Mongrels, Dishlickers, and a Poodle

After many months, I found out why my dear owners had neglected me. One day, Pam disappeared and didn’t come home for several days, finally returning with a small screaming baby. The peaceful home I once enjoyed was now taken over by this small noisy creature they called Carl. Pam was keen for me to get to know Carl; he was cute in a sort of human way, and in the scheme of things, he was now behind me in the pack. I expected Carl to start walking around, but all he did was sleep in his bed, and he had to be fed from a bottle. I wondered why he was such a helpless creature, unlike us dogs; we started walking straight away. But at the same time, as he was a small pup, it was my responsibility to look after him. Our walks now included a baby pram, and I walked proudly beside it, making sure other dogs didn’t come too near us. I was puffed up with pride when people stopped us and enthused about baby Carl, but if they came too close to the pram, I growled as a warning. Strangely, Pam didn’t appreciate my protective actions. “Fiver, that’s no way to greet our good neighbours; they only want to look at baby Carl,” she said as she pulled my lead away from the pram to allow the neighbours to admire the baby. Over the next weeks, we were stopped many times on our walks, and it seemed everyone wanted to see Pam’s baby, but I still insisted on growling a warning. Pam continued to apologise for my bad behaviour until one day, a man said that I was just being protective of my family. I licked his hand in gratitude, and from then on, he was my friend. Friends and relatives came to the house to see the baby; the girls were always around after school to help Pam, but I had to stay outside and look and listen through the door. It was amazing to see people reacting to the new family member. They always said he was beautiful and how much he had grown and how much he looked like his father. But of course, he looked like his father; he was a human child. Pam didn’t go off to work now that she had the baby to look after. That made me very happy, as I had company every day. When she wasn’t attending to the baby or the washing or the cooking, she spent her spare time in the veggie garden. It was spring now, and the garden needed lots of work. I got very good at babysitting, especially when Pam put Carl in his pram and left him to sleep on the veranda in the sunshine. I checked him out every time he gurgled or muttered, but when he woke up, I didn’t have to inform Pam, as his screams could be heard around the neighbourhood. One afternoon, Pam planned to do some weeding in the strawberry patch, so she placed Carl’s pram in the middle of the lawn. I took up my position as babysitter and settled down beside the pram. I was half-dozing, as we dogs do, but something strange made me sense something wasn’t right. I opened my eyes and looked at the pram. The something was a large black snake that was slithering over the pram wheel, heading for the baby! Without thinking for a second, I barked loudly at the snake and leapt onto it, grabbing its neck in my teeth. It resisted by clinging onto the pram wheel, but as I shook my head vigorously, it let go, and by giving it a good shake, I soon broke its back. Pam came running to see what the commotion was all about. As the snake went limp in my mouth, I dropped it at her feet. She screamed so loudly that baby Carl woke with a distressed cry. She scooped Carl up in her arms and kissed him, saying, “Oh my poor baby, how could I be so careless, leaving you out here in the yard with snakes around? From now on, it’s the veranda for your sleeps in the sunshine.” She looked at me with such gratitude and bent down to give me a big hug. “Oh, Fiver, you brave, brave dog,” she cried. “You saved the baby from the bad snake. How can I thank you?” That was the end of the gardening for the day. I followed Pam and the baby upstairs, and after she put Carl down in his crib, she went to the fridge and rewarded me with a big lamb chop. That certainly made my day. I found a quiet spot in the yard and made that chop last as long as I could, savouring its juicy, meaty flavour. From then on, I was always on my guard for snakes when any of the family was in the garden, but I didn’t find any more. The snake population probably got the message not to bother coming into our yard, especially after Barry placed the dead snake on the vacant block next door as a warning. Time ticked by, and baby Carl went from crawling to walking in no time, and I was always there to make sure he didn’t fall down the stairs. He was a bit clumsy to start with, but he soon grew stronger, and from then on, he ran everywhere. He liked to throw the ball for me and giggled as I fetched it and brought it back to him. Although he wasn’t that good at throwing the ball, and it didn’t go very far, I played along, and he improved. Winter turned into spring, and as the weather warmed up again, I noticed there was another change in Pam’s appearance, just like before Carl arrived. She disappeared for a few days and came back home with another human baby. This time, the baby was a female they called Kathy. Now I had two little humans to look after.