My Dumb Brittany Spaniel

By Meredith, 6th grade

          When most people say that their dog has mental issues they are just joking around, but when I say that my dog is dumb I am not kidding you. My Brittany spaniel is named Rusty. His nose is dotted with small brown spots, making him look like a freckle-faced dog. He has orange-brown spots all over his body, making him look like he was left out in the rain and rusted.

          Rusty has earned the title, “dumb”, for many different reasons. When he was a puppy, and we lived at the farm, he dug up a mouse and gulped it down alive without even chewing. I think he had a belly-ache that night. He also tries to catch the wood bees on the porch in mid-air and eat them.

          When he was puppy-dog, about one or two years old, he jumped out of the window of our car, and got his paw run over, chasing a bird high in the sky.

This past summer living in Firebrook, he tried to steal my other dog’s chewy. He grabbed it out of Tanner’s mouth and ran. Tanner barked and Rusty turned around to look at him while still running, and ended up running straight into a wooden post.

A few weeks ago, Rusty was laying in the yard, bathing in the warm sun. He is one of the main hunting breeds, so you would think that when I tell you there were five birds walking around ten feet beside him, he would immediately get up and chase them. I called, “go get the birds Rusty; go get them!” But no, he fell asleep.

Surprisingly though, Rusty has done one thing smart in his life, when he found Tanner.  I was only three or four when this happened, and I was swinging on the rope swing at the farm when I heard Rusty start barking. He was just a tiny puppy at the time, so I ignored him, thinking he was just barking at a bird or squirrel. But after a while, he was starting to annoy me and ruining my fun afternoon of swinging in the bright sunlight.

I folded my arms and marched inside, mad at Rusty for not giving up on that dumb bird. “Mom,” I whined, “Rusty won’t be quiet!” I walked around to the other room and started to bother Tori and my other siblings.

But, I think after a while my mom started to notice Rusty’s continuous barking. Then, suddenly it stopped. My mom was suspicious so she walked outside to find a little brown and white puppy bobbing down the street.

“RUSTY! Get back here!” Rusty stopped; his tiny tail tucked under his butt, and retreated, his little paws scrabbling along the pavement.

Rusty was terrified of the electric fence that bordered our property, so there must have been an important reason he crossed it.

“C’mon guys, let’s see what Rusty wanted.” Tori, Ross, Joel, and I piled up in the car along with Rusty who was panting in Ross’s lap. The only other close property in the direction Rusty had ran was an abandoned house about a minute away. The family had moved after their golden retriever had given birth to a huge litter of puppies. We headed in that direction and pulled up next to the house.

Rusty was going ballistic and yelping, heading towards the direction of the house. He started barking, and shoving his tiny head under the porch. My mom got on her hands and knees and crawled under with a flashlight. What she found was a tiny scrap of fur and bone, a puppy that must’ve been living off of mice ever since his family had moved, that he probably spent a long time catching, considering his size.

“Come here, puppy!” My mom coaxed a small abandoned golden retriever puppy out under the dark porch with a dog biscuit. He was thin, and had a copper tone instead of that golden white color his other littermates had had.

We loaded him into the car, Rusty licking the puppy’s fur as if he was his mother.

A few days later we figured out that his father was named Bud, but I do not remember what his mother’s name was. Luckily, my mother knew the date the mother had given birth to her litter, so we knew his birthday was on May 9^th. We called him Tanner, and he became adopted into the family. I guess Rusty has done one smart thing before, finding himself a brother.

The End