Day 18: 5 Minute Freewrite-Prompt: write about something that was left at your door

Freewrite @mariannewest

The first time I found a pile of sticks on the front door stoop I just assumed the kids had been playing with them and I kicked them off to the side so that I could carry my bag of groceries into the house.

But after I found more sticks there several times that week, I started paying attention and realized that it was our new puppy, Molly, who is bringing the sticks from the yard and putting them by the door. Molly was a Golden Retriever and it became apparent that she took the retriever part of her name very seriously.

As she grew so did her pile of sticks. Some days it would take me 10 minutes to get the stoop cleaned off. Some of those branches were getting pretty big. We started to joke about the fact that it was a good thing that we had 65 acres of woods because she was doing her best to clear them, and her brush pile where we threw her accumulation of firewood grew bigger by the day. We started to notice that she was retrieving live trees that she had chewed down, like a beaver.

It was after she chewed down the apple trees that I had planted that we decided something had to be done. We built a big kennel, and unless someone was actively watching her, she had to spend more of her puppyhood confined in her playpen! Eventually she outgrew her lumberjack phase. Although every once in a while we still found the odd tree blocking the door, and she would look embarrassed when we asked her where it came from.

https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-18-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-write-about-something-which-was-left-at-your-door