Favorite Flicks: My Dog Skip

© 2000 Warner Bros.
Running time: 93 minutes Rated PG
Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Kevin Bacon

 

PLOT

It’s 1942 in Yazoo, Mississippi, and shy, scrawny, nine-year-old Willie Morris is the perfect target for neighborhood bullies. After his only friend joins the military to serve in World War II, Willie’s mother thinks a dog would be the perfect solution to her son’s loneliness. Willie immediately connects with Skip, whom he calls “just a trembling ball of fur, as scared and shy as I was.” Before Willie and his parents even realize it, Skip has become a member of the family, and it soon becomes clear that he's no ordinary dog. He helps with household chores, barks with pleasure at the sound of President Roosevelt’s voice on the radio, and helps Willie out of more than one scrape. He also helps Willie make unlikely friends and meet a girl. When Willie’s friend, Dink Jenkins, returns from war a changed man, Willie begins to realize that change is part of growing up.

HUMANE MESSAGES & OTHER GOOD POINTS

• Promotes responsible stewardship of animals. Although Willie’s dad initially balks at the idea of getting a dog, Skip becomes a loved and irreplaceable member of the family.

• Shows the power of friendship. Skip changes Willie’s life for the better. Willie becomes more outgoing, gains self-esteem, and learns to stand up for himself and what he believes in. Willie says of Skip, “He didn’t mind that I was scrawny or shy or that I liked books more than football.” Without Skip’s unconditional love, Willie might have grown up to be a different person.

• Discusses the issue of racial relations during an era of segregation. Skip makes friends with anybody and everybody. Because of that, Willie makes friends with people he might otherwise not have met. He learns not to judge people based on the color of their skin or where they live.

• Encourages empathy for animals by showing that they have feelings and can suffer physically and emotionally. Please note that several of the empathy-building scenes are intense and may upset younger viewers. These scenes include the death of a deer at the hands of hunters, Skip’s disappearance after Willie hits him, Skip being hit with a shovel, and Willie’s vigil in the vet’s office when Skip’s life hangs in the balance.

POINTS TO PONDER

From a humane perspective, few movies are perfect. Following are potential problems with the film that you may wish to address with your children or students.

• Skip is allowed to roam on his own throughout the town. Dogs allowed to roam face many dangers, including cars, wildlife, leghold traps, and disease. Remind children that dogs should be walked on leashes or kept within a fenced area for their own safety and for the protection of people and other animals.

• Some scenes may be frightening to younger viewers, including the night Willie and Skip spend in the local cemetery and their encounters with the men making illegal moonshine there. At one point, one of the moonshiners hits Skip with a shovel.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

Truth or fiction. My Dog Skip is a true story from Willie Morris’s childhood memoirs. Have students read the 128-page book and compare it to the movie. Morris’s other autobiographical books, also childhood memoirs, are North Toward Home and Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood.

Our own dog Skip. Students love to share stories about pets. Have them write a brief account of how a pet changed their life (or the life of someone they know). Ask them to add photos or artwork and compile their essays in a book or on a bulletin board in the classroom.

Sergeant Skip. Much of the movie deals with World War II and the issues surrounding it. After seeing a newsreel report on dogs in the military, Willie decides to train and enlist Skip. Although the recruiter ends up rejecting Skip, there were over 10,000 dogs who did serve in World War II as scouts, messengers, mine detectors, and watch dogs. Have students research the use of dogs and other animals in the military, or write a biography of a military dog. Good places to start are www.militaryworkingdog.com and www.uswardogs.org.

A dog of a different breed. In the movie, Skip is portrayed by Jack Russell terriers (six different ones), but the real Skip was an English foxhound. Do some research about the two breeds. Why, do you think, did filmmakers opt to use Jack Russells instead of foxhounds?