Underdog

• Brodie Mahady, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2009

One beautiful, sunny Wednesday afternoon, my dad and I took our dog Nibbler (who is a beagle), out to the park. My dad had just gone to get us some tasty hot dogs from Smithy Joe’s Hot dog Palace. When he returned he tripped over an old tree branch. The hot dogs left his hands and flew into the air.
Nibbler’s eyes were attracted to the snacks … he flew to them and gobbled them up, there was a loud gasp from everyone around us and a car crash or two. When dad stood up he fell over again this time he had a heart attack, the ambulance came and took him to hospital.
A few days dad got out of hospital and the incident was all over the papers and the news. Luckily there was an old movie director on holiday at the park. Somehow he got our number, phoned us and asked if he could borrow Nibbler for a couple of months to make a movie called UNDERDOG. We jumped right at the offer. A few months went by and the movie was a big success, they also turned it into a book.
It’s been almost a year since we found out Nibbler could fly and he’s the most famous dog in the world, we have now become multimillionaires living a nice quiet life in London.
Yeah right! There has been a heap of new people coming to London to see Nibbler. Someone even tried to steal him a couple of times to take away his power. Thankfully they failed, which made us think. So we lent Nibbler to the science professor to find some more powers. It turns out he has the ability to fly, super bark, dig really fast, turn invisible and he also has laser vision. As a result of people trying to steal him we decided he wouldn’t perform for any more people. With the money he earned we bought a brand new car, house, lab and science equipment. To make extra money that we give to charity we let the professor work in our lab.
One and a half years after the incident dad told me to write a report for the Today Show titled “Family of The Flying Dog”. The mayor saw the report one night and thought that he should build a memorial for our family. The memorial’s great and I have a bunch of new friends but sometimes I wonder if they like me or if they are friends just to get to Nibbler.
It been ten years now, Nibbler lived a long and happy life but died of flying into a jet engine, it was a sad goodbye but it was for the best, too many people were taking advantage of his powers and making him do pointless things that could have been done easily by one person. Nothing’s the same without Nibbler and I miss him every day.