Martha Speaks - Lost Dogs

Originally published on January 27, 2021 on Spinpasta Wiki.

I've been a big fan of Martha Speaks for a good long time. Back in my mid to late elementary school years, every morning before school, Martha Speaks would be among the shows I would watch while having breakfast. I also watched it on many weekends in my free time. I loved the stories, the characters, the learning segments, everything. The show had really helped me grow my vocabulary, making me smarter for the better. Although I had stopped watching Martha Speaks in recent years, my love for it was here to stay, even after what I discovered not long ago.

It was an ordinary January day in my junior year of high school, where I was happy with my good grades and my positively high level relationship status of my friends and family. Having finished all my homework for the week, I was naturally bored. Eventually, I reminded myself that, as a legal US citizen, I had my own money, so I figured I'd take advantage of it and do some online shopping (if there's one thing I'm too lazy to do sometimes, it's physically going to the store). I was browsing some random products on Amazon, when something familiar caught my eye.

It was a Martha Speaks DVD. The product title was "Martha Speaks - Lost Dogs." The DVD cover showed artwork of a wooden pole with a piece of paper stapled to it. The paper wore a drawing of Martha and Skits in a pencil line box. Above that, "LOST DOGS" was written in red marker. With the clues I had gathered, this episode was called "Lost Dogs." I do remember at least some episodes where Martha, and other dogs besides Skits, getting lost, but I couldn't remember seeing an episode with the exact title "Lost Dogs," but the DVD only costed five to ten bucks, so I bought it anyway. I was already excited to relive my childhood. I only had to wait a couple days before it showed up at my doorstep.

I noticed something a little funny about the package. Besides being unsealed, it was unmarked, only wearing the return address, along with the word "DOGS" written above it in messy writing. I assumed it was just the work of some little kid that was just playing with the box before it got used. I took out the DVD, which had the same cover as in the image, took out the disc and put it in my old but reliable DVD player. I started watching the first few seconds of the video. It was Martha, TD, Martha and Skits all running around and playing happily in Helen's backyard. When I heard TD's younger voice, I figured this was a much older episode, and I thought to myself, "Okay, I just got an episode that I might have missed. That's pretty cool." I then grabbed myself a quick snack, poured a cup of gingerale, and started to watch the episode all the way through.

The episode transitioned to a new scene after thirty seconds, showing Martha, Skits and Helen laughing, jumping around and playing in Helen's room. They looked very happy. Then, all of a sudden, Helen stopped laughing and screamed for a second, causing Martha and Skits to exchange both of their looks of confusion. Helen then proceded to walk toward her door, with Martha and Skits following close behind.

Helen opened her door and stepped out into the hallway, walking past her brother, Baby Jake. She laughed a playful laugh and kicked Jake in the stomach. The cute baby let out what sounded like an actual infant's sqeualing, and Helen just laughed like she didn't care. Martha and Skits were speechless, mouths closed and eyes wide open. Helen walked out her front door, leading Skits and Martha outside to an empty alleyway and kicked the two dogs into the grass and yelled, "You're nothing to me!"

Martha and Skits sprung on their paws and ran after Helen, then, as they were crossing the road, they got hit by a passing car, pushing them farther from Helen's house than before. Martha screamed at Skits, and then they both started crying and wimpering. Martha then charged at Skits, starting a brawl. The intense fight lasted for a couple minutes. At one point, Skits bit off Martha's left leg, blood squirting on the road as she let out a howl much different from her usual one. As Martha kept screaming, TD was in his house, watching the fight from his kitchen window, frantically calling for help on his house phone.

Ten seconds into the brawl after that, Matha bit horrifying deep into Skit's neck, causing him to let out a much louder howl, which lasted for several seconds, even after Martha let go, befoe he collapsed to the ground. The camera cut to a closeup of Martha, with a menacing look on her face, along with blood all over it, as she growled deeply in her breathing. This lasts for a few seconds before Martha appears to pass out, no doubt due to the blood loss caused by her brutal amputation.

The screen then faded to black, then only to fade into a video of a little girl in a purple sweater, looking into the grass of her front yard to find a puppy labrador, wimpering, laying on the ground, covered in dirt and missig a left leg. The girl had taken it home to her father saying, "Daddy, can you help her?" The father smiled and replied, "Yes, of course sweetheart." He then took the dog to a small room with a computer. After patching the dog up with a bandage, he put it in a box. What I saw next would haunt me for days, if not for life. The man labeled the box, in messy writing...

"DOGS."