Free Just a Dog by Gerard Michael Bauer

make sure that Mister Mosely was happy and not in any pain.
    I didn’t like the way Dad was saying that. I didn’t want Mister Mosely to be sick. He didn’t even look sick. He looked exactly the same as he always did except for the limp. I wanted Mum and Dad to take all the money I was saving up for computer games so we could help Mister Mosely. Dad just shook his head when I said that and Mum just cried.
    At the vet’s we got some special medicine to take home with us. We had to give it to Moe with his food. That was my job. I made sure he took it every single day and never ever missed out once. I wanted the medicine to make him better. I wanted it to make the cancer go away. But that didn’t happen.
    What happened was, it started to get harder and harder for Mister Mosely to fetch the paper. We tried to make him stop but he wouldn’t. We’d find him stuck halfway up the back stairs every day, breathing really fast and whining and with that black spot under his eye making him look really sad. One time he made it all the way up but then he was stuck there. We had to wait till Dad got home from work because Moe was too big for Mum and me to carry back down again.
    So what I did was, I taught Moe just to bring the paper to the bottom of the steps and drop it there instead of trying to bring it all the way up to the top like he used to. And Dad made a new place for him down in the laundry.
    It didn’t seem right not having Moe on the porch waiting for us. I thought I’d never see him there again. But I did. Just one more time.

24 Mister Mosely Back on the Porch
    I kept giving Mister Mosely his medicine exactly like the vet said. But it wasn’t working.
    I knew it, because after a while just going out to the front yard and carrying the paper back to the bottom of the stairs was too much for him. Some days, like when the paper came early on Saturday morning and it was cold, Moe couldn’t even stand up. He’d keep trying though and he’d be whining and whimpering all the time and he’d only stop when someone went and got the paper and showed it to him. I guess then he knew his job was done.
    One Saturday when I was in the kitchen making myself some toast I heard Mister Mosely whining, so I went out to see what was wrong. Hewas at the bottom of the stairs. The big Saturday newspaper was on the step in front of him. It was the first time for ages that Moe had tried to bring the paper around.
    I helped him back to his bed and took the paper up for Dad. He was making a cup of tea. I was just giving Dad the paper when we heard Mister Mosely whining again. This time we found him up a few steps and trying to climb higher. He was all shaky and almost falling over. Dad had to take him back down before he hurt himself.
    But Moe just wouldn’t stay there. As soon as we got back to the kitchen we heard the whining again and then we heard a big thud and some scratching too. Dad and I ran out the back. Moe had fallen over and his legs were going everywhere and he was trying to stop himself from sliding down the stairs. Dad grabbed him and Mum came running out because of all the noise.
    Dad said, ‘Don’t know what’s got into him, but he wants to get up to that porch. Haven’t got a clue how he expects to get back down.’ Mum just looked kind of sad and said that maybe he wasn’t worried about that any more. I wasn’t sure what she meant.
    Anyway, we didn’t want Mister Mosely to keep hurting himself trying to get upstairs, so Mum made a bed for him on the porch just like she did way back when he was a puppy. When it was made Dad carried Moe all the way up. I got his bowls for him – his water bowl and the big silver one that Dad wrote his name on. We gave him some dry dog food and leftover gravy, but he didn’t eat any of it.
    Mister Mosely stayed there in his old spot all afternoon. When it got dark Dad carried him downstairs so he could go to