Doofus, Dog of Doom Read online

Doofus, Dog of Doom

  Emma Laybourn

  Copyright 2014 Emma Laybourn

  Emma Laybourn’s website is at

  www.megamousebooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Doofus, Dog of Doom

  Chapter One

  “What a noise!” shrieked Mum, clapping her hands over her ears.

  Holly did not cover her ears. She listened carefully to the painful din inside the dogs’ home. The rasping barks sounded like shovels hitting the concrete floor. They echoed over and over in sharp, frantic waves.

  None of them sounded anything like the right bark. None of the dogs was Pancake.

  “Let’s just go, Mum,” begged Holly; but Mum couldn’t hear her.

  “Which one do you want?” she yelled over the barking. “Go on, Holly, take a closer look! This is your treat!”

  A treat? thought Holly. How was this a treat, with Pancake only three weeks buried?

  The assistant unlocked a metal gate and pointed out a bundle of spotty, yappy, long-eared puppies.

  “How about one of those?” she suggested. “They’re nice, cheerful dogs, and just desperate for a home!” The puppies bounded up and down as if their legs were springs. They looked ridiculous and cute. Holly shook her head at them.

  “Well, what about that golden labrador over there?” said Dad hopefully. “It looks like a friendly fellow.”

  Holly followed his gaze. The labrador sprawled lazily on a blanket, tail slowly wagging, too comfortable to get up. That was Dad’s sort of dog.

  She could see Mum’s sort of dog as well: a thin, wiry terrier with bright eyes and boundless energy, scurrying busily to and fro inside its pen. That would be the perfect dog to accompany Mum on her ten-mile runs.

  There was even a dog for Matt, her teenage brother: a haughty boxer with a throaty bark, which tried to stroll nonchalantly across its enclosure and tripped over its own feet.

  But nowhere was there a dog for Holly. Nowhere was there another Pancake. No little brown barrel with short, skittering legs, rocking like a lifeboat while she ran, carrying the newspaper all over the house and not letting anyone read it.

  Holly’s throat began to ache. She wanted to feel the scrape of Pancake’s bristly coat, to hear her huffy growl, to smell her doggy smell of bins and biscuits. She did not want a new dog.

  “Shall I fetch one of them out for you?” asked the assistant.

  “Come on, Holly!” said Mum. “Which one do you want?” Mum was getting impatient. She wasn’t good at waiting around.

  Holly sighed, thinking that maybe she should just choose a dog at random, so that they could go. It didn’t matter which one she picked. After all, Mum would take it for runs up on the moors. Dad would feed it. Matt would try to train it. Holly wouldn’t have to do anything at all.

  Gazing gloomily at the bouncing puppies, she raised her arm to point. While she was still wondering which one to choose, she saw behind them a dog that she hadn’t noticed earlier.

  That was probably because it was completely black: as dark as a patch of shadow. It sat quite still, not barking, not bouncing, not wagging its tail. It didn’t even look at her. It was staring into space.

  She moved her arm, and pointed. “That one,” she said. “The black one.”

  The assistant looked startled. “Are you sure? It’s not very sociable, that one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not troublesome. It’s just…well…” Her voice tailed away uncertainly.

  “That one,” said Holly firmly.

  With a shrug, the girl went through the gate and waded through the sea of yapping puppies to reach the black one. Scooping it up, she carried it to Holly. When Holly didn’t hold out her arms for it, the assistant set the puppy carefully on the floor at her feet.

  The puppy drooped on the concrete. Dad squatted down to offer it his fingers, but it didn’t sniff them. On all sides, dogs were leaping up and yelping in eager desperation: Me! Me! Me! The black pup looked as if it would much rather just crawl back into its pen.

  “Is it all right?” asked Dad doubtfully.

  “Oh, yes. The vet’s okayed it,” the girl assured him. “It’s had all the jabs. It’s just a bit quiet… well, usually, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t bark too much, then?” said Mum.

  “Bark? Oh, no. It doesn’t bark at all.” She pulled a face. “Not exactly bark, as such.”

  “So where is it from?” Dad wanted to know.

  “It was abandoned, like most of these dogs. They’re generally pets that people can’t cope with. This one was found by the roadside on the top of Whitten Moor, out in the middle of nowhere. He was probably a Christmas present that someone got fed up with and dumped.”

  “Poor little thing!” Dad began to stroke the dog, which showed no sign of even noticing him. “No wonder he doesn’t look very happy. Poor old boy.”

  “Holly?” murmured Mum. “Are you quite sure this is the one you want? I mean, he’s nothing like Pan–”

  “This one,” insisted Holly. There could never be another dog like Pancake. If she had to have another dog, she would choose one as different to Pancake as possible. This puppy’s thick black coat was quite unlike Pancake’s. Its eyes were so dark they seemed expressionless after Pancake’s enquiring, bright brown gaze.

  “There’s just one thing I ought to mention,” said the girl. “He’s a mixed breed. It’s hard to tell what he’s a mixture of, but I think there’s some mastiff in there, and possibly ridgeback, and probably some wolf-hound too. They’re big dogs. He could grow to quite a size.”

  Pancake had been small and noisy. “I don’t mind that,” said Holly, and she looked at Dad.

  “Well, we’ve got enough room,” said Dad. “We’ll just have to make sure he gets plenty of exercise.” He looked at Mum.

  “That’s no problem,” said Mum, “as long as we don’t have to drag him out for walks. He’s not very lively, is he?”

  “He’s quiet,” argued Holly, suddenly desperate to make Mum agree and just get out of there. “Some of those yapping puppies might have bothered Nan. She won’t mind this one.”

  “Big dogs are often the most docile,” added the assistant.

  “Good point,” said Dad. He picked up the silent black puppy, and Holly heard him whisper to Mum.

  “Let’s take this one, if it helps Holly to snap out of it!”

  Holly stiffened with indignation. Snap out of it? As if her grief for Pancake was something she could just break out of?– like somebody falling through a window in a film, then standing up to shake the bits of glass off, quite uninjured.

  They made those film-set windows out of sugar. They couldn’t cut anybody. They didn’t hurt. They weren’t like real life.

  She turned her back on Dad and her new dog, and marched out of the door.