Rachel Fields: Dog Whisperer

Part 2.

When I was in fourth grade in England, my classmates and I got really into having imaginary dogs. We would pretend to play with them and walk them and whatnot. It was pretty weird, but everyone was doing it, so it became strangely acceptable. My dog was called Spanner and he was a cocker spaniel. Unfortunately, after a few weeks, everyone else decided that the imaginary dog trend was weird and lame, so they all stopped doing it. Of course nobody told me this, so I was faithfully walking Spanner up and down the playground for a few weeks before I realized. Then I tried to sneakily cover my tracks. "Yeah, Spanner killed himself," I told them, trying to seem devil-may-care and nonchalant. "He jumped out of a window." They looked at me with a combination of pity and scorn. "Yeah, right," the meanest one said. "He's right over there, isn't he?" ... Dammit, he was.