My Dog Skip (2000)

Plot
Willie Morris as an adult is looking back on his childhood in the early 1940s and how it was colored by his dearly beloved dog, a whom he had named Skip. In the beginning, Willie is a lonely 9-year old child with a gruff, proud father, a veteran, and a charismatic, talkative mother , a housewife, but he is an only child and small for his age with few friends. His one companion is a young man who lives next door, Dink Jenkins, who is the local sports hero in Mississippi. However, when Dink is drafted to go to war, Willie's mother decides to buy him a dog, against his father's wishes, in order that he should have some company.

Willie and Skip become firm friends very quickly. However, Willie gets bullied at school by Big Boy Wilkinson, Henjie Henick, and Spit McGee, until Dink sends him a German helmet and belt from the front line. The other boys demand he play ball in order to win back his belongings. Skip leaps in to help him. That same day, the three boys talk Willie into spending the night in a graveyard, where they claim a witch is buried. If he stays there, he gets to join their gang and also keep the ball Dink Jenkins signed for them, and if not, he has to give them his German helmet. Willie stays there for a number of hours, until he hears two moonshiners who are loading crates into a crypt. Skip jumps on Millard, one the moonshiners, until the second one, Junior, comes at her with a spade. Willie uses a slingshot to hit Junior in the nose with an acorn and attempts to escape the graveyard with Skip. They are soon captured by Junior. He tells Willie not to move before sunrise or he will kill Skip. Then the two men leave. The three boys return in the morning and accept Willie into their group for spending the night in the graveyard.

The narrator then goes on to explain various changes in his life. Skip, having always been a friendly dog, is known by everyone in the town, including black people, significant because Mississippi was still segregated at the time. Skip leads Willie through the best parts of his life; his boyhood days. Thanks to Skip, Willie now has three friends, and a girlfriend, Rivers Ginny Grey.

Skip is there for him when Dink gets home, shell-shocked and a drunkard since discharged from the army. However, when Willie’s first ball game comes along, Skip and Willie have their first falling out.

Dink promised to come along but does not bother. Since the war he has found competitions do not matter to him anymore, and Willie is so upset by this that his game is ruined. Skip, wanting to cheer him up, runs onto the field and sits wagging her tail, refusing to leave. Becoming increasingly frustrated, Willie hits her across the muzzle and she runs away.

After the game, a devastated and tearful Willie is unable to find his dog. Unbeknownst to him, Skip had returned to the crypt, and been accidentally shut in the grave where moonshine alcohol was being stored. Dink, however, after explaining that he had been scarred by having to kill in the war, tells Willie nothing is ever lost for good and goes out to help him find Skip. As Willie searches in the graveyard, he hears Skip's barks, and can see that Junior is about to strike Skip with a spade. He runs to save her, but there is a thump and a whimper. Dink arrives, and manages to eject the two moonshiners, telling Junior that he'd better hope that Skip lives, but it is uncertain as to whether Skip will survive.

As the family and friends gather in solemnity in the vet's waiting room, Willie weeps over his dog’s vet bed, telling him everything he ever should have done; that he will never have a true friend more dear like him again. Skip awakens, licking his hands and face.

The film concludes with Willie explaining his friendship with Skip, that he had been an only child and Skip an only dog. When Willie leaves to go to in the, Skip remains with Willie's parents, sleeping in Willie's old room, and finally dies, being buried under the elm tree. The closing line adds, "That wasn't totally true. For he really laid buried...in my heart".