Today’s post asks us to visit our favourite online news source and pick an article with a headline that grabs you and write a short story based on it.

Now I’m going to give you the story, then I’ll tell you the headline!!!

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Rufus & Max

Rufus loved Max. Max had saved Rufus from downing when he was only a few months old. Max had been out paddling his canoe in the creek near his house when he came across a distressed little puppy trying to climb back up the bank. Max picked the wet mess of fur up and took him home, washed him, dried him and gave him a feed. Max decided to call him Rufus as he’d been watching Bill and Ted’s awesome adventure the night before and the name sprang to mind. He called up his local vet and off they went for a check-up. Rufus wasn’t microchiped, so max had him microchiped and registered him as his own. He didn’t bother looking for Rufus first owner, he figured if they didn’t bother to keep the pup safe or have him microchiped that they didn’t deserve him. The vet said that Rufus was approximately three months old and that by the looks of it he had wolfhound and kelpie in him.

Max was a rather active kind of bloke, he loved camping, fishing and hiking in the bush and so did Rufus. Rufus was convinced he had the best human in the world and that Max had been made just for him. They had many fun filled years together while max was finishing high school, then starting Uni. Max had even perceived and taught Rufus to swim.

Rufus loved it when Max got his own place and Rufus no longer had to deal with Max’s mother’s evil cats Muffin and Patsy. Muffin and Patsy where always breaking things and Rufus was always getting the blame, no matter how much Max stood up for him. But alas the pressure of having their own home was weighing Max down. Rufus could see how tired Max was getting now that he was working full time and still trying to complete his final year of study. Rufus decided he’d take matters into his own paws, Max needed to rest, he needed a break, so the next morning when Max’s alarm went off, Rufus pulled cord out of the wall with his teeth before it could make enough noise to wake Max, he then smiled to himself and trotted into the kitchen and pulled the telephone cord out just to be sure. Rufus then went and curled up on his favourite purple plush pile rug in the lounge room.

Max awoke a few hours later, he sat up with a shot upon seeing how bright the sun was outside. He looked at his clock but it was turned off, he jumped out of bed and grabbed his phone and turned it on. I think everyone within a kilometre radius would have herd the words he exclaimed when he saw what time it was. There was 10 messages on his mobile phones answering service. He listened to them grimacing as in each message his boss got angrier and angrier. He looked at his alarm clock and wondered how in the hell the power cord had been ripped from the wall, he went and checked his land line telephone and found it’s cord had been pulled out also. He was trying to figure out what had happened, he thought that maybe he had done it sleep walking perhaps.

Max looked at Rufus lying peacefully on his rug, he glanced at the time and decided that he was already in the shit at work anyway so he may as well take Rufus for a swim and some fishing, perhaps when he was fishing he’d be able to come up with some sort of excuse, he hoped.

So Rufus got what he wanted, Max had a sleep in and then they spent a relaxing day fishing and swimming in their favourite spot and Max never really figured out what had happened.

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The headline that called out to me was “Snooze Dogg turns off owner’s alarm” as it was the only remotely entertaining/ happy sounding title, all the other headlines where sad or serious and I wasn’t in the mood for that.

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