Jack the Dog: Sticks, Stones, and Hearts by Victor Brodt (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .txt) 📕

By Victor Brodt with C. S. Case

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Introduction

Jack the Dog: And His Boy tells the unique adventure from beginning to end. Magic Night is just one story that is part of the original series. Many of the stories have delighted audiences for years, now these are available in book form. They are written with one purpose, to encourage all us to find the best things life has to give. Prepare to enjoy a story that is really about you and the most precious things in your life.


Sticks, Stones, and Hearts

The stories that have been told about Jack for many years and occasions begin in a quiet way. I was an eight-year- old trying to figure life out, but Jack was a Retriever. There were no doubts about it, he lived to retrieve. It was his all-consuming passion, which gradually drew me in. Throw out a stick, and he would run and get it. Toss out the stick again, he would get it, again and again and again. He would wear you out!
“Just one more fetch, I love it, I love it!”

The problem was, you could play fetch forever, you could throw your arm right off, and he would happily go get it. In the beginning, Jack was too much. His enthusiasm would leave arms aching. Besides this, I was not terribly interested in loving another dog. Duke, our first dog, had died not long before we got Jack, and though I was quite young, my plan was not to get very attached to any one pet. It is a dangerous thing, to love.
With our menagerie of small pets, there had already been a long line of funerals. Toilet bowl eulogies were nearly a weekly practice at our household. There were goldfish, guppies, bluegills, turtles, frogs, and a toad (one toad was enough), salamanders, spiders and a wide range of odd creatures. Some, like the snakes and mice, got away before their appointed time. Many came and went. Then there was the silky soft bunny, an instant favorite. Real country life is a bit harsh; I was told that we might eat him. In a way it was lucky for me; he died first. Mr. Brown lasted only one summer. I sang a long, low, dirge for the cuddly little guy. A stone marked both his grave site and the point in time at which I determined that I would never again extend my heart so deeply.

“Never again!” Then there was this dog named Jack. I wanted his friendship, but then again I didn’t.

A great test of the Retriever’s passion began with an unexpected show down. We lived way out in the country on a big lake. One cold fall day I was standing in front of the lake when up came Jack in his regular mode. He was carrying a stick, which was one of the ways he would strongly hint that he wanted to play fetch.
At the age of eight I had been warned to stay at a safe distance from the lake to keep from drowning. The rule was if I were to go closer than six feet from shore I would need to put on a life jacket. There was no life preserver handy, and it was a difficult walk back up the steep hill. I longed to be closer to the lake, so the next best thing came to mind. I took Jack’s stick and gave it a big heave into the distant waters. This was new for me, but not for Jack. The water immediately exploded with Jack’s dashing and smashing. Surely I thought one or two trips swimming back and forth would utterly exhaust the dog. Jack had never watched the Olympics, but he was more intense than a gold medal winner and his dedication never waned. Every muscle strained to burst into the water. Spray gushed up as he dashed forward. Finally, he took another lunge into the deep and swam as though it were a frantic swim meet.
Still to this day when I hear a Retriever’s pounding rush into the water, my heart beats harder. It is an awesome thing of contagious joy. Soon the stick returned to my hand. There is one thing that Retrievers never seem to understand: they love the water so much that they cannot imagine how you wouldn’t. With all of the miles of lake shore, he chose only one spot to shake off, right next to boy-master.
“Oh, that water’s cold!”
Jack loved it. I shivered, but the joy of fetch was too wonderful to ignore. I could not resist his excitement. Again I tossed the stick, this time as far as I ever could throw. Again the water exploded. The story repeated itself in what promised to be an endless cycle, as I grew wetter and colder. It became more apparent that even with all that hard swimming, Jack was never going to slow down. I looked around trying to consider my options and avoid further drenching. Running away was out of the question. I could not quickly move up the steep hill that bordered the lake. In fact if I were not careful, I could stumble and roll backwards into the lake. Then I would really be in trouble, especially if I drowned. A certain stone caught my eye, and I picked it up as a plan developed. As soon as Jack returned, a split second before the stick dropped in my hand, I threw the stone.
“Go fetch!”
Sure enough, it worked great, because without even shaking off Jack turned to mark the splash and dove into the next retrieve. This was when I stopped to think about the stone that now was at the bottom of the lake. Did you ever do something without thinking first? I realized that I hadn’t considered what would happen.
It was wrong. I tried to call him back, but Jack circled around and around the area, determined to find what I had thrown. He stretched a little higher to look, then turned back at me as if to say, “This was where it landed, it should be floating right here.”
I knew what I had done; stones do not float. I looked down in shame. Then another idea came to mind, I picked up the first stick that he had dropped, but when I looked up, he was gone. Jack was gone! I had worn him out. I held my breath in awe of the horror. What was I going to tell Dad?
“You see, ah, I ah, threw a rock instead of a stick, but Jack kept looking, until, until he—drowned. Oh, Dad, I didn’t mean to ...”
I was about to cry for help when up from the deep came this great sea dragon spewing out water, snorting and gulping—no, no, it was Jack! It was Jack, and there in his mouth was the stone. I might have been a little boy, but I knew that there were lots of different kinds of rocks at the bottom of the lake. There were black ones and red ones, flat ones and round ones of all sorts, but the one I threw looked just like the one in Jack’s mouth. He came to me and shook off again, but this time the cold shower did not seem to matter. If you were there you would have believed it, too: it was the very same rock that I threw.
Jack couldn’t understand the meaning of “impossible,” so he just did it. I tell you there was a lot of special in that dog, and thanks to Jack, I started to look for it more carefully. Special is a lot more obvious when you look for it, and Jack seemed to always be finding it. Love what you do, do what you love, and even the impossible is just another grand adventure.
Oh, that I could live life as well as that dog!
 

Stick, by, A. Dog

Wada stick! I goda stick!
I lub dis stick! What would I do without dis chew?
All other dogs got no chance they’d only drool and watch me prance!
Oh, it’s you!
... ...
You wannit?

True love never dies, it only waits for you.


 
 

The following is an excerpt from: Jack the Dog: Will I See You There?

The Last Chapter and the First

Here beyond the Great Barrier, it seems that time itself floats, flattens, and warps until parts of a second are indistinguishable from parts of a day—or perhaps even much longer. In the flash of this moment as the two old friends ran together, there were a thousand questions the boy thought to ask. Then instantly even before the speaking of words, he understood; things were not as he had assumed. It was all so clear to him. Death was not an enemy, but simply a passage like a buried seed becoming something different than it had been—new and perfect life.