‘I’ll get Mouse cleaned off. Then it will be easier,’ Tina sighed. She got the shower head and started to wash down Mouse. That was all right until Streaker grabbed hold of the snaking shower hose and tore it from Tina’s grasp. Water spurted everywhere.
Tina shouted at Streaker and tried to grab it back, but that just made Streaker think it was all a game. We weren’t sitting next to Niagara Falls any longer – we were actually in it. Streaker barked and growled and crouched and jumped. Tina grasped the hose and pulled and a tug of war began which could only have one possible result – which quickly happened. Tina fell into the bath.
So there’s Mouse in the bath all wet and bedraggled, and Streaker in the bath, still with the shower head in her mouth, busily making sure that there wasn’t anything dry anywhere within ten miles, and Tina in the bath struggling to clamber out but not being able to because the sides were so slippery with soap and anyhow the dogs kept knocking her over, and me standing there, watching and laughing and laughing and getting totally soaked…
… and in walks Tina’s mum.
So that was the end of Streaker’s grooming session. I’ve been banned from Tina’s house for two weeks. The dog show comes up in two weeks’ time and I don’t know what to do. Help!
5 The Return of Charlie Smugg
Tina’s mum only went and told my dad, didn’t she? She rang him up to complain, and while Dad was talking to Mrs Angry on the phone the postman came to the door with a parcel. Do you know what it was? Melinda Boffington-Orr’s muddy Armani jeans and top. There was a note inside.
Dear Mr Larkey,
If you are unable to get these clothes properly cleaned then you will have to replace them or send a cheque for their full value, £124.98.
Your dog should be fully trained, kept on a lead and muzzled. If I hear of any further misdemeanours regarding her I shall issue an order for her to be destroyed. Your membership of the golf club is also in serious doubt.
Yours sincerely,
Boris Boffington-Orr
Chief Superintendent,
Chairman of Swankyman Golf Club,
Ex-7th Eltham Scout Troupe,
Black Belt Tae Kwon Do,
Blue Peter Badge-Holder (Twice).
Was my dad a happy man by the time he had finished the phone call and read the note? Of course he wasn’t. Did he do his extraordinarily accurate impression of The End Of The World As We Know It, featuring full volcanic eruptions, several hurricanes and multiple earthquakes complete with collapsing buildings? Of course he did. And you can guess who caught the worst of it. That’s right. Me. Dad’s final words were something like ‘Get that dog trained or she’ll have to go.’
I took Streaker to the field. ‘It’s not my fault,’ I told her as we walked up the road. She looked at me with her shining eyes and wagged her tail cheerfully. ‘It’s not exactly your fault, either,’ I told her. ‘After all, you’re a dog.’
Streaker gave a little jump and a single bark. An elderly lady stopped with her wheeled shopping bag and smiled.
‘That’s a lovely dog,’ she said and before I could stop her she was patting Streaker on the head.
Oh dear. That was a mistake.
Streaker doesn’t normally get pats on the head because she is far too over-excited for anyone to get that close to her, but somehow this little old lady managed it. Streaker was so gobsmacked she leaped into the air – just like that – as if she had a pogo stick attached to each leg. Ker-poinnggg!
The ‘up’ bit of the jump was fine. The trouble is that once something has jumped up it has to come down somewhere. Streaker came down on the lady’s shoulders and she promptly collapsed in a heap on her shopping bag, which set off down the hill at high speed.
Streaker thought this was terrific. A free ride! She got to her feet, standing on the old lady’s shoulders and began to bark madly at everything and everyone. The old lady was screaming her head off, waving and kicking and making a dreadful racket. Everyone was staring. Well they would, wouldn’t they? It’s not often you see a barking, screaming shopping bag on wheels travelling at full speed, waving arms and legs at you.
And then, just before something truly awful could happen, the bag split open and came to a grinding halt. The shopping went every which way and so did the old lady. Streaker jumped off and ran back to me with a big grin on her face, while the old lady struggled to her feet and shouted after us.
‘I’ll tell the police about this! Where do you come from? What’s your name? Where do you live?’
‘Venus!’ I yelled back and hurried off. Phew. Lucky escape.
As if the morning was not already bad enough, when I got to the field, who was there? Charlie Smugg and his three Alsatians.
Let me introduce Charlie Smugg. He’s the local gorilla. No, that’s not fair – gorillas are quiet, peaceful, well-behaved animals that only become dangerous when they are well and truly cornered. Charlie Smugg, however, is dangerous at all times, and he’s an oaf. He’s fourteen and enormous – built like a tank. Almost everything about Charlie is big. He only has one small bit in his body – and that’s his brain.
Tina and I got into serious trouble with Charlie last year when he bet us we couldn’t train Streaker to do anything. There’s an old horse trough in the corner of the field, full of gunky muck. Charlie said if we lost the bet we would both have to get in the trough and wash our hair. Talk about yuck! And of course if he lost the bet then he had to get in. Well, that was when Tina and I made the dog-walking machine and Streaker got trained to come back.
So Charlie lost the bet and should have got in the trough, but surprise, surprise he wouldn’t, and we certainly couldn’t make him. But he was still angry with us. Matters were not helped by the fact that his dad was the sergeant at the police station where Mr B-O was now top dog. All the Smuggs like to throw their weight around, and they’ve got a lot of weight to throw, too.
The Smuggs have got three Alsatians and they are lethal. Why should anyone want three of the beasts? They’re really scary dogs, all bark and bite. They’d love to eat Streaker but fortunately she’s much too fast for them, and a lot cleverer.
So at the field there was Charlie with his three dogs and a scrambler bike. It sounded as if there was a very large, angry wasp on the loose. Neeeyaaaaarrrrrr!! And the bike went whizzing and bouncing across the field, with the dogs in pursuit. I must say it seemed a pretty good way to exercise them.
Charlie soon spotted me and I could see the bike coming straight over. He skidded to a halt, sending a flurry of mud and stones over my shoes, sat back and grinned. ‘Well well, if it ain’t Clever Trevor. Whadda you think of my bike?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘SIT!’ Charlie suddenly roared as the three Alsatians caught up with him. They sat instantly, in a row, slavering and showing their enormous fangs.
‘Dad’s got a bike, too,’ boasted Charlie. ‘He’s gonna do a display at the dog show.’
‘Your dad’s not a dog,’ I said, although secretly I was thinking of Sergeant Smugg as a chihuahua.
‘Oh ha ha,’ sneered Charlie. ‘The superintendent has asked my dad to put a display team together and I’m gonna be in it. Dad’s gonna ride the bike, with eight people standing on his shoulders.’
‘That will help solve the traffic problem,’ I muttered.
‘Yeah, and I’m gonna put the dogs in the show – agility. I’m gonna win an’ all.’
‘No chance,’ I crowed. ‘Streaker’s going to win that.’
Oh bums! Why did I have to say that!
I knew I shouldn’t have said it even as the words came out of my mouth, but it was too late. Charlie pounced.
‘Ha! Streaker? Beat my dogs? Don’t be stupid.’
‘Streaker could beat your dogs any day She’s doing the agility test, too.’
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you wanna make that a bet? Same as before?’
OK, now listen to me. You know I’m not stupid. I’m not, am I? Certainly
not as stupid as Charlie Smugg. So what happens? Do I show how clever I am and say: ‘No Charlie, I do not want to make a bet with you. That would be such a silly, foolish thing to do considering how things turned out last time.’ Do I say that? No. What do I say?
‘Sure, I bet you.’
DOH! (As someone famous says.)
So that is how I ended up getting myself into even deeper trouble. Now I had a bet with Charlie and it’s the animal trough for me if Streaker doesn’t beat the Smuggs’ Alsatians. Just to finish my day totally I discovered something else about Charlie.
He started up his bike and was revving the engine to show off. I wanted to get back at him somehow because I was feeling so low, so I asked him how Sharon was. (Tina and I once caught Charlie holding hands with Sharon Blenkinsop –he was so embarrassed! Talk about a face like a beetroot!)
Now he just grinned at me. ‘Dumped her ages ago,’ he said. ‘Going out with someone else now. She’s totally cute AND she’s my dad’s boss’s daughter. Her name’s Melinda. Oh yeah, something else – that bet we just made. Don’t forget that includes your girlfriend! See ya, dumbhead!’
The bike snarled and spat more mud and stones over me and off it went, with the Alsatians lolloping after it. The clouds came down, heavy black clouds. I tramped home feeling about as miserable as it was possible to feel. It seemed to me that the entire world was against me. Even Streaker had her tail between her legs.
6 What Kind of Noise Does a Squirrel Make?
‘Yοu said what?!’
There. I knew Tina would be impressed.
‘You are such an idiot!’
OK, maybe she wasn’t impressed.
‘I cannot believe you would do something so incredibly pathetically stupid.’
Definitely not impressed.
‘You are a total mashed potato.’
Mashed potato? That was a new one on me. ‘Mashed potato?’ I repeated back to her.
‘As in brain like a… got it?’
I nodded dumbly. Tina sat on the edge of my bed, staring into her lap and frowning. She shook her head. ‘You’ve landed us both in it now. If you’d stayed quiet we could have kept the whole thing secret and then sprung it as a surprise. Now Charlie will be on the lookout, and so will his dad.’
Of course. Sergeant Smugg. I’d forgotten about him for a moment. He would be watching out for any opportunity to make Streaker’s life difficult, just so that his own dogs had a better chance of winning.
‘What are we going to do?’ I moaned.
There was a long silence before Tina spoke. She got up, walked around the room, gazed out of the window, walked around again, picked at the wallpaper and finally sat down once more.
‘OΚ, let’s sort out this mess. We have to get Streaker trained. That will get Boffy-Offywotsit off Streaker’s back, not to mention your mum and dad. Then we have to beat the Smuggs’ Alsatians in the agility test at the dog show.’
I nodded glumly. ‘And don’t forget about Melinda,’ I added.
‘Melinda?’
‘I’ve got to put things right with her.’
‘Why’s that?’ Tina was looking at me searchingly. Faint alarm bells were starting to ring somewhere in my mind.
‘Well, we got off to a bad start and I’d really like it if we could be friends.’
‘Why’s that?’
I wished Tina didn’t keep asking ‘Why’s that?’ all the time!
‘Because she’s… um…’ I wanted to say that Melinda was beautiful and gorgeous and made my heart leap every time I saw her but I couldn’t really tell Tina that. ‘She’s… nice.’ I finished lamely.
‘Oh good. ‘I’m glad,’ Tina answered frostily. ‘I’m so glad she’s… nice.’ Tina made the word ‘nice’ sound as if she’d just got it out of the deep freeze and dropped it down the back of my neck.
‘Actually Trevor, I don’t know if you have realized but we have a small crisis to deal with concerning Streaker. Forget Melinda and think about your dog for a moment or two. I think we should train Streaker at the old football ground.’
‘But it’s a shambles! Nobody goes there. It’s full of old tyres and stuff.’
‘Exactly. It will be ideal. If nobody’s there we won’t be spotted and we can use all the junk lying around to build our own agility course.’
The more I thought about it the better it seemed. Tina was right. The old football ground would be ideal. Nobody would ever know what we were up to and we could get on with the training in peace and quiet.
We went down there at once. It’s a bit further away than the field, and I hadn’t been there for a while, but it hadn’t changed much. The local football team used to play there but that had been years earlier. It had been deserted for ages. Nobody seemed to know what to do with it and people who lived anywhere near just used it as a kind of unofficial dump. Where footballers had once rushed about shouting ‘To me! To me!’ at each other, there were now a dozen abandoned cars. Everywhere there was refuse – not the small rubbish you put in bins, but big rubbish, like old sheds people didn’t want any longer, lumps of concrete, tyres, old fridges, spin dryers – not to mention the cars.
Streaker thought it was brilliant and went whizzing around happily, trying to sniff everything at once. Tina grabbed an old car tyre and dropped it by my feet.
‘We need ten of these,’ she said. ‘We’ll put them in a row, leaving a good gap between each one.’
‘A slalom course!’ I shouted.
‘Exactly. Come on.’
It didn’t take long to find the tyres. However, getting Streaker to weave her way in and out of them was another matter. She jumped on them. She ran across them. She ran between them. She sat on them, lay down on them, barked at them and finally she widdled on them. Then she ran off.
Tina gazed after the disappearing hound. ‘I didn’t think she’d do it straight away but I did think she’d have a better go at it than that.’
‘We’re dead,’ I groaned.
‘Trevor! We’ve only just begun. You can’t give up straight away. In fact you can’t give up at all.’
‘All right.’ I sighed. ‘What other things do the dogs have to do for the agility test?’
‘Slalom, See-Saw, Tunnel, Hoop and Wall of Death.’
‘What’s the Wall of Death?’
‘It’s where they have to scramble up a really high wall and down the other side,’ Tina explained. That perked me up a little.
‘OΚ. We’ll try that next.’ I said. ‘You know how Streaker likes to climb trees? She could be good at this.’
So while I went off to try and get Streaker back Tina began work on the Wall of Death. By the time I returned she’d unearthed a huge sheet of plywood and was trying to drag it across the ground. It was far too heavy.
‘Hang on, I’ll give you a hand.’ We managed to lift it upright and rest it against the rusty cabin of an old van. The effort left us both panting and wiping the dirt from our hands. Tina grinned.
‘We make a good team,’ she said. ‘Just you and me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can’t imagine Melinda Toffee-Boffee-Offywotsit getting herself dirty like this.’
Do you ever feel as if you’ve suddenly been hit on the back of the head by an invisible boomerang? Well that’s the kind of effect Tina’s remark had on me. I stopped dead in my tracks, unable to think of a smart answer.
Tina smiled triumphantly ‘You’re pretty strong,’ she added, changing the subject. ‘Muscles like iron. I bet your mum makes you eat loads of Brussels sprouts.’
Now she was making me blush!
‘Come on. Let’s see if Streaker does the business.’
I took Streaker to the wall and let her sniff it. She put her front paws against it and scrabbled a bit. ‘That’s it! Jump up! Good girl!’ Streaker gave a half-hearted jump.
‘You’ll have to get her to run at it and then scramble up,’ Tina pointed out.
All three of us ran at the wall, shouting and barking. (Tin
a and I were shouting; the dog was barking, in case you were wondering.) We crashed into the wall.
‘That wasn’t quite what we wanted you to do, Streaker,’ I told her. ‘Let’s try that again.’
We hurled ourselves at the wall once more but Streaker just didn’t seem to get the idea that she had to climb up it.
‘I know what’s wrong,’ I said. ‘When Streaker goes up trees she’s going after squirrels, right? You get up on the roof of the van, hide behind the top of the wall and make squirrel noises, OK?’
‘What sort of noises do squirrels make?’
‘Don’t know. Wheep wheep? Eee-eee-eeeek? Try one of those.’
Tina climbed on to the van roof and lay down behind the wall. I took Streaker a long way back so she had a good run-up. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Ready!’ cried Tina.
‘OΚ, go for it!’
An incredible din rose from the Wall of Death. It sounded like a whole bunch of balloons having their necks pinched while air was squeezed out of them. Streaker and I hurtled towards the wall.
‘Eeeeeeeek!’ screamed Tina.
And then, BANG! We reached the wall and Streaker just thundered up it at a billion miles an hour, straight into Tina’s arms. Brilliant!
We were so excited. Streaker jumped up and down. Tina jumped up and down. Streaker threw herself from the roof and landed in my arms. We fell to the ground and she rolled off, leaping and barking, her eyes shining. I scrambled to my feet.
‘My turn!’ yelled Tina and she threw herself from the van roof too, knocking me straight back on to the ground. ‘We did it!’ she shouted.
‘You make a pretty good squirrel,’ I laughed, sitting up.
Tina leaned against me, panting. ‘That was great. All we have to do now is the tunnel, see-saw and hoop.’
The Return of the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog Page 3