Zelda The Blue Nose Pittie Saves Christmas

Zelda the Blue Nose Pittie

STORY BY JULIE MURRAY

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAURA OLSEN

Once upon a time there was a dog named Zelda. She was a beautiful dog with a beautiful spirit and her favorite time of the year was Christmas!

Zelda tried to spread holiday cheer wherever she went. When she met new people, she would wag her tail and wiggle her butt and try to make everyone smile. Sadly, most people would cross the street to avoid her with their Christmas packages, get angry because they were scared of her or just not look at her at all. Zelda didn’t understand why this happened. She didn’t understand that humans cropped her ears to make her “look tough” or that her breed was seen as dangerous by lots of people because of untrue stereotypes that were passed around. Just because she looked a certain way, people would not give her a chance to love them.

Zelda tried not to let this bother her and continued to spread joy. One day, she was walking down the street on her way to sniff out the best Christmas tree and she met a kind old man with a big white beard sitting on a park bench. He looked very sad and worn out so she went up to him and sat right in front of him, wagging her tail and gazing up at him with love. He smiled and patted the spot on the bench next to him so Zelda jumped up and immediately began to kiss him and sniff and snarf in his beard. The old man laughed for the first time in weeks and thanked Zelda for her cheer. “This time of year is just so hard - no one seems to care about one another anymore. They just want to stick their noses in their phones and ignore everything.” Zelda personally did not see what the problem was with sticking noses in things, but she could tell that the man was upset so she just leaned her big head up against him and let him talk. “You see, my job depends on people believing in goodness and kindness and seeing what’s on the inside, past all the material things, and loving and helping one another. People just don’t seem to care anymore. I’m too sad and too tired, the elves are depressed and the workshop morale is at an all-time low.” The kind old man thanked Zelda for making him smile, gave her one last scratch, picked up his sack and made his way back down the street.

Zelda continued to enjoy her day, catching snowflakes on her hippo tongue, building snowdogs and frolicking in the park where the ice skaters twirled and glided on the pond.

As she was sniffing a particularly interesting patch of yellow snow, she heard a distant cry and looked over to the pond. The kind old man had fallen through the ice and could not swim! No one else had noticed as they were all busy taking selfies with their phones, so Zelda knew it was up to her to take action. She ran over to a group of skaters and said “Please help me! My friend has fallen through the ice!” However, the people were scared and they backed away from her and shooed her away. Zelda knew it would be up to her to save the kind old man so, being part hippo, she decided to go and rescue him by herself. Zelda put her paw in the water - it was COLD - but she knew that she had to be brave. She eased into the water and slowly doggy paddled out, out, out into the pond. All of the skaters put down their phones and noticed that Zelda, a dog they thought was scary and mean, was risking her own life to save another. They began to cheer her on and hearing this made Zelda even more determined.

She finally reached the kind old man and grabbed him by the collar of his red suit and swam him back to the edge of the skating pond. Everyone clapped and rushed up to help Zelda and the man get dried off and warm. They all apologized to her for the way they treated her before, and clapped and hugged her and called her a hero. Zelda was so happy and wagged her tail and wiggled her butt. No one noticed that the kind old man had snuck off in the commotion and was warming up in his nifty sleigh. He smiled to himself as he watched everyone come together from afar and toast Zelda with their hot chocolate. “Maybe people aren’t so bad after all”, and his heart felt warm and full again.

That year, everyone noticed that they had a particularly wonderful and generous Christmas...but no one knew it was all because of a sweet, wonderful, brave pitbull named Zelda.