Buddy's Caught!

By: Caroline

"Arrffffff, Arrfffffff!!!!"

"Is that Buddy?" I wondered.

I was sitting on the front porch playing GameBoy by myself. Suddenly I heard pitiful yelps coming from my dog in the backyard.

We keep our dogs, Buddy and Lucky, in a fenced area in the backyard. When I heard yelping I started running to the pen. When I got there, Buddy's head was sticking out the wire mesh. His cage is made of wiring that has holes in it. Buddy gets his claws into the wiring and tears it. This time he tore a hole in the door of the cage. The hole was big enough that he could stick his head through but he could not get his body through.

I hurried outside and opened the cage door. I hoped that maybe his head would slide out if I gently tugged a little. I tried but I stopped because this was not working and I could see that Buddy was scared when his yelps got louder.

Buddy's heart was pounding fast, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It was scary for me too. I was worried about my dog.

I screamed, "AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I was thinking, "I don't know what to do."

"Poor Buddy," I said softly as I patted his head.

He was still trapped and his feet were in the air. He was wiggling and yelping some more. "Ahh… ahh… ahh… ahhhh…" he cried trying to get out. I tried pulling and tugging Buddy but nothing worked. I found out that when I did that he could not breathe. I stopped and gave him some water and some dog chow. He was not very interested in food but he wanted some water. I had to think of a plan.

Next, I went to my dad's shed and took his pliers and put on some gloves. It was not long after that my dad got home from work. He was wondering what I was doing. I was not allowed to touch his tools.

"What's wrong???" My dad shouted across the yard.

"You won't believe it." I said.

I did not tell him the whole story because he would be mad that I took his tools from the shed. I wanted to solve this problem on my own. As it turned out I really didn't have to use them after all.

While I was in the shed, my sister's dog, Lucky, went to eat Buddy's food. He saw the dog chow I had to put near Buddy and he wanted it. Lucky was jealous because he did not get any dog chow. Lucky started to get mad and fight for the Kibble. Buddy got so excited and jumped through the fence. I could not believe it.

Once he got out of the cage he looked free but also terrible. He had blood scrapes down his neck. I scrubbed him hard and long with a scrub brush. It was hard to clean around his neck because he kept trying to get away. He didn't like his bath. After he had a good scrub down he was ready for a nice long nap. He never tried to squeeze through again. I wonder if he would try to get out if a cat came around?

Patti Weeg
pweeg@comcast.net

May 21, 2005