Dog Diaries 07 - Stubby by Kate Klimo

Finally, the soldier was so irritated that he turned on me. But I was too fast. I ran away before he could stab me with his bayonet.

    I was staring into the thick of the battle—firing rifles, flashing bayonets, flying fists—tryingto figure out where I could lend a paw, when a grenade landed right by my leg. Before I could run clear of it— kaboom —it exploded.
    The blast knocked me squeegee, blowing me backward.
    The next thing I knew, Conroy had picked me up like a football and was running back behind our lines. I was bleeding all over. He took out his field dressing and wrapped my leg and chest in bandages. He gave me a few gentle pats, then ran back to help our boys.
    My leg and chest throbbed with pain while the battle raged on. The bandage was soon soaked with blood, and I tore at it with my teeth. I needed to get to the wounds and lick them. But I was too weak to do the job. I lay back in the dirt, exhausted. As I swirled off into a deep darkness, I wondered whether this was curtains for me.



A D ECORATED D OG
    By the time Conroy came back, the sounds of the fighting had died down. He lifted me in gentle arms and ran through the wreckage until we got to the field hospital.
    Conroy charged into the tent. “Wounded dog here!”
    He laid me on a cot. Soon a familiar face loomed above. Well, what do you know? It was my old pal Dr. Burns.
    “Stubby!” said Dr. Burns. “Not you again!”
    I tried to work up some enthusiasm, but even wagging my stub took more strength than I had in me. I was hurting bad.
    “He followed us over the top and right into battle,” Conroy said to the doc. “You should have seen him. The little man was in there fighting just like the rest of us.”
    “Is that true, Stubby?” the doc said with a wide grin. “Are you a fighter? From the looks of you, I’d like to see the other guy.”
    Conroy held me down while the doc took a pinching tool and removed the shrapnel buried in my leg and chest. Shrapnel are sharp little bits of metal from the exploded grenade. Each time he removed a piece, I let out a yelp.
    Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! That Dr. Burns sure earned his name that day!
    He tossed the pieces into a can, where they made a ping-ping-pinging sound.
    Conroy made calming noises.
    “This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you,” Dr. Burns said.
    Yeah, right.
    When the doc was finished, he put some stinging medicine on my wounds and wrapped me up in fresh bandages tighter than a package sent from home.
    Afterward, I fell into a deep sleep and woke up with my teeth chattering. I was cold all over. Conroy was still with me.
    “I think he’s got a fever,” he said. “His nose is warm. Is he going to be all right, Doc?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not a vet, and I’m not really equipped to treat a dog here. We’d better get him to the Red Cross Recovery Hospital,” the doc said.
    Uh-oh. The Red Cross was where they sent the soldiers who were hurt bad. They had more doctors and more medicine.
    “I’m going, too,” Conroy said. “The commanding officer told me I should stick with him.”
    After that, I passed out. The next time I woke up, I was lying on a cot in a strange new place. Conroy was sitting beside me.
    “Hey, boy. You’re coming along okay.”
    Slowly, I tried to make sense of where I was. Man, but I was stiff and sore! Around me, there were cots, every last one of them filled with a wounded soldier. All of them looked pretty banged up. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so sick. Before Conroy could stop me, I jumped off the bunk and went to work.
    I trotted up and down the aisles, stopping at each cot. Hey, howya doing, soldier?
    Some of the guys were so bandaged up, you could hardly see their faces. But most managed to reach out a hand to pat me. Others were too weak to do much of anything, their skin sweaty and their breathing short. I gave these guys a good, strong swipe of my tongue. I licked whatever part of them I could reach and told them to hop to and start getting