I Spot Trouble

Submitted into Contest #41 in response to: Write about an animal who causes a huge problem.... view prompt

3 comments

General

Jenny was a fresh graduate from college, still looking for her full time dream job as a vet. She had a steady part time job as a pet store clerk, which she thought was enough for her to find herself a place to live. While house hunting, she realized she spent way to much on entertainment, and the only place she could really get was a basement. A rich snobbish middle aged couple lived there, and they had a son who was hardly home because he was working in the military. They were strict, and didn’t seem very nice, but they seemed to keep to themselves. It would have to make do for now. When she first moved in, there were still a lot of her landlord's boxes, and it was still a little dusty and messy, but there was furniture, it was almost move in ready. It took her a while, but Jenny finnaly made the place into somewhere she could call home, she got into a solid routine and she was really free to go or do anything she pleased.

Jenny had been living there for a couple months now, and she decided she wanted to get a pet. A little practice for being around animals once she had her steady vet job. She walked around town until she found a pet store with a large variey of dogs. She ended up chosing a dalmatian- It was a classic pick for firemen, which was her father’s job. She also felt like they saved as many lives as the firemen do, just like she wants to help save animal lives. She named her dog Spot, because he had little spots all over, as was expected, and it was easy, when she talked about Spot people would know he was a dog and not a person, which she found happened a lot to other pet owners with names like Charolette, Frankie, Charlie or Lucky. Spot sounded like an ordinary name for a dog, and Jenny liked ordinary. When Jenny was bringing Spot back to her basment, her landlords were leaving and they just gave her and the dog a disapointing look while getting into their fancy black car. Jenny ignored them and showed spot into her place, she showed him the areas of her home she had already set up like the food and water bowls by the dining table and the dog bed by her bed. She had three rooms, a room for herself, a guest bedroom and an extra room which she had originally set aside for storage but now that she got herself the dog she had always dreamed of, she cleared out just over half as a room where they could just relax and play, one side had toys she got for him, a place for her to store his hygeine supplied and food. The other side had a fully soft green carpet, almost acting like grass outside, and a beanbag chair where she could sit and relax or work while he played with his toys or they could play ball without messing up the whole house. 

Spot settled into Jenny’s home very quicky, but he also got very restless very fast. Jenny took him out for as many walks as she could but there were some days where she just couldn’t leave. Being early spring, the weather was all over the place, sometimes it was stormy, the sky filled with rain or snow, too much to go out in, or it was just too cold or gloomy for Spot to have any fun. Jenny hated staying inside so she took Spot out for walks around the block or to the store whenever she could but there was the one week, the one week where all the trouble was being stired up. They had been cooped up inside nearly every single day of the week, and it was getting even Jenny all restless and moody. The first three days wern’t that bad, first there was a rainstorm, then a thunder storm, and on the third day there was a blizzard. Jenny never remebered the weather being this crazy as a young girl. The fourth day Jenny was set on going out but it was getting so windy it was hard to even open the door. This was the day Spot ran around the whole basment while Jenny danced out all of her energy. On the fifth day, it seemed to be a lazy day, maybe they had both givin up on the idea of going out. 

The sixth day was it for Spot. He spent most of the day in the corner of his room, and whenever Jenny tried to walk in and get him to go out with her, he just barked violently at her until she left. She tried to go back a few more times only to get the same odd reaction from her dog. While Spot was in his room, he was digging, digging a whole into the basment where the wooden floor had already been ruined by spilling water on it too many times. Spot dug and dug until he created a whole, and would just cover it up when Jenny walked in until he could kick her out. It was like he knew what he was doing, he knew Jenny would not be please with him when she found out what he was doing, but he didn’t know that she would be in trouble. Spot just wanted to have a little fun even if it meant he would be in trouble for a little while. When Spot finished digging out the wood, he found dirt, and he kept digging until his paws got muddy. For a while he took a break to eat, he ate spilling his food all over the place, something which he knew Jenny found perticularly annoying, she would just have to clean up the food and she wouldn’t notice his muddy paws. He skipped right back to his room and went right back to digging, this time he dug until he hit full on water. Spot had found a puddle, and once he found it, he dug around, big enough for him to jump and splash around it. For a while, he forgot about Jenny, he just played in the water, enjoying the coolness. Soon enough he got tired and fell asleep, right inside the hole, the puddle of water he dug up. 

Soon enough, Jenny grew worried about him, and when she went to check on him, she found him sleeping peacefully, and she carried him out with a look of disapointment. She hadn’t made it out of the room when she heard water rushing and bubbling. She put Spot down, waking him up, she looked back to see Spot had been acting as a cork to the water hole, which was now bubbling and coming out of the hole. Her look was a mixture of horror and fear as she watched the water start to flood the room. She tried to carry as many things as she could out of the room, ushered Spot into her own room and then ran up the basment stairs to get help from her landlords. When the son finally opened the door and asked why she was hyperventelating she slowed her breathing and told him there was a flood in one of the rooms. “Wait for just a moment miss, Ill go get father.” Jenny nodded meekly as she watched her landlord walk down the stairs. He shook his head dissapointingly as he asked her what happened. “Well my dog, Spot, he dug up a hole and-” he shoved Jenny out of the way and asked which room the hole was in. “I knew that dog was trouble from the day you brought him into my home.” 


May 14, 2020 22:21

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3 comments

Rita Parekh
21:49 May 21, 2020

Description was very good especially about the dog .its picture comes out live in our mind. Description of the days inside and the weather is also so well done.Just that it is not conclusive

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Rose Gaspard
00:55 May 21, 2020

The sory was ver descriptive, it was easy for me to picture the scenes in my head. I have a 4month old puppy, so I could relate to the character. The ending was a bit short, I felt as if the story ended midway. I liked how we got to be in Spot's head for a while. Good job.

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A. Y. R
22:50 May 14, 2020

Really liked your descriptions, they really helped the story come to life! Could mabye work a bit on the overall flow though by making the sentences less broken up

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