I lived in a little village called Tuckohuck and I have a family of four. Almost everyone has a dog team because it was the only way of transportation. My dad had a dog team, but I had my own dog. His name was Peewee. I really enjoyed talking to my dog everyday because it always talked back to me. I mean really talked. Sometimes he would complain of the cold weather and the food he gets. Whenever I went out to feed Peewee, he would say, "Gee I'm cold," or "Gross food!"

One time my dad tied him to a dog sled along with seven other dogs. Their names were Snappy, Pepsi, 7-up, Pepper, Esther, Pubbo and Diamond. I went with my dad to take a ride in the slough. All the dogs were saying "Geez, I don't want to run." My dad got mad and said to the dogs, "Be quiet or I ain't going to feed any of you!" I felt sorry for Peewee when he turned around and gave me a sad look, so I whispered to him, "Run fast and I'll give you more food later on." He nodded his head and was ready to run. As we were getting farther and farther away from Tuckchuck, the dogs started to complain and said that they were getting tired of running, so my dad turned around and headed back to town. When we reached Tuckchuck, the dogs were very tired. Later on, my dad and I fed the dogs, while I gave Peewee more than the rest of the dogs. After we fed the dogs, they all said, "Thank you." But we heard some of the dogs mumble, "Gross food" even though they ate it anyway because there was nothing else to eat.

Every night, before I went to bed, I would hear the dogs talking and laughing just like us people. Sometimes they'd keep me up a long time, but I was already used to it by then. But there was a shaman living up in the mountain who didn't like how the dogs always talked and made noises at night. He would yell for all the dogs to be quiet because he was trying to sleep. But they wouldn't be quiet, so one night, he woke up and put a spell on all the dogs in the world.

The next day when my dad and I were going to take a ride with the dogs we noticed that they were being very quiet. My dad tried to call all the names of the dogs but none of them responded; they just said, "woof woof." We didn't know what was wrong with them, so we went to the chief and asked him what was wrong with the dogs. He told us that the shaman got fed up with them talking every night, so he put a spell on the dogs so they wouldn't talk. Now they could only howl and growl and, of course, go "woof ,woof!"

By: Darcy Kameroff