"Too Good to Be True" Rhino Rules Contest #2: Animal Stories

Writing Contest #2 ~ Amazing Animal Tales

First Prize: $25 sbd

All earnings from upvotes on this post will be donated to Rhonda's Animal Rescue.

Everyone loves an underdog

The archetypal underdog is more often human (David vs Goliath), but the underdog can also be--a dog! Or one brave woman who rescues dogs and other animals from people with cold, shriveled hearts.

I'm thinking of @rhondak, underdog, fighter, extraordinary novelist, and "beautiful soul" in Central Appalachia fighting hard for animal rescue and animal rights. (See Simple German Guy @uwelang's Week 3 #Charity Weekly for more on Rhonda's efforts to save animals from abandonment, abuse, and senseless deaths.)

Follow @rhondak's blog for stories about her rescue animals and how fellow Steemians raise money to save them. I especially love Paige, the little black and white dog who plays Diplomat and keeps the other dogs in line, gently but firmly.

My favorite "true fairy tale" is the Cinderella story of a workhorse
headed for the slaughterhouse. Snowman surprised his rescuer and astonished the world with his natural talent for jumping. Snowman, an $80 plow horse, outperformed million-dollar champions at international jumping competitions.

The Bremen Town Musicians is one of the best-known, most beloved fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. We all root for the old farm animals who can no longer earn their keep. The donkey carried corn-sacks to the mill indefatigably for many a long year. The old hound can no longer hunt, but he can run when his master tries to kill him. The cat, “with a face like three rainy days,” teeth worn to stumps, escapes from a mistress who'd drown him. The rooster is doomed to become Sunday dinner. One by one the four fugitives meet on the road and scare up a house of their own to live in for the rest of their lives.

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Contest Rules

Write a story, 500 to 1,000 words (more or less), about an animal or animal rescuer who makes an amazing comeback despite all the obstacles.

I don't count words, so use as few or as many as it takes to steal our hearts.

No gratuitous gore/violence
"Gratuitous" violence means (to me) more explicit and graphic than I needed.
If the bad guys come to a gruesome end, if the violence is germane to the story, it's not gratuitous.

-- Tag of your entry: * writingcontest *animalrescue * fiction (two more tags of your choice)
-- Title your post: Rhino Rules Contest #2: Animal Stories [Your Story Title]
-- Upvote this post to enter.
-- If you get here too late for an upvote to count, upvote a reminder post on the contest.
-- Resteeming this post is optional, and appreciated if you do.
-- Post your story, then come back to this post and put a link to your post in the comment section.

Warning:

Sentimentality won't win the Rhino's heart. Don't tell me it was terrible, awful, horrible, heart-rending, yada, yada. Show me.

Genre:

Anything but erotica, and preferably not horror. I'm looking for happy endings.

In college, our fiction workshop teacher (Nancy Price, "Sleeping with the Enemy" told us the truth is too good for fiction. I.e., true stories are often more unbelievable than the ones we make up. If your story sounds too good to be true, I won't ask for proof that it happened in real life.

Hint:

Pay attention to punctuation. If in doubt, visit the Discord # english-spelling-grammar channel.

Deadline:

Sunday, October 8, midnight CST, but don't panic. Time zones, clocks, calendars - I'm not a bureaucrat.
THREE WEEKS notice to write an entry? Yes. I believe you need time to edit, pare down, and polish.
Before you try to squeeze 2,000 words into one steemit post, make sure every word counts.

Judge:

Just me, this time. I don't want our best writers to recuse themselves so they can help judge or critique the competition at Fiction Workshop. Writers on steemit would be wise to take advantage of the #fiction-workshop, but remember you may be critted by competitors. I have 100% confidence in our workshoppers' objectivity, fairness, and support of one another.

Steemhouse Fiction Trail has one goal: to curate the very best creative writing on Steemit. Novels, short stories, flash fiction--we are on the hunt.

Thank you for participating! And special thanks to @bex-dk for donating almost half the prize money.

P.S. Kate Bratskeir (HuffPo) wrote a great article (not fiction) with this item:
On his fourth day as a foster dog, TaterTot the pit bull saved Christi Smith’s four-year-old son’s life. The pup barked and whimpered in the middle of the night as he paced between Smith and her son Peyton’s room in Minneapolis. When Smith check on Peyton, she found him incoherent and barely breathing. At the emergency room, doctors found his blood sugar levels had crashed dangerously. Veterinarian Isis Sanchez told KMSP-TV that TaterTot’s sharp sense of smell helped him sense Peyton’s shift in body chemistry.
TaterTot’s smart move earned him a permanent home with the family: “I am never going to let this dog go,” foster mom-turned-permanent-mom told the Pioneer Press. “I owe him for the rest of his life."
more at These 16 Dogs Are Heroes. They Are Also Pit Bulls.

*Horse image by Dorota Kudyba @kudybador
*Bremen musicians by Felix Brönnimann
Both images courtesy of pixabay