to play with him. After they had played fetch and catch and taught him to sit, roll over and retrieve, Max was starved, he rushed inside to find the raw sausage he could smell coming from the laundry. While Max was eating, Jason went to get the mail, there was a poster in the box that said, ‘Dog Race, enter dogs to win the $100 000 prize. Jason bolted to his mother and demanded, “We need to enter this competition.” His mother replied, “If it’s ok with Max?” she said with a calm voice.
Jason and Max had entered the race and had been practising for weeks and Jason thought they were ready. So Sarah took Jason to the racing venue and took Max to the starting line, he gave him a little pep talk, even though Max couldn’t understand what he was saying and Jason went to his special racer’s seat, he had never felt so important.
The man with the gun walked up to the starting line to fire the gun, and then all he heard was “On your marks, get set,” BANG! The dogs were off. On their first lap, Max was in the lead. Jason was screaming at the top of his lungs. Once the dogs were on their last lap, Max tripped and all the other dogs passed him. But Max didn’t give up, he pretended that there was a juicy, huge pile of raw sausages at the end of the line and he ran his hardest and passed all the dogs, winning first by a millisecond. The crowd went crazy and all Jason could say with tears in his eyes was, “That’s my dog.”