Wanted! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Read online

  ‘But, but, but the puppies …’ began Mr Whiffle.

  ‘Blast butting the puppies!’ bellowed B-O.

  ‘Get rid of them! Drown them!’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I backed off. There was no way I was going to let this happen. They’d have to drown me first. Mrs Bittenbott took several steps forward. Streaker growled even louder. And it was at that point that Superman came to our rescue. He was even wearing Clark Kent spectacles.

  You’ve guessed – it was Mr Whiffle. Now that was a surprise! As Bittenbott came forward Mr Whiffle moved towards them, armed with nothing more than a big bucket of dog pellets. He tipped the whole lot over B-O and the Warden.

  You are probably thinking, so what? A bucketful of dog pellets? That’s not going to hurt anyone. And you’re right. But maybe you’ve forgotten the dogs. That compound was full of them. You should have heard the racket they made!

  They howled and growled and snapped and snarled. They hurled themselves at their cage doors until first one broke out, then another and another, until the whole compound seemed to be squirming with dogs hungry for pellets.

  Down went B-O. Down went the Warden. They weren’t being harmed – just sort of licked to death. The more they rolled about the more pellets they picked up on their clothes, and the more pellets they picked up the madder the dogs went. Dad and I slipped out of the compound and left them to it.

  ‘I’d better come with you,’ said Mr Whiffle a trifle sadly. ‘I think I’ve probably just lost my job, and I only started yesterday. I was quite, quite, quite enjoying it.’

  ‘You’re better off not working for those two madmen,’ muttered Dad. ‘Come on, into the car.’

  Dad had barely got the car started when a dog went zooming past us, quickly followed by another, and then several more. I looked back. They were streaming out of the compound, every one of them. Streaker hung her head over the open window and watched with growing excitement as the dogs streamed past. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She just had to join in. With one leap she was out, spilling on to the road, her legs already churning like helicopter rotors, and she was off.

  ‘Streaker!’ I yelled. It’s that old habit. I can’t break it.

  But she was running with the pack, leapfrogging, or rather leap-dogging her way to the front and there was no stopping her.

  Boffington-Orr and Bittenbott had struggled to their feet, shouting and waving their arms ferociously.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Dad, gazing at them in his rear-view mirror. ‘Trouble. Better get a move on.’ He put his foot on the gas and we took off.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘We promised your mother we’d be at the finishing line. She’s been practising and practising. We’ve got to be there, Trevor. The pups can come too.’

  ‘What about Streaker?’

  Dad gave a little frown. ‘She’ll turn up. She always does, not necessarily when you want her to, of course, but she does turn up. Eventually.’

  ‘Can we pick Tina up on the way? Please?’

  Dad reckoned we had just about enough time. I was dying to show her the pups and tell her about the great escape. I knew she’d be overwhelmed, and she was.

  ‘They are so cute! Give them to me. I want to cuddle them. Gimme, gimme!’

  Dad found somewhere to park and we made our way towards the finishing line for the race. I still had the pups curled up in my jumper. We managed to push our way to the front.

  ‘Can’t see anyone yet,’ I said, peering down the empty road.

  ‘They could be ages,’ murmured Dad, craning his neck.

  ‘I was a champion,’ Mr Whiffle offered, rather unexpectedly. He didn’t look very sporty.

  ‘Really? It wasn’t for electrocuting things, was it?’ asked Dad.

  ‘No, no, no! Don’t be silly. I was Bogman 2005.’

  I almost dropped the puppies and Dad choked for a second. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he spluttered.

  ‘I was Bogman. I did bog-snorkelling.’

  Bog-snorkelling? It sounded like the most gruesomely gruesome hobby I’d ever heard of.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Mr Whiffle. ‘You wear a wetsuit, diving mask and snorkel, and you jump, you jump into a ditch full of sloppy, sloppy mud and peat and weed and so on and off you go. It’s quite good for someone like me, with short sight. It’s so filthy, filthy, filthy in that water you can’t see where you’re going, so being short-sighted is no disadvantage at all. I won the local championship – Bogman 2005.’

  So Mr Whiffle really was a kind of superhero! Bogman! Don’t people do weird things?

  An excited roar from the crowd quickly changed to guffaws of laughter as the front runners came into the view. And the front runners were … dogs. Dogs, dogs and more dogs, and right at the front was – yes, of course, who else? Streaker!

  Streaker was loping along, at least fifty metres ahead of the rest. She wasn’t even going at full speed. She’d set her legs to super-cruise and was loping along, enjoying the sunshine, the freedom and the crowds yelling. And for once the crowds weren’t chasing after her. They weren’t yelling at her to stop. They were shouting encouragement! I could see Curtis and Alysha on the opposite side. They were shouting too.

  We all were.

  ‘Go, Streaker, go!’

  Everyone thought it was fantastic. Then the human runners came round the corner and into sight, a great mass of them. I searched for Mum.

  ‘There she is!’ I cried, jumping up and down so much that the pups protested with little squeaks and I hurriedly calmed down.

  We cheered until we were hoarse. The dogs went piling past us. Streaker skidded to a halt just before the tape. She sat down and began to wash herself. Oh no!

  ‘Streaker!’ I yelled, so she ignored me as usual and carried on licking herself. The other dogs were catching up. Streaker got to her feet and scratched herself behind the ears. She stretched. She yawned. She had a widdle in the middle of the road.

  And then, and then she calmly stepped over the line. She sat up and grinned at the cheering crowd, saw me, came steaming over at a hundred miles an hour, threw herself into the air and landed among the puppies.

  ‘Hooray!’ screamed the crowd, and Mr Whiffle’s spectacles fell off from jumping about too much. Tina threw her arms round me and kissed my cheek.

  ‘I saw that,’ said Dad. ‘I warned you, Trevor. It’s one long slippery slope from now on.’

  Tina gave Dad a rather sharp look, smiled, reached up and pecked his cheek too. You should have seen Dad’s face. Talk about red! One of the runners yelled out, ‘I saw that, Tina! You’ve already got a boyfriend. Leave my husband alone!’

  It was Mum. She’d come third! Amazing. My mum – third! (And thanks for embarrassing me in front of all those people, Mum.) The slower runners began to toil past, puffing and panting until it seemed that there was nobody left.

  But there was. Round that final corner came the two last runners: Chief Superintendent Boffington-Orr and Mrs Bittenbott. A quiet cheer went up from the crowd, along with a ripple of laughter. B-O waved a fist.

  ‘Stop that dog,’ he croaked, his voice hoarse from too much shouting.

  ‘Which one?’ Dad laughed. ‘There must have been at least fifty of them!’

  Mrs Bittenbott could barely stand. ‘I’ll get that dog before you can say …’

  ‘Dog’s dinner?’ suggested Tina, and the Dog Warden sank to her knees and gave up. The Terminator had just been terminated.

  And that was about it. Mum got a medal for being third in the Mothers’ Marathon. Streaker got a special medal for being fastest dog-mother, even though dogs hadn’t meant to be in the race at all. She also got a reprieve. The town council said it was obvious that Streaker was stealing food because she had her pups to feed.

  I didn’t bother to point out that we fed her very well and she was just being greedy really. I thought it better to keep quiet. Sometimes it’s better to keep quiet, isn’t it?

  There are four Stre
akers in our house now. One big one and three very small ones.

  ‘They’re gorgeous,’ sighed Tina. ‘I wonder who the dad was?’

  ‘They look as if they’ve got a lot of Alsatian in them,’ Mum suggested. My eyes almost popped out. Alsatian? Tina and I stared at each other in horror. That would mean … no, surely not, not one of Charlie Smugg’s dogs! If one of his Alsatians was the father, that would make Charlie Smugg almost like the puppies’ uncle or something! Uncle Charlie! Nooooooo!

  Dad fixed a beady eye on the three little wrigglers. ‘They are definitely going to be trained,’ he informed everyone.

  ‘That should prove interesting to watch,’ Tina whispered in my ear.

  ‘They are going to know their names,’ declared Dad. ‘They will know what “sit” and “stay” and “come back” all mean. Won’t they, Trevor?’

  I looked at him. Surely he wasn’t expecting me to take responsibility for them?

  ‘What are their names?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Dad.

  ‘No idea,’ said Mum.

  So that’s something to think about. Tina and I took Streaker and the pups up to my room, where they curled up on the bed.

  ‘We’ll have to think of good names,’ said Tina. ‘Something that fits their character.’

  I knelt on the floor by the bed and looked at them carefully. Something that suited their character. I gazed into their eyes. What could I see? Pies, pizzas and pancakes. Pancakes, pizzas and pies.

  Oh dear.

  Trouble ahead.