Dachshund Disaster

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “How’s Tombo?” I asked Michelle. Her family had just gotten a new boxer, and from the stories she’d been telling us, he’d been kind of crazy to deal with at first.

  She beamed at me. “He’s awesome. He’s madly in love with Chihiro.” Chihiro is Midori and Satoshi’s dog — she’s a Weimaraner, which is a big beautiful dog who’s this eerie cool silver-gray color. I was a little worried about introducing Chihiro to King … I had a feeling there’d be a lot of barking involved there. Luckily only Midori and Satoshi were coming to my house that afternoon. Chihiro never comes with them. She and Bowser were pretty growly with each other the one time they met.

  Arnold had some sports thing so he couldn’t join us, which meant it was just Satoshi and Midori climbing into Giovanni’s car with me and Aidan after school.

  “Hi Giovanni!” Satoshi and Midori chorused.

  “Hey there,” Giovanni said. He looked a bit more frazzled than usual as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Uh, Charlie, you might want to let King out as soon as you get home. He wouldn’t let me anywhere near him today. He hid under your bed and barked at me whenever I went up to your room.”

  “Really?” Midori said. “But all dogs love you, Giovanni!” She was basing this theory entirely on Bowser and Chihiro, but I was pretty surprised, too. I thought Giovanni would be the one person King got along with besides me.

  “King!” I called as we went in the front door. “King! I’m home!”

  Meowser rushed over and purred at Aidan, rubbing her head against his knees like she always does. I could see Bowser slumped at the top of the stairs, which meant David wasn’t home yet.

  “King!” I called again. No response. “He doesn’t really know his new name yet,” I explained to my friends.

  Bowser suddenly surged to his paws and came charging down the stairs. We jumped out of his way right before the front door flew open and David stomped in with his friend Harper. Bowser flung himself at David, slobbering with joy and wagging his tail so hard he nearly fell over.

  This is always a weird moment to watch, because it’s the one minute of the day when David actually smiles. He knelt down and rubbed Bowser’s head and back while Bowser licked his ears.

  “Hey Harper,” I said nervously. She pushed the hood of her black sweatshirt back a little bit and nodded at me and Aidan, but didn’t say anything.

  I used to have kind of a crush on Harper. She’s been best friends with David practically their whole lives — don’t ask me why, because I think she’s way too cool for him. She used to smile at me and talk to me about TV or music while she was waiting for David, but she’s been weird ever since they started middle school. Now she wears a lot of dark makeup around her eyes and hunches her shoulders and doesn’t talk. And I’m pretty sure she cuts her own hair, because it’s a lopsided pale blond mess and much too short.

  “Don’t bug my friends,” David snapped at me. He spotted Midori and Satoshi behind me. “Oh, great. More brats. Now this day is perfect.”

  “David, be cool,” Giovanni said in a no-nonsense voice.

  David rolled his eyes and grabbed Bowser’s green leash from its hook by the door. “Come on, Harper,” he said. “Let’s take Bowser for a walk.”

  Harper shrugged. Bowser looked nearly ready to die of happiness as David clipped his leash on. They vanished out the door, and I could feel Midori and Satoshi breathing matching sighs of relief behind me.

  “David and Bowser walking?” Giovanni joked. “I thought I’d never see the day.”

  “I’m surprised he even knew where the leash was,” I said, and Midori laughed. Actually, I wondered if David was remembering what I’d said yesterday, about him being too fat and lazy to walk his own dog. He’d never admit it — but was that why he’d suddenly decided to walk Bowser?

  “Nobody get me in trouble for this,” Giovanni said, “but who wants leftover birthday cake?”

  “Me!” Satoshi and Midori and Aidan all yelled at once.

  “King!” I called again. When nothing happened, I said, “Maybe he’s asleep. I’ll go get him.”

  “We’ll be in the kitchen,” Satoshi said.

  “With the cake!” Midori added, clapping her hands delightedly.

  I hurried upstairs. The door to David’s room was open a little so Bowser could wander in and out all day, and as I went by I could see a huge mess stretching from one wall to the other. Mom’s room, on the other hand, was neat and perfect the way it always is, with all her shoes arranged on a shoe rack beside the closet so their toes lined up exactly.

  “King?” I said, stepping into my room.

  A small black nose poked out from under the bed.

  “Hey silly,” I said. “It’s me! Remember me?”

  King scrambled out from under the bed, shook himself, and strutted regally over to me so I could pet him hello. His tail started wagging as I scratched behind his ears and he ended up licking my hands and my face in a happy, wriggly way.

  “Did you miss me?” I asked him. He wagged his tail in a way that I decided meant yes.

  Right then I noticed something small and gray under my bed. My heart skipped a beat. For a moment I had a terrible feeling that King had gone into Mom’s room and brought back her BlackBerry charger or something equally important and expensive.

  But when I pulled it out, it was just a weirdly-shaped piece of plastic. It curved a bit and it had a few holes in it, and it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. It looked like it was supposed to belong to something, but I couldn’t figure out what. At least it didn’t have any teeth marks in it, so I guess King had decided it was worth saving, but not worth chewing on.

  “What is this?” I asked King.

  He wagged his tail and lifted his snout like he was saying, I’ve been guarding that for you all day!

  “Well, thanks,” I said, “but where did it come from?”

  Wag, wag, wag. Unhelpful grin.

  “OK,” I said. “Bottom of the laundry hamper it is.” I tucked it down next to Aidan’s chewed-up dinosaur, hoping I could figure out what it was (and more important, whose it was) later, and then I carried King downstairs.

  “Oh, he’s amazing!” Midori cried as I brought him into the kitchen. “Look at his ears! Look at his paws! Look at his goofy little legs!” She pushed her half-eaten cake aside.

  “He looks just like dachshunds in the movies!” Satoshi said, leaning over the table.

  Midori laughed and laughed. “What did you think he would look like?” she teased. “Less glamorous, because the movie dachshunds wear all that makeup and have fashion consultants?”

  “RARF RARF RARF!” King barked at them as I slid open the door to the deck. Midori and Satoshi jumped up to join me.

  “Can I come, too?” Aidan asked, wiping a milk mustache off his face.

  “No,” I said. “We’re doing older-kid things right now.”

  Aidan looked crestfallen, so I added, “Besides, I don’t want to overwhelm King with people. He’ll do better if there’s not too many of us.”

  “It’s OK, Aidan,” Giovanni said. “You can help me figure out what to make for dinner.”

  Blech. With my luck, that meant asparagus, which was the one vegetable Aidan liked and I didn’t. But it wasn’t worth sticking around to argue about it. I slid the door shut behind Midori and Satoshi, led them down the steps, and set King on the grass.

  He gave my friends a baffled look and ran off across the yard, barking. I loved watching him run. It was like a seesaw — his front half went down while his back half went up, and then his front half went up while his back half went down, up-down-up-down as he ran.

  “Uh-oh,” I said as King dove into one of my mom’s flower beds. It wasn’t the one with the bulbs, but I knew she wouldn’t like him digging anywhere in her garden. I ran over and grabbed him, but he’d already managed to dig a hole big enough to stick his front end into.

  He wriggled around and licked my face, scattering dirt all down the front of
my dark blue shirt.

  “I read about dachshunds last night online,” Satoshi said as he and Midori caught up to me. “They were bred to chase badgers into their tunnels, so that’s why he’s so good at digging!”

  “And burrowing,” Midori said. “I saw one on TV that could disappear into a hole in the ground in, like, ten seconds!”

  “Well, he’s not allowed to dig and burrow out here,” I said. “Seriously, King, Mom will kill us. She might even send you back to the Schwartzes if you don’t behave.”

  “RARF RARF RARF!” King yapped over my shoulder at Satoshi and Midori.

  “And you need to be nicer to my friends,” I said to him. “Also Giovanni. Come on, King, chill out.”

  “RARF! RARF! RARF RARF!” He was wriggling around in my hands so much that I put him back on the ground. He shook himself all the way from his nose to his tail, barked one more time at Midori and Satoshi, and trotted off to do his business in the bushes.

  “He’s very cute,” Midori offered, but I could tell she had her doubts about King, just like the rest of my family did.

  “Yeah,” Satoshi said skeptically. “Maybe he just needs a couple of days to calm down.”

  King poked his nose out of a hydrangea bush, saw that I was still standing with these nefarious strangers, and went “RARF!” in an outraged way before disappearing into the bush again.

  I kicked the dirt back into the hole he’d left in the flower bed. I didn’t want to admit how worried I was, but if I couldn’t get help from my best friends, then who else could I ask? “To be honest, guys,” I said, “I don’t know what to do with him. He barks all the time, he doesn’t like anyone but me, he wants to dig up my mom’s garden, and according to the Schwartzes, he’s totally untrainable. I thought getting a dog was a great idea … but now I’m afraid it’s more like a disaster!”

  Satoshi immediately looked interested. He loves solving problems, especially if it involves building something. “Maybe we could make a barricade around your mom’s flowers,” he said. “I bet we could build a little fence or something to keep him out of the flower beds.”

  I shook my head. “Mom wouldn’t like that. She’s really particular about how the garden looks — little fences wouldn’t exactly fit into her plan.”

  “The other thing you can do is tire him out,” Midori said, sitting down on the grass so she could see King better. “Dogs who get lots of exercise are much better behaved than bored, restless dogs.”

  Satoshi rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Animal Planet.”

  “Well, it’s true!” she said. “That’s why Dad and I take Chihiro on such a long walk after dinner every night! She loves it, and then she’s really good and quiet for the rest of the evening.”

  “So that’s all I have to do?” I said. “Walk him a lot?” I knelt down to check on what King was doing. I could see his fat little paws trotting around between the bushes and the fence, so at least I knew he wasn’t digging. “What about in the winter?” I asked. “With short legs like that, he’s going to have a tough time in the snow around here.”

  “There must be indoor stuff you could do with him, too,” Midori said. “Oh! We should make up a game that’s like badger hunting! That way it’ll use his natural instincts, and he’ll get out all that digging and burrowing energy.”

  Satoshi snorted and joined us on the ground. “What’s a game that’s like badger hunting? You want him to chase Meowser around the house?” He stopped and got that look on his face that means he’s about to have a great idea.

  “Aidan would have a heart attack if we let King chase Meowser,” I warned.

  “But we don’t have to!” Satoshi said, snapping his fingers excitedly. “We can play hide-and-seek with King instead!”

  I laughed. “I don’t exactly see King standing in a corner and counting to twenty while we hide.”

  “Wait, Satoshi’s right,” Midori said. Her eyes were lit up like her brother’s. “One of us can hold him while the other two hide treats or toys, and then we make him look for them. It’s close enough to hunting. I bet he’ll love it!”

  For a moment I was excited about the idea, but then my spirits fell again. “Except it’s not going to work if he won’t go anywhere near you guys.”

  “Well, so that’s step one,” Midori said, jumping to her feet. “Come on, Charlie! This’ll be such a fun project!”

  “First things first,” Satoshi said. “We need to get Giovanni to take us to the pet store.”

  I’d only been inside Furry Tails, the town pet store, once, on the day before my birthday, when we went in to buy some stuff for King. Normally when Mom or Giovanni went in to get food for Bowser or Meowser, I would wait in the car, because it was too weird to look at all the stuff I wanted to get but couldn’t because I didn’t have a dog of my own.

  But on Saturday I’d finally been able to choose all the dog stuff I’d wanted — a bright red leash and matching collar with a pattern of gold thread woven through it; a big white, squishy dog pillow with black dog bones all over it; the two little red dishes for his food and water; and a tiny red harness seat belt for the car.

  We hadn’t gone into the food aisle because we already had a giant bag of dog food for Bowser at home, and Mom said we could just use that for King as well. So I’d forgotten to get treats, and even worse (if you asked me), I’d also forgotten to get any toys for him.

  Aidan trailed after us as we headed into Furry Tails. Giovanni insisted that we couldn’t leave him at home alone, and David still wasn’t back with Harper.

  “Hey Aidan,” I said, “why don’t you go look at the hamsters while we check out the dog toys?”

  Aidan glanced in the direction of the small rodent section. I knew he liked watching the mice and guinea pigs and gerbils playing on their wheels, so I was hoping he’d leave us alone for a while.

  No such luck. “Can’t I come pick a dog toy with you?” Aidan said. “There are so many good ones! Some of them squeak! I can help you find the perfect one!”

  “Oh, he can come,” Midori said. “He’s no bother.” She smiled at Aidan and he gave her a worshipful look.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I get to make the final decision, so no making a fuss about it.”

  “I never make a fuss!” Aidan said indignantly.

  I was actually less worried about Aidan and more worried about King. It was fun to bring him into the pet store with us, but what if he saw another dog and started barking?

  Almost as soon as I’d thought that, we turned into the treats aisle and spotted a tiny, shaggy white poodle a few feet ahead of us.

  “RARF RARF RARF RARF!” King bellowed, bracing his paws and looking up at me for backup.

  The poodle jumped in surprise and spun around. When she saw King, her tail started wagging about a million miles an hour. She came bounding over toward him, yanking the pink leash out of her owner’s hand.

  “Uh-oh,” Midori said under her breath as she saw who was on the other end of the leash.

  “Buttons!” Rosie Sanchez yelped, stamping her foot. “Buttons, no! Get back here!”

  Buttons paid no attention to Rosie; she was too excited about saying hello to King. She bounced into a play bow in front of his face with her little pom-pom tail wagging frantically. Alarmed, King retreated behind my legs. “Rarf?” he said, and to me it sounded like, But I was so loud and scary! Why is she saying hi to me? I don’t understand! Girls are weird!

  “Hi Rosie,” I said.

  “Hi Charlie,” she said. “Hi Satoshi. Hi Aidan.” She pointedly didn’t say hi to Midori, but Midori was pretending to read the label on a package of treats as if she hadn’t even noticed Rosie was there. Aidan looked from Rosie to Midori, his forehead wrinkled in confusion. He’s still too young to understand how mysterious girls can be.

  King poked his nose out to look at Buttons again. Buttons’s tail wagged even harder. Slowly King took a few steps forward and sniffed her ears, then another step to sniff the rest of her. Button
s stayed still for a moment while he did that, and then suddenly she spun around and bounced on his head with a gleeful expression.

  “Rarf!” King protested, but he only jumped back half a step.

  “Ruff!” Buttons agreed and jumped after him. This time King dropped onto his back and flipped her over him. I let go of his leash so they could play. Soon they were both rolling around in the aisle, spinning and wriggling and rrruffing and RARFing. Aidan clapped his hands in delight.

  “Awww,” Rosie said, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s adorable. Is that your dog, Charlie?”

  “Yup,” I said. “His name is King.”

  Rosie shot a look at Midori. “Isn’t it so nice to have a small dog?”

  Midori lifted her chin a bit higher and kept reading the treat label, although I could tell she was really watching Buttons and King out of the corner of her eye.

  “Well, it works for me,” I said. “But big dogs are nice, too.”

  “Like that one,” Satoshi said, pointing. A golden retriever was sauntering past the far end of the aisle, sniffing the chew bones curiously. I recognized the dog from a couple of times when he showed up at school at the beginning of September. The guy holding his leash was Parker Green, and he was talking to Rosie’s brother Danny as they picked out a big box of dog biscuits.

  “Oh, Merlin,” Rosie said, shaking her head and wagging her hands in the air. “Perfect, amaaaazing Merlin. Yeah, he’s all right, if you don’t mind finding fur all over everything.”

  “I’m going to check out the toy aisle,” Midori said, putting down the treats. “Come on, Aidan. We’ll see you guys there.” She grabbed Aidan’s hand and hurried him away without looking at Rosie.

  I wanted to let King and Buttons play all day, but I knew we had to get going soon. Plus it felt kind of weird to be caught in the middle of Rosie and Midori’s fight, whatever that was all about.