Me and My Pal --Big Ben

Description: Children's Short Story
This is a story about a dog, that dug in the earth, planted flowers, and howled at the moon, except when it snowed.

Don't blame me for letting my grand-daughter help me. It was the only way I could do this and keep her from asking me to do something else

BIG BEN

Big Ben was the smartest dog on the face of this earth. He learned to do most everything simply by watching people do it. My brothers and I discovered Big Ben's talent for learning how to do things by watching people do it quite by accident. It all started out simply enough. We were in the park one day throwing the frisbee back and forth to each other. Big Ben sat quietly watching me and my brother, Billy, throwing the frisbee to each other for a long time.

The next day when we went back to the park, and Big Ben tagged along again. This time Big Ben did not sit quietly on the sidelines watching. He would run back and forth trying to catch the frisbee before we did. Big Ben was a very big dog. He weighted almost a 100 pounds. My brothers and I thought he was the biggest dog on earth. It was not long before Big Ben was knocking us down to catch the frisbee. Then soon enough Big Ben was catching the frisbee and bringing it to either me or Billy to throw it again. Big Ben could not throw the frisbee as high and as far as me or Billy. After many more visits to the park over the next few weeks my brother and I stopped throwing the frisbee to each other. We would each have a frisbee and just took turns throwing it to my dog, Big Ben.

When school started Big Ben had to stay with my sister. Lilly was not old enough to go to school so Big Ben would stay home to play with her. Lilly was not old enough, or big enough to go the park alone to throw the frisbee with Big Ben, but Lilly did like to plant flowers. She was always planting something, even if it was not meant to be planted. Lilly had heard the story about the Cabbage Patch doll garden, and decided to plant her own doll garden. Once Lilly even tore all the pictures of big, beautiful flowers out of Mother's favorite big, hard-cover flower book that was always on display on the living room coffee table. Lilly got in a lot of trouble for tearing the pictures of flowers out of Mother's book and planting the paper flowers in the yard. Lilly learned very quickly not to tear pictures out of our Mother's books, but she still has not learned the difference between what can be planted and what cannot be planted.

Everybody that met Big Ben thought that he was an extremely smart dog, but wondered why he was always in need of a bath everyday now that he was staying home with Lilly. Well Big Ben learned to dig holes in the ground by watching Lilly plant a huge assortment of objects. Big Ben had even learned to talk to the unlikily items like Lilly did. Lilly had heard that it was good to talk to her plants. Big Ben would howl all night long while sitting in the middle of all the dirt in Lilly's ever mysterious gardens.

One night shortly after Big Ben learned to dig the holes in the yard to plant whatever Lilly decided needed planting we heard our mother outside yelling at Big Ben. There was a full moon that night, so we could clearly see both mother and Big Ben in the backyard garden. Big Ben was laying on the ground with his big paws on top of his head. He knew that mother was very upset by the tone and volume of her voice.

"What on earth have you done Ben?" Mother sounded like she really expected Big Ben to answer her.

Big Ben just laid there keeping his head covered with his big paws. Mother was standing there pointing and shaking her finger at Big Ben and saying over and over again "Bad dog. Very bad dog."

Seems Big Ben was better at digging holes than he was at planting flowers. In the pale moonlight, we could see that Big Ben had dug a bunch of very big holes all over the back yard. We could also see that Big Ben had dug up all the brand new flower bulbs that mother had just planted. We watched as mother stormed back into the house.

After mother went back in the house, we watched Big Ben slowly get up. He went inside of his big dog house that daddy had built for him when he was still a puppy. We did not understand why daddy had kept telling us that a big dog needs a big dog house. We certainly did not understand how big Big Ben was going to grow up to be. We did not call him Big Ben when he was just a puppy, but after about 10 months Ben's name changed to Big Ben.

We could hear our mother telling daddy what Big Ben had done to the back yard. Mother always talked really loud and fast when she was excited. And tonight she sounded very excited. We knew that whenever mother got really excited daddy would be up to talk to us soon after she was finished talking.

We were not very surprised when daddy came upstairs to our room and asked us all to listen very carefully.

"All of you are going to have to start being more careful about what you teach Big Ben to do." Our father said in his most serious voice, although this time he looked like he was wanting to laugh.

"Daddy is mama really mad?" Billy asked.

"No son, she is not mad, she is just upset because Big Ben dug up her real flower garden."

He explained that Big Ben needed to stop being so destructive, and try to be more helpful.

We all agreed to try to teach Big Ben to be more helpful, and we also agreed to try to keep Big Ben out of trouble.

It was shortly before Christmas when daddy saw us outside in the snow with his big snow shovel.

"What are you kids up to now." He yelled from an upstairs bedroom window.

"Billy and Ray are trying to teach Big Ben to be more helpful." Lilly proudly announced.

"What on earth are all of you thinking." Daddy yelled back.

"It was Ray's idea to teach Big Ben to shovel snow off the driveway Daddy. We are trying to teach Big Ben to be more helpful just like you said." Billy answered.

"Well, why not teach him to mow the grass next summer, and you can teach him to wash the car too" Daddy was laughing, and then we heard mother.

"What on earth Bill are you telling my children to do?" We heard her asking daddy. We could still hear daddy laughing.

We finally figured out that it was going to take more time to teach Big Ben to shovel snow than there was going to be snow on the ground to teach him to shovel. We decided that we would start teaching Big Ben to shovel snow earlier next year.

Lilly suggested that we could start teaching Big Ben to take out the trash. Surely mother would like that since she is always saying that nobody ever wants to take out the trash.

We hurried towards the side of the house where the big trash cans were kept.