Dead Is Dead, or So My Grandmamma Says

So the dog, our dog, snuffs it in the fire, gets all burned up and dead, dead is dead, or so my grandmamma says, so I best mind my manners. He was one of those red settlers or something, anyhow he had red fur and greenish eyes that were always looking in the opposite direction you wanted him to look. He used to like to go for walks in the field up the top of our street; that is before he died, in the fire that is. He’d jump and romp, I think that’s it, romped, anyhow he like to run round in these crazy circles chasing his tail, and if there was another person’s dog there he’d chase after its tail. Once we’d finished taking him for a romp we’d have to spend the rest of the afternoon picking burrs and snarls out of his coat of fur, the red one, the coat that is. There’d be twigs and grass and straw, on account that there was a hay field not far from the field at the top of our street and he liked to circle round it like a sheep dog or one of those black and white dogs, the one’s that are always chasing cows and sheep and other animals that farmer’s have in their fields. My dad would yank his handkerchief out of his pant’s pocket and blow real hard into it, on account of he usually stayed out late the nights before and didn’t feel all that good, and on account of the fact that he hated having to take or dog for romps up in the field at the top of our street. He carried a stick with him, one of those scout’s sticks what’re made out of tree branches and cleaned clean with a scout’s knife, the kind you wear on your belt loop in a leather thing, a scabbard what’s I think there called. Anyways he used to thump it against the ground in front of him hitting those brown puff balls what’re really just rotten dandelions waiting to be stepped on and crunched into the ground like that, dead and all smelly and rotten.