Writing Club - Go Fetch

“Go, Fetch!”
Samantha Weber, 8th grade, Sept. 9, 2005

“Mekia, Come!” “Come on, you lazy dog, get up! Mom says I have to go play with you; so, come on!”

Have you ever made a bunch of promises to your parents so you could get something? Promises that you probably wouldn’t keep? Like promising to take out the trash AFTER you watch some TV, or promising to do some extra math if you can go hang out with your friends first. Well, welcome to the club. I get in trouble almost every day for one promise I made my parents 4 years ago: to play with the dog every day. (Actually, that wasn’t the only promise I made to my parents about the dog; but, that’s the only one I’m going to write about today.) Although I’m really bad about going outside with Mekia to throw a ball or run with him, I do, sometimes, very rarely, get up and go do it without being told.

You see, my dog, Mekia, well, he’s not exactly the kind of dog that you only have to throw a ball for once and he’ll be tired. No, that is definitely not the case. Mekia is a combination Boxer, Lab, and Shepherd and is very athletic and very large. When he stands on his hind legs he is taller than I am. Playing with him over the course of the last couple of years has turned into his playing with me. When I made my promise to my parents, he was a little puppy and it was no “big deal” to go play with the little angel. All I had to do was throw the ball, he’d go get it and bring it back – no big deal. Because he was so athletic, it was actually very entertaining to watch him leap into the air and catch a Frisbee, then joyfully run it back to me, sit, and drop it at my feet, ready to go again.

Now, however, I throw the ball or Frisbee, he runs, maybe catches it, and then flops down on the ground, and waits for me to come get it. This means that I get as much exercise as he does, and I don’t need any more exercise!
I wonder if he’s mentally thinking, “Come on, Sam, “Go Fetch!” Now that this has been going on for some time, I’ve come to a conclusion. People say that when you get older you get wiser. Well, I think it’s the same for dogs: dogs get smarter the older they become, because I know Mekia thinks he has taught me how to play “Go Fetch.” Perhaps this saying is true for me too though because I have learned not to make such open-ended promises as the one to take the dog out and exercise him every day!