The Dopiest Animal On The Planet

Flash Fiction | 5 Minute Read

This story was written for the Fictionistas monthly event called The Great Prompt Celebration — a collaboration between myself, Heather Huffman (of Sprinkled Inspiration) and the Fictionistas community. Each month Heather and I share writing prompts with the Fictionistas community to help encourage fiction writers on Substack to write, share, and read more fiction on Substack. I host a Writing Prompt Party for the group each month (just like the ones I host in Stop Writing Alone), and then we share the prompt with the whole writing community. By the end of the month fiction writers share their stories (no longer than 1000 words) in a thread and we spotlight the favorite stories of the month in a Fictionistas post. This month’s prompt was created by Heather Huffman and can be found here. I hope you enjoy my story.

This story is a 5 minute read.

The Dopiest Animal on the Planet

Beagles. God made them cute for a reason. That reason is: it makes up for their dopey destructions.

This has been my pet-ownership mantra for decades due to a litany of transgressions suffered at the paws of both Chewy and Buffy, adorable rescues who came with no warning labels concerning the reasons they needed rescuing. I learned that this breed is a life-long puppy with tiny boundaries, endless energy, and chaotic curiosity. But their floppy ears are softer than velvet, their eyes can peek into the depths of your soul, and their warm bodies curve into the crook of your knees providing you with the soundest of sleeps.

Winnie, my most recent beagle, stood before me in wagging-tail delight, covered in mud, next to the crater she had created where my herb garden happily grew a mere half hour earlier. As I stood over the doggie demolition in my yard, I realized that every single disaster dealt me in the past was mere puppy play. I stared at the already wilting leaves of basil peeking out from the base of the mound of discarded soil and wondered if I should get back to the work of replanting when Winnie whimpered nudging my shin. Of course, how silly of me to think I could move on with my life without examining her masterpiece. Beagles never knew how close they were to being kicked out on the street, they were always so proud of their destructions. Dopey, adorable creatures.

Knowing I was about to be dirt-covered regardless of what I was to do next with my probably hopeless garden, I crouched down next to Winnie, patted her filthy head and said in my squeaky, puppy-approved voice, “What’d you do? What did you find?”

Winnie responded by sticking her nose into the hole. I followed her movements, leaning my head over expecting to see an excellent root she mistook for a fantastic fetching stick, or a rock she thought might be a ball, or a fellow furry creature she didn’t know if she should befriend or maim. I saw none of these things. I saw a crater full of stars and blackness. It made no sense. It was space, outer space, in a hole in my backyard. 

Winnie whimpered again, licking my cheek. It was as if she spoke perfect English for the first time, because what else can one say when seeing such a sight? A whimper of helplessness was all that made sense.

I grabbed my hand trowel to dig the hole wider, trying to find an end to this peek into the impossible. As clumps of soil fell into the already revealed portions of space, they hit the starry scene and dispersed in tiny, silent, slow-moving explosions of dust floating away in the zero-gravity space below me. I found a pebble in the garden and threw it into the hole. It instantaneously slowed to a float. I reached in to grab it, regretting the move immediately.  

My hand felt the ice-chill of space crash around my fingers, palm and wrist. My fear-filled heart mimicked the feeling. When I tried to pull my hand back it was like I had submerged it in oobleck. The harder I pulled, the more solid the space-grip got. When I stopped pulling to catch my breath, the space-place pulled me in deeper. When my elbow crossed the portal seal I began to panic. I took a calming deep breath while Winnie began crying and circling me. It was clear she knew better than me to stick any limbs into the unknown. Maybe the dog wasn’t the dopiest being in the yard afterall. 

I tried to change my position, putting my free left hand on the edge of the crater and getting my knees under me to pull with more of my weight, but, in doing so, I slipped. The icy chill of space consumed my chin, lips, nose and the fingertips of my no-longer-free left hand. 

I was going in. The oobleck hardening of the space-place was about to consume me whole. I was about to die in my yard, in outer space, in an impossibility come to life. All because I was stupider than my beagle. Maybe I deserved it.

As I shut my eyes praying I could bring my mouth and nose back to the land of oxygen, I felt a warm, furry mass wiggle its way under my torso on the Earth-side of my body. Winnie used all of her power to help pull my body back. At first, the slow and steady force helped me regain the freedom of my left hand and arm on the side of the crater. Then, with that extra leverage, we freed my face. As I gasped for air, tears streaming down my face, wondering how I never gave this dog breed credit for its intelligence, loyalty, and strength, Winnie shifted under my right armpit, putting her energy where it would be most effective. Together we pulled my right arm and the ice cold pebble free from the other world. 

I hugged Winnie, tumbling back into the soil. She licked my frozen face wagging her body in gleeful victory, until she burst into a case of zoomies – the incomprehensible physical expression of joy dogs experience that is both a loss of all sense and composure paired with a show of such agility and speed nearly all dog owners find themselves swept up in the joy and wonder of it. Winnie thrust soil everywhere with her outburst, running at top speed in meaningless oval laps around the yard. I kneeled directly in front of the crater, cheering on her zoomies (as was our tradition), but also playing my role as protector, just as she had done for me, making sure she did not accidentally zoom herself right into space. 

Which was an incredibly dopey move for me because of how our zoomie-tradition always ended: with Winnie jumping, all four paws, into my chest as I hugged her. 

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Do you have any beagle experience? Chewy and Buffy are the names of my two real life beagle loves who inspired this story. Many times I did shout that God made them cute for a reason! Do you have a crazy story of a pet that deserves to inspire fiction?

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