The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt – Chapter Three

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Bath Time

Rowdy pushes open the patio door to the kitchen and calls out, “Mom, he’s back. The circus dog is here! And he brought my lucky stick.” He holds the door open for Mr. Mutt who pokes his head through the doorway and looks about. It pays to be cautious in the woods.

Rowdy’s mom is checking on tonight’s dinner roasting in the oven. The house smells like a restaurant on a busy day. Mr. Mutt takes one deep breath and is instantly in nose heaven. He doesn’t recognize everything he’s smelling, but mystery has never smelled so good. In a daze of curiosity, he ambles inside and Rowdy slides the patio door closed.

Rowdy’s mom turns from the oven as her son walks in, followed by a very big dog. She looks the dog over and sees a lot of mastiff in him. She’d had a mastiff as a little girl and she’d loved that dog more than anything. And that dog loved her back even more. “So this is the dog from the circus that beat you at tic-tac-toe?”

Rowdy makes a face. “No need to bring that up.”

She smiles. “What’s his name?”

Rowdy pats the dog on his back. “Mr. Mutt.”

She winks at Rowdy. “Mr. Mutt, the Drooler.” Continue reading “The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt – Chapter Three” →

The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

Chapter Two – Popcorn Catch

The following afternoon, Rowdy plays a game of popcorn catch out on the backyard patio. He tosses a piece of popcorn as high as he can and tries to catch it in his mouth, but it bounces off his nose onto the ground. The blue patio tiles around him are covered in popcorn like white sprinkles on a blue frosted cake.

His mom comes out, leans a broom and dustpan against a nearby lounger for him to use to clean up later, and grabs a handful of popcorn for herself from the bag. “Your aim is improving.”

The boy looks at all the popcorn around him on the patio. “It sure smells good when it hits my nose.”

“Well, you keep at it, Rowdy.” She wipes some butter off his cheek. “You mastered tic-tac-toe, you can master this.” She winks at him and returns inside the house.

Rowdy tosses another piece of popcorn into the air. When he goes to catch it, someone behind him says, “Straighten your neck, then leap at it and snatch it out of the sky.” This was followed by the sound of snapping teeth. Continue reading “The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt” →

The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

Chapter One – Tic-Tac-Toe

On a blustery fall day, golden yellow leaves drift across a pale blue sky. Rowdy sits underneath a large chestnut tree on the edge of a sandbox, playing tic-tac-toe against himself. He’d been inside the house winning against one of his older sisters, but she got mad at losing and the other three got mad at the noise of them arguing and eventually all four sisters shouted, “Go play outside!”

He knows sisters are weird, but he’s beginning to wonder if his have developed a hivemind.

When he draws another X in the sand with his lucky stick, he sees that the game is going to be another dud where no one wins. He puts another handful of popcorn in his mouth from the bag of popcorn leftover from his earlier game of popcorn catch, and thinks, I’m just too good to beat, even when I’m playing against myself, even with my lucky stick. But you always want to keep trying, at least that’s what his inventor dad said about robot battles over pancakes this morning. He erases the game with his foot and draws the lines for the next one with the now butter stained stick.

In the woods behind the house, a big brown mutt of a dog chases after a white butterfly as it weaves its way through the Douglas fir trees. He looks to be a mix of a giant Labrador Retriever, mastiff, and a basset hound with big floppy ears. As he chases after the butterfly, he wonders what the flitter-flyers smell like, but he’s only gotten close enough to smell hints of vanilla in the puffs of air below its wings.

As the dog’s pursuit takes him closer to the edge of the woods, he hears the boy’s voice and slows to listen.

The boy’s voice sounds through the trees. “See? I just can’t be beat. I’m the king of tic-tac-toe!”“What?” Continue reading “The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt” →

Forget the Biscuits, Gimme Tacos – Burger God

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I used to daydream that my dogs understood me when I spoke to them. I’d make up their responses and speak out loud for them in a goofy voice. They came to recognize this goofy dog voice of mine and would get excited when they heard it. I’d carry on conversations between my dogs and myself in these voices, a sensible one for me and a goofy one for them, imagining how cool it would be if it were real, if they really were thinking what I was saying in this goofy dog voice. I used to think it would make life with dogs so much simpler. Ask them what they wanted, and they could tell me. I’d done this all my life up till a few days ago, when I no longer had to.

“I’m not eating this,” Hamish says, putting his nose up at the kibble I just scooped into his bowl.

Franny looks up from her already empty bowl. “I’ll eat it.”

I give her a stern look. “No you won’t. You already had yours.”

“But I’m still hungry.”

“No. You need to lose weight,” I say.

“But if I lose weight, I’ll be cold and light as an earth worm and the birds will carry me away to some far away tree branch and eat me.”

Hamish shoves his bowl away with his snout. “I’m not eating this. It has rat poop in it.”

“So that’s what that was.” Huckleberry licks the crumbs off his lips. “I’ve been wondering all week what that new flavor was.”

Hamish pokes at his food with his snout. “It’s been there since he opened the new bag.”

“What?” I ask. Continue reading “Forget the Biscuits, Gimme Tacos – Burger God” →

Forget the Biscuits, Gimme Tacos – Dog Tongues

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

I get the stepladder from the garage, open it up under the flickering kitchen ceiling light and up I climb. My three dogs gather around to watch. We spend so much time together it’s as if I can hear their thoughts.

“What’s Raud doing up on that ladder?” wonders Hamish, a honey-brown Labrador and golden retriever mix and the youngest of the three.

“This is new. Maybe it involves food,” thinks Franny, the calorically challenged yellow Lab.

“Is there a ball up there?” wonders Huckleberry, the chocolate Lab. He’s obsessed with anything that can be thrown so that he can retrieve it. But some things are better for retrieving, like his ball, which is always nearby. At the moment he’s dropped it at the base of the ladder. “You could really throw it far from up there, Raud.”

As I unscrew the knob that holds the frosted glass bowl over the light, the memory of installing these lights to replace the fluorescent tube lights crosses my mind’s eye. The fluorescent light felt too much like an office. I put the knob in my shirt pocket and lower the glass bowl, placing it on the step ladder’s fold-out shelf where the paint bucket goes, dried blue and cream paint drippings surround it. I check the bulb’s fit. It’s loose like I thought, so I tighten it, then replace the glass bowl and screw the knob back in place.

Standing on the stepladder, I look about for the next distraction, avoiding going back to the drawing lessons on the drafting table. Learning to draw cartoons takes more concentration than I realized. Outside, it’s raining hard. The gentle patter on the patio awning has become a steady growl. Though it’s only midday, it’s dusk out there.

When lighting strikes so close there’s no separation between the flash and the boom, my whole body startles so badly I lose my balance. As I fall, I reach out to grab the edge of the kitchen counter, but I’m too slow and the blue Formica swoops up toward my head. Continue reading “Forget the Biscuits, Gimme Tacos – Dog Tongues” →