Jeremy Strong

Lost! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog

Pies!

It wasn’t my fault. All I did was jump in the back of a van. What’s wrong with that? In fact I was being really helpful. Trevor Two-Legs – the boy who is supposed to look after me – had gone wandering off. He’s always doing that and then he gets lost. He should be kept on a lead. Trevor’s hopeless when he’s lost and he starts calling for me. ‘Streaker? STREAKER!’ What am I supposed to do? I KNOW WHERE I AM. HE’S THE ONE THAT’S LOST!
  Anyhow, Trevor had disappeared as usual, leaving me all on my own. I was trotting about sniff-sniffing and there was this van with the back doors open, so I had a peep inside and guess what? It was full of pies and sausage rolls. It was! A whole van full of pies and rolls. My favourite!
  And I was thinking: Hmmm, fancy leaving all those pies lying about like that. Someone could easily come along and steal the whole lot.
  The thing is, I’ve always fancied being a super-clever-guard-dog type of dog, only I’ve never been given the chance. I’d be an extra-super-special guard dog and I’d probably have super-powers too, and an extra-special name. I’d call myself DAZZY DONUT DOG.
  That’s DAZZY because Dazzy is a super-special word, and DONUT because Dazzy Donut Dog likes eating Donuts. (Of course, really it’s me – I like donuts. A WHOLE LOT.) And it’s DOG because I’m a dog.
  Dazzy Donut Dog lives in my head, where nobody can see her, except me. She has amazing super-special-powers, which she gets from eating SUPER-SPECIAL-POWER DAZZY DONUTS, with jam inside, or icing on the top. I keep all the donuts in my head too, but it’s a BIG SECRET, so don’t tell anyone.
  Whenever there’s trouble all I have to do is eat one of the super-special-power-donuts and KER-CHING!! I become Dazzy Donut Dog and go Whizz! Whoosh! Grrrrrr! Gotcha!
  But that Trevor, he’s useless. He never gives me anything to guard. I’m not complaining, because I like Trevor and his mum and dad. It’s just that they’re all a bit useless, being two-legs. Fancy having only two legs! That’s a bit naff, isn’t it?
  I’ve never been given the chance to show them what I can really do. I could be the best guard dog ever, and if a robber came along I’d leap out and bark furiously and jump up and down – Boing-wuff! Boing-wuff! – like that. And if they came too close I’d dive at their ankles and bite them, Raargh-raargh, crunch-crunch! like that. And they’d go Ow-wow-wow! like that, and I’d go, Huh! serves you right, rotten robber. You shouldn’t go around stealing things. Dazzy Donut Dog is on your case! Then they’d run away, slowly, because they only have two naff legs.
  So there I was, the superest, dooperest guard dog ever, and right now, right there in front of me, almost touching my nose and almost almost almost in my mouth even – there were all these pies and sausage rolls just lying there. I could almost hear them calling out to me: Hey, we’re over here, lots of lovely pies just ready to be stolen!
  STUPID PIES! So I thought, right, I will be Dazzy Donut Dog and get in the back of this van and stand guard over it. I shall probably get a medal for doing this and meet the Queen, but I hope she doesn’t pin it on me because that would make me jump. It would have to be on a ribbon. A yellow one.
  And I’d probably get a reward too, like a lifetime’s supply of pies and I could take it back for my three puppies, because they are the best puppies IN THE WHOLE WORLD and I love them to bits and pieces of bits. Then my pups would know what a brave and clever mum they have and guess who that is? ME!
  That was why I got in the back of the van. There I was, busily checking it out to make sure there wasn’t a pie thief hiding somewhere, and what did I find? A big sausage roll, on the floor. In fact, not just one, but three sausage rolls, lying ON THE FLOOR! How stupid can a sausage roll get? That’s asking for trouble, isn’t it?
  I said, ‘Hello, hello. What are you lot doing out of your box?’ And I was about to pick one up and put it with the others when I thought: Hmmm, this might be a pretend sausage roll.
  I know you can get pretend pies because I ate one once. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to eat it. At least, that’s not exactly true – I DID mean to eat it but that was because I thought it was a real pie, but it turned out to be made of painted plastic. It tasted horrible and I had to spit it out. SPLUUURRRRGH! Like that.
  All these splinters of plastic came shooting out of my mouth and made a mess and lots of people shouted at me and I got chased (again), but I didn’t care because I can run like a crazy thing, like a rocket, like an un-guided missile. In fact, I am probably the fastest dog in the whole world. (Though I’m not very good at stopping.) Besides, they shouldn’t make plastic pies. What is the point of that?!
  Anyway, I thought: This roll could be like that nasty pie and there’s only one way I know to check if the sausage roll is real and that is to taste it.

Lost! The 100-MPH Dog © Jeremy Strong, 2008. Publiashed by Puffin Books.