Waggit Again

by Peter Howe

  Peter Howe

  Waggit Again

  Drawings by

  Omar Rayyan

  This book is dedicated to working dogs everywhere

  and especially to the memory of my wonderful

  therapy dog Bobby Blue, who brought so much joy

  to so many children in distress.

  Table of Contents

  Map

  1 Waggit’s Escape

  2 An Unusual Upright

  3 Travel Plans

  4 Getting Acquainted

  5 The Journey Begins

  6 The Rescue of the Cowardly Pit Bull

  7 Lug Tags Along

  8 Freight Train to Nowhere

  9 Truckers and the Big Rigs

  10 Hitching a Ride

  11 Trapped by Fear

  12 Narrow Escape

  13 Home at Last

  14 Team Contact

  15 Welcomed Back

  16 Felicia’s Feast

  17 Lowdown’s Hideaway

  18 Olang’s Challenge

  19 Home Improvement

  20 Tashi’s New Team

  21 Treachery at Silver Tree Bend

  22 Triumph and Tragedy

  23 Chance Meeting

  24 The Mystery Solved

  25 A Friend’s Good-bye

  26 Puppies in Distress

  27 Waggit Makes Amends

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Other Books by Peter Howe

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  1

  Waggit’s Escape

  Even though he was wearing his leather collar Waggit could still feel the chain biting into his neck as he pulled on it. It hurt to move the links backward and forward over the sharp edge of the rock, but he could bear the pain; what he couldn’t tolerate was staying one more day on this farm. So he had done the same thing every night for weeks, ever since the farmer staked him out in the backyard after his fight with the dog called Hodge. The chain was old and rusty, but so far it had resisted his best efforts to snap it.

  Maybe tonight, he thought. Maybe it will break tonight.

  The night was moonless and very dark, and his escape would be that much easier if he broke free now. He continued to pace back and forth, keeping the chain taut, his head held down, listening to the grinding noise of the metal as it chafed against the rock. The task was made more difficult by the need for silence. The other dogs slept unshackled only a few feet away, and any of them, Hodge in particular, would have raised the alarm if they heard his attempts to break free.

  Hodge was the leader of the farmyard dogs. His name was short for Hodgepodge, and he was a tough, lumbering creature who looked as if he had been made out of the parts left over from other dogs. When Waggit and his owner had arrived at the farm after a long drive, she had let him loose in the yard. He had been pleased to see other dogs and had run up to them eagerly. To his surprise they all cowered as he came near. He was just about to explain that he only wanted to say hello when he heard a growl behind him. He turned to see Hodge, his teeth bared and his hackles up.

  “Well, what do we have here?” the tough dog said with contempt. “Is this a city dog I see? Have you come here to teach us all your fancy city ways?”

  “No,” said Waggit, not sure why the dog was being so aggressive. “I only wanted to say hi. I’m just visiting. My owner’s going to take me back home in a minute.”

  “Well,” said Hodge, “you’d better hope she does, ’cause we’ve got some country ways we can teach you, and they all involve pain.”

  But as it turned out, Waggit’s owner didn’t take him back. She had driven off, and although at first he had confidently waited for her to return and take him to the city, his optimism had drained away as many days passed and still there was no sign of her. He became resigned to life in the yard, keeping to himself, which wasn’t hard to do. If any of the other dogs approached him or tried to be friendly, Hodge snarled at them and told them to leave the “city boy” alone.

  This went on until Waggit could stand it no longer. The farmer fed the dogs once a day, putting down battered metal bowls that contained mostly table scraps. Hodge would frequently wolf down his own food and then shove another dog out of the way and take his or her meal as well. He had never tried it with Waggit until one day.

  Waggit was about to put his nose into his bowl when he was knocked sideways by Hodge’s shoulder.

  “Leave it,” Waggit barked as the bully was about to empty the bowl of its contents.

  “Oh my, a tough guy,” Hodge sneered. “And we were all of us just saying what a scaredy-cat you seem to be.”

  Now, you can call a dog any number of nasty things and they will roll right off his back, but only the most timid of dogs would tolerate being called a scaredy-cat—and Waggit was far from timid. Hodge didn’t realize that even though Waggit was still young, he hadn’t always been the spoiled pet the country dog mistook him for. Parts of Waggit’s short life had been very hard indeed, and although not a fighter by nature, he could only be pushed so far.

  Waggit leapt at Hodge without warning, taking the other dog by surprise and putting him on his back. Hodge quickly recovered and went on the attack. But if he was much stronger, Waggit was much quicker, and he would dart in and nip the bigger dog and then retreat. As his opponent lumbered toward him he continued his hit-and-run tactics, driving the bigger dog wild. How this would have ended nobody will ever know, because the noise that the other dogs made as they watched—plus the angry growls of Hodge as he grew more and more frustrated—attracted the farmer’s attention, and the next thing Waggit knew he was chained up. The farmer didn’t care who was right and who was wrong; he simply needed peace in the farmyard.

  Waggit was happy to oblige the man by removing himself completely. And so he moved backward and forward, backward and forward, knowing that every scrape of metal against stone brought him a little closer to freedom. His neck ached with the effort, but still the link wouldn’t give. He took a short break and noticed that the sky was beginning to get a little lighter. Dawn was coming. The thought of another day on the farm so panicked him that he pulled against the chain with all his might. Suddenly there was a ping and he fell backward. The chain had broken! Unfortunately as it snapped it snaked back across the yard and hit the sleeping Hodge squarely on the nose. He yelped and sat up, instantly awake.

  Hodge immediately understood what was happening and raced across the yard barking, causing all the other dogs to bark as well. The area was completely fenced in, but Waggit had already planned how he was going to get out; now he had to do it as quickly as possible. He had one handicap, however. Although he was free of most of the chain, about two feet of it still hung around his neck. Picking the trailing end up in his mouth, he sprinted to the corner of the yard where bags of fertilizer were stacked on wooden pallets and leapt from a run onto the top of the stack. Although the chain wasn’t heavy, it was cumbersome, and he barely made it, digging his claws into the plastic sacks, his heart in his mouth along with the chain.

  He paused for breath while Hodge and two of the other dogs barked ferociously at the foot of the pile, leaping up, desperately trying to get to him but lacking the agility to do so. Waggit saw a light go on in the farmer’s bedroom and knew that he didn’t have much time. The jump over the fence was not a problem, not more than a couple of feet. It was the drop to the ground on the other side that was intimidating, for there was nothing to break his fall. He worried that the chain might get caught on the fence as he went over it, leaving him hanging by the neck.

  In the end he had no alternative but to jump, sailing over the fence as if he were flying until gravity took over and brought him crashing to the
ground. Pain shot through his legs and the wind left his body as he hit the hard earth. When he got his breath back he scrambled to his feet, shook himself, checked that he was okay, and then ran as fast as he could, leaving the three dogs clawing at the fence, snarling and cursing at him. The last thing he heard from the farmyard was the voice of the farmer yelling, “Be quiet, you dogs. What’s going on?”

  2

  An Unusual Upright

  Waggit ran and ran until he could run no more and had to lie down in some bushes, panting as if he would never stop. He was pretty sure that he was far enough away now, so even if the farmer did come looking for him the man would be unlikely to find him. But although he was feeling safe, he was also feeling lost. He had no idea where he was or which way he should go. Whichever direction he took, he would have to be careful. Although dogs alone on country roads might be a more familiar sight than in the city, those with two feet of chain attached to their collars would attract unwanted attention.

  He got up from the bushes and stretched. He had found that stretching was a good thing to do when you had to make a decision; it seemed to make thinking easier. He sniffed the air as if trying to pick up some scent of the city. He knew this was silly and that his home was many miles from here, but even so he felt a tingling in his nostrils when he faced in a certain direction, not a smell exactly but a sort of feeling. His whiskers also twitched like a water diviner’s rod. He turned around in a full circle several times, but the sensation only happened when he was facing one particular way. Since he had nothing else to guide him he decided to follow this instinct and headed down the road in that direction.

  In the distance he heard the sound of a truck snorting as it applied its brakes and rounded a bend. Waggit quickly jumped into the ditch on the side of the road and lay as flat as possible until the vehicle, a large milk tanker, passed him by. The sky was quite light now, and it would be safer if he could find a route that wasn’t a highway. More and more cars were about, and soon he was spending as much time hiding in the ditch as walking.

  He had gone several miles and was beginning to feel tired and hungry when he came upon a lane that went away from the highway and into the fields. It was deeply rutted where tractors or trucks had used it, and it looked interesting to the dog. On either side stone walls and thick, prickly bushes hid him from sight; it seemed a better alternative than the road. He was still too scared to relax though, and he moved quickly along, glancing over his shoulder every few feet to make sure that he wasn’t being followed. He had gone only a short distance when his heart sank. The path ended at a metal gate that led into an empty field from which there appeared to be no exit.

  But then something at the far end of the field caught his attention. It was a tall, grassy embankment, on top of which he could see poles with wires strung between them. Something about the embankment aroused his curiosity and he squeezed his body under the bottom of the closed gate and headed toward it. He quickly ran across the field and scampered up the side of the ridge.

  When he came to the top he was on a flat surface covered in small rocks, over which ran two strips of metal that were mounted at intervals on crosspieces of wood and seemed to go on forever. Waggit had no idea what all this was for—he had never seen a railroad—but he could see it was free of cars, trucks, and people. His nose told him it was heading in the right direction. Taking it, however, was easier said than done. The rocks hurt his feet, and the wooden planks were spaced too far apart for comfort. He tried walking beside the tracks, but the slope was too steep and it tired him. The best he could do was stay between the rails, and after a while he got into a rhythm alternating between rocks and planks that made it bearable.

  Apart from the surface, the railroad tracks were perfect. They went through deep countryside, and not only did he see no people, he rarely saw houses, and when he did they were far in the distance. The sun had been up for some time and was warm without being hot. Birds were singing in the trees, and he smelled a hint of cherry blossoms. He felt so lighthearted that he even dropped the chain from his mouth and let it jingle musically on the ground. Although he was fearsomely hungry, at least he wasn’t thirsty. The tracks had gone through a deep cutting in the rock, with sheer sides rising up many feet. From a crack in the walls a small waterfall descended, and under this Waggit quenched his thirst and cooled his body.

  His feeling of contentment was short-lived, however. No more than a mile from the cutting, the tracks ran through more open countryside. Suddenly he felt the earth beneath his paws begin to vibrate, gently at first, and then more noticeably. His ears picked up the sound of rumbling, not the kind that trucks made but much different. Then he heard the shriek of a whistle, and as he turned and looked behind him he saw a terrible sight. An awesome metal monster was bearing down upon him, its single headlight glaring like a huge, malevolent eye, angry black fumes coming out of its nostrils.

  Waggit just had time to throw himself down the embankment before the beast was upon him. It roared past, an unstoppable force, dragging dozens of large metal boxes behind it. These were freight cars that clattered rhythmically over the joins in the rails, sounding like they were saying, “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go.” The train appeared to be endless, and Waggit feared he would never be able to walk along the tracks again, but finally, after what seemed like hours, the last car passed. Silence once again descended on the landscape, although the dog couldn’t tell because the sound the locomotive had made was so loud that his ears were still ringing.

  “Well, young man, who are you and where are you going?”

  Waggit spun around to see a woman standing behind him, not young but not really old either. He hadn’t heard her come up because of the noise reverberating in his head. She was dressed in an assortment of strange, mismatched clothes. She had a scarf tied under her chin with an old and ragged baseball cap on top of it. Across her shoulders she wore a cape, now faded to a pale blue but still trimmed in red. Beneath it was a thick woolen plaid shirt of the kind that people think lumberjacks wear. She had on a flowing skirt that came below her knees with black sweatpants under it, and on her feet were a rugged pair of work boots. The entire outfit should have looked ridiculous, but the way she carried herself gave it a stylish quality.

  Waggit’s first instinct was to back off and put up his hackles, but there was something about her that was strangely soothing, and he realized that he didn’t fear her at all. He wasn’t sure why; it might have been the sound of her voice, which was musical and calming, but it was more than that. Just being near her made him feel peaceful. He cocked his head and looked at her. Then he realized she had asked him a question.

  “My name is Waggit,” he replied, “and I’m trying to go home.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Waggit,” she said in her wonderful voice. “My name is Felicia. Now where exactly is your home?”

  “It’s where my friends live.”

  “Hmm.” She considered this thoughtfully. “That doesn’t give us much of a clue as to whether or not you’re going in the right direction.”

  “Well,” he said, “every time I turn this way my nose tingles, so I think it’s right.”

  “Yes,” Felicia agreed, “that’s always a good sign.”

  Then something struck Waggit with the force of the train. He understood what she was saying, and she understood him. Not only that, she spoke to him the way dogs talk to each other, without making a sound and without moving her lips. Her words just popped into his brain the way they did with other dogs. This had never happened before with a human being.

  “How come you know what I’m saying? I mean, you’re an Upright, and Uprights can’t understand dogs.” He cocked his head in confusion.

  “I’m a what?”

  “An Upright, you know. You’re a people.”

  “Well, I suppose I am. I just never heard that term before,” she said.

  “So?” persisted Waggit. “How come?”

  “Well, I may be an Upright,
but I also have”—she paused for an instant—“shall we say, certain powers that most people don’t have, or at least don’t think they have.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Waggit, truly impressed. “Can you talk to all animals?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I suppose I could if I tried, but I only bother with the ones I like. You dogs are my favorites, with horses second, and I also find pigs quite amusing. Cows are rather dull, and I don’t like cats. They’re way too full of themselves.”

  “Do other Uprights who can’t talk to their animals ask you to tell them what we’re saying?” he inquired.

  “Bless you, no,” she said with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes, “quite the opposite. They think I’m strange, to put it mildly. To them I’m just a little less threatening than a witch.”

  Waggit didn’t know what a witch was, but the thought of this calm woman with her soothing voice being a threat to anyone seemed odd to him.

  “Come,” she said, “you have a ‘lean and hungry look’ as Mr. Shakespeare said, and I think I have some sausages that we can cook up. Let’s go to my place.”

  Waggit didn’t know who Mr. Shakespeare was either, but whoever he was he apparently knew a thing or two about dogs and their digestive systems, because the word sausage caused Waggit’s stomach to start growling louder than Hodge in a bad mood. He trotted along beside her until they came to a small tent set a little way back from the tracks. She had covered it with leaves and branches so that at first sight it was almost invisible. A narrow, clear stream ran close to the tent, and Waggit ran to it to drink and let the cold water wash over his paws and ease the soreness from walking on the rocks that lay beneath the rails.