Reba Messina's Pet Dragon

I have been getting a number of complaints lately about bad smells and sounds coming from the woods behind Doggyspace.  I did not want to investigate. It has been my experience that bad smells and sounds never lead to anything good. But when Hattie Mae barged into my office saying the smell was getting into the clothes she hung on her line I knew I would have to take action.
I did not want the other angels to know what I was doing.  I was just walking along, sniffing the ground, like all terriers do, when I caught a heavy, unknown scent.  I followed the smell to Reba Messina’s house and then into her backyard. I followed a path down a meadow and stopped when I found the smell’s source.

Standing in front of me was a huge dinosaur.  I had visited them recently and figured this big fellow had come to see me and got lost.  But then the beast opened his mouth, and suddenly fire shot out. I had made the worst mistake you could make concerning big lizards.  I had mistaken a dinosaur for a dragon.

But that was impossible.  Dragons never existed. So how could one be here? “Puff!  Puff!” I heard a voice yell. I turned to see my good friend, Reba Messina, running towards me.  “Puff, Foley is my friend, don’t hurt her.” Puff, apparently, the dragon, put his huge mouth next to my face and took a deep breath, and then he licked me covering me with hot dragon saliva.  

I wiped the spit away.  “Reba, first you aren’t supposed to have big reptiles here, and second you have one that doesn’t exist!”

“Puff does too exist,” Reba said.  “I found him, and he is my friend.”

“But your neighbors are complaining about the sound and smell.”

Reba went over to Puff and patted him on the nose.  Puff let out a purr. “Where did you find this dragon?” I asked.

“In the land of make-believe,” Reba said.

Oh, boy.  Reba went to the land of make believe?  No one was supposed to go there and if you did slip through you couldn’t bring anything back.  So many rules had been broken. And now I had to get permission from the Board of Big Guys to let Reba keep Puff behind her house.  It was such a big violation I thought that even with my skills of persuasion I would fall short.

I was going to the Big Guy Board to plead Reba and Puff’s case when suddenly Hattie Mae lead a group of villagers out of the forest with torches and pitchforks.  They all stopped, stunned when they saw Puff. He slowly walked towards her, bent down, and gave Hattie a big lick. “Gross!” Hattie yelled. But Brody began laughing at his best friend, and then all our friends were laughing until even Hattie raised a smile.

Reba told us to watch what Puff could do.  She then got on Puff’s back, and they took off into the sky.  We watched as they traveled on a boat with a billowed sail with Reba perched on Puff’s mighty tail    Noble kings and princes bowed to them. Pirate ships lowered their flags when Puff let out his mighty roar.

As they landed, Reba told us Puff’s story.  A smug little bastard named Jackie Paper played with Puff until Jackie found girls and forgot about his dragon friend abandoning him in a cave.  As dogs, it was a story we knew too well. We agreed we would never forget about Puff or let him be alone again. Even Hattie Mae went for a ride and demanded we call her Khaleesi.

I never did tell the Big Guy Board about Puff, and when one of them came around we dressed Puff up as a really big dog, and he slept under a tree.


Reba tells us she adopted Puff and Puff says he adopted Reba, but as is often true they adopted, and saved, each other and everyone in the Rainbow Bridge’s Doggyspace Family has had their lives improved by Reba’s and Puff’s friendship.