"Give A Hoot About Animals" Writing Contest

Read this winning entry for the "Give A Hoot About Animals" contest! Learn more about the contest here.

Honorable mention, ages 9-11

Shelby K., age 9, Florence, CO

I'm an Animal Lover!   

A tiny fluff ball just jumped into my arms. If its tail hadn’t been wagging a million miles an hour, I wouldn’t have known it was my puppy. Animals are sweet, loving, loyal, and beautiful. That is what makes them so easy for me to love so much.

My puppy lives at my house with my huge family. I know he sometimes likes to escape from all the noise, so to show him I care, I love to take him to my mom’s work. She works at a nursing home an hour away. After the long ride, we go for a walk. Usually a resident or two will notice us and distract my puppy from the reason for his after-ride walk. Then we go inside and he has trouble deciding whom to visit first. He loves to escape from the chaos of home by gently hopping into a grandma’s lap then hopping down again to see how a grandpa’s doing. He can do this for a couple hours.

While he’s having himself a good time, he is making resident after resident smile and laugh. Some of the residents think they are in heaven when he climbs in their laps to be snuggled. I gave him the name Spicee but the residents call him Sweetie Pie and Honey Bun.

Spicee is ninety-nine percent sweet and one percent mean. If he’s munching on pizza (his favorite food) you’d better not mess with him. He never learned to share, unless you count his sharing my Daddy’s coffee every morning. When you look at Spicee, it’s love at first sight. He hasn’t met anyone yet that can keep his or her hands off of him. On a scale of one to ten, Spicee is an eleven! If you compare Spicee to any other dog, Spicee would win by a million.

I’d have to say even though I love most of the dogs and cats I’ve met, none compare to Spicee. If Spicee really represents all animals, I guess I’m just a plain old animal lover.