Goosebumps: Dead Dogs Still Fetch was a special Goosebumps short story created in 1998 via collaboration from R. L. Stine, Braden Thomas Gardner, and the students of Southeast Warren Intermediate School.
In 1998, Scholastic, Parachute Press, and General Mills held the "Brain Juice Terrifying Title Contest" wherein kids sent entries with titles for possible Goosebumps short stories. Braden Thomas Gardner of Lacona, Iowa, won, and was treated to R.L. Stine making a special appearance at his school. Stine sat down with Braden and worked on creating a tale to go along with his title Dead Dogs Still Fetch with help from Braden's classmates.
As such, together they created a tale about two young children playing fetch with their dog in a cemetery, and what the children encounter when their dog retrieves a human skull.
Dead Dogs Still Fetch infamously remained lost to the Goosebumps fandom for decades. While its existence was known thanks to archived newspaper articles, the story itself was unknown to the fandom. It wasn't until recently when a writer for the horror review website Point Horror was able to track down Braden Thomas Gardner, who in turn recovered a video tape with a recording of the creation of Dead Dogs Still Fetch.
The recap of the story can be found here
, with a link to the video recording.
"Dead Dogs Still Fetch" includes examples of:
- A Boy and His X: The premise of the story focuses on two young children and their pet dog Seth.
- Dead All Along: Seth.
- Dem Bones: Braden and Jessica are accosted by a skeleton, enraged at Seth for stealing its head.
- Foreshadowing: Braden mentions he found Seth while playing in the graveyard one day. Because that's where Seth's buried.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: The skeleton leaves the kids alone when it realizes that their dog Seth is dead too, making him more of a threat to whatever supernatural abilities the skeleton might possess.
- Properly Paranoid: Braden and Jessica's mom warns them it's not safe to play in the cemetery, and it turns out she's right when the kids and Seth provoke a living skeleton. Subverted in that Seth being dead manages to scare off the skeleton.
- Spoiler Title: Seth is, indeed, a dead dog.
- Stock Femur Bone: Averted. What Seth brings back isn't a bone, but in fact an actual human skull.
