Off Leash

• Amelia Frankel, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

The last thing I can remember is my owner taking off my leash and hearing my owner scream my name. How I wish I had listened to him and had gone back to him like a good dog. But I didn’t. I kept running away from him, away from my owner.

I’m Charlie, a Jack Russel. My owner adopted me from an animal rescue centre in NSW and made me his dog. I have had a rough start to life but my new owner thought he could fix that. My old owners had bought me from a pet shop a couple of kilometres out of NSW, and had left me tied up to a post on the side of the road where I was rescued.

My new owner wasted no time in showing me around my new home . He unlocked the front door, I raced past him and all around the room, tail wagging. I fell asleep as soon as I laid down on my new bed. ‘Maybe this is my forever home’.

The next day my owner took me to the park a little ways from his house and next to a little wood .He had bought a new ball to throw to me. He unclipped my new leash from my collar and threw the ball towards the wood. It bounced off the green lush ground. I raced after the ball kicking up chunks of dirt and grass. Instead of catching the ball I ran past it, my owner called my name shouting madly. I never looked back, I kept running towards the woods and away from my owner. He had started to run after me calling for me to stop, but I didn’t. I ran into the woods. I had been running for about eighteen minutes now and had started to get tired.
I looked at my surroundings and tried to find a way out. I was swarmed with little black pesky bugs and the smell of damp oak trees filled the air. As it started to get dark I lay down on the ground, the cold piercing my skin.

As soon as I had run away, my owner started asking people if they had seen me. He went home thinking I would come back the next day. I didn’t, nor the next day and the day after that. It had almost been a week before he had seen me. Then he received a phone call…
It was from an animal shelter twenty three kilometres out of NSW.
They said they have a dog with his phone number on it’s collar.
As quickly as he could he travelled down to the shelter.

When he arrived he realised that I had travelled forty five kilometres from where he had last seen me. He rushed to where the people said they have me. There he was, my owner. I barked as he scratched,patted and hugged me.
He took me back to his house, finally I was home.