“Yes, you can have a dog for Christmas.”
Mum and Dad had finally buckled after being constantly pestered by their three kids. A 12-week old Boxer, he was the only puppy from a litter of eight that was not sleeping when they went to choose. They thought he was cute so they chose the one 'scampering around’ and called him Scampers. They all had a great Christmas and Scampers even got his own gift, a cuddly teddy bear that quickly became his favourite.
Despite being a loving dog, Scampers was fond of scampering about, knocking over lamps, vases, tables and chairs. If he wasn’t scampering, he was barking. On the rare occasion that he was doing neither, he’d either be asleep or quietly chewing down on something. He was also fond of digging holes.
Oh, and he also refused to be house trained, going when he wanted, where he wanted.
As Winter turned to Spring, Scampers didn’t improve. If anything, he got worse. Nothing was safe and it is quicker to list the things he didn’t chew: humans and his teddy bear.
That’s right, everything else had been nibbled or gnawed at one point.
Despite his flaws, he was a dog and therefore loyal, protective, loving, and adorable. Unlike a dog, he was untrainable. After he bit his third and final trainer, Mum and Dad were left with a difficult decision to make. After cleaning up the trainer’s blood from the kitchen floor, Mum and Dad opened a bottle of wine. Scampers was in his bed on the kitchen floor, looking guilty yet alert.
“He’s got to go, he’s not a normal dog,” Dad said.
“But he’s only 9 months old. He’s still a puppy,” Mum replied.
“He’s had plenty of time to learn. Let’s just face it Hon, we can’t keep him, he could bite us or one of the kids,” Dad said, knowing that this was untrue.
“Okay, but the kids are going to be devastated,” Mum said.
Surprisingly, for the rest of the evening Scampers was on his best behaviour and pooped on the kitchen floor instead of the carpet for a change. At night, when they dimmed the lights, lit the candles, and got out the sweets for movie night, Scampers snuggled with the kids and only barked a dozen or so times. He was even quiet for a whole 30 minutes, a personal record.
However, come bedtime he was back to his usual trick of zooming round the house like the floor was lava.
They left Scampers to it, giving him free reign of the house except for their rooms. They had learned long ago that they could either leave the downstairs doors open or have them destroyed.
After two hours of peace and quiet, Dad woke up startled by Scampers barking and scratching at the door. Furious, he stormed out of bed, opened the door, and shooed the dog away. He was almost in bed when Scampers started barking again.
Dad went back to the door, wondering what had got into the dog. He opened the door and stopped. Then he inhaled quickly through his nose.
Fire!
“Quick, everyone outside. Go through the back door now!”
30 seconds later the entire family, Scampers included, were out in the back garden. Then Scampers ran back into the house and returned with something in his mouth then disappeared into the bushes.
The firemen arrived and quickly put the fire out, which luckily had been confined to the living room. It had burned the curtains, half the carpet, one of the sofas, a coffee table, a toy box and some toys.
They said the probable cause was either a candle left too near the curtain, or an electrical fault with the plug below the curtain. Both ideas seemed implausible as Dad had done the electrics himself and knew they were sound, plus there was nothing plugged in.
As for the candle idea, they had already replaced one carpet because Scampers knocked a candle from on top of a cabinet, so now they kept them on shelves on the wall opposite the window, just out of reach of Scampers and too far from the curtains to be a fire hazard, although Dad did admit that he had left one burning when he had gone to bed that night.
After one heck of a night, the family went back to bed, but not before Dad nearly broke his neck slipping on a puddle of water near Scamper’s water bowl.
The next morning, Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, holding cups of coffee as they looked out the window. Scampers was outside digging a hole under the oak tree. Nothing surprising really, he’d been digging holes since they’d got him. This must be his 20th hole. Soon they’d have no garden left.
“Let’s keep him.” Dad said between sips.
“You sure?” Mum asked.
“Yeah, he did save our lives.”
“Yeah, he sure did.” Mum said as they watched their crazy dog tear up their garden.
So Scampers stayed, and after a couple of days of sadness for the loss of his favourite teddy bear that must’ve been destroyed in the fire (even though they’d never seen it out of Scamper’s bed), he was back to his old tricks.
Life went on, neighbours came and neighbours went, and after three sofas, ten carpets, twelve rugs, thirty-five mats, five coffee tables, and countless shoes, Scampers died at the age of eleven, which was quite old in dog years.
Dad wept thinking about the time Scampers had been just a puppy and saved their lives. He remembered Scampers digging under the oak tree and decided that would be a good place to bury him. As he dug the grave he thought about what a good dog Scampers had been, truly bonkers, but a good dog who’d loved the family and had been loved in return.
He would be deeply missed.
When he was three feet down his shovel hit something soft, like an item of clothing. Dad fished it out of the hole but it was dirty, so he went to rinse it off.
“Well I’ll be…” he said as he inspected Scamper’s long lost favourite teddy bear, the top half perfectly fine considering it’d been buried for so long, the bottom half burnt to a crisp.