Category: Dog Fiction

The Escapades of Rowdy & Mr. Mutt

Published on by Raud KennedyLeave a 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

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

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” →

The Hydrant

Published on by Raud Kennedy2 Comments

When Arthur arrived at the cafe, the hostess seated him outside on the sidewalk patio at his favorite table right in the midst of the diners where the people watching was best. He ordered a glass of wine, not because he liked it but because he didn’t. It would last a long time and he didn’t want to get drunk, not tonight, not with what he’d learned this morning.

The middle-aged couple on his right were discussing current events. He eavesdropped for a bit but they were just boringly parroting talking points they’d picked up from television news like something they’d tracked in on their shoes. Besides, Arthur knew all that was just lies fed to the public to keep them engaged enough to be complacent but not so engaged that they started digging for the truth and got mad. You see, Arthur had found the perfect source for news, one that never lied and was honest to a fault.

A month or so ago at the beginning of spring, he had been weeding around the fire hydrant in his front yard by the curb when he was struck by an odd smell. As he sniffed the air trying to identify it, he started to hear voices in his head and see images in his mind’s eye, as if he was watching other people’s memories, but then he started hearing even stranger voices commenting on what he was hearing and seeing. There he was on all fours, sniffing the air next to the fire hydrant, and he felt like he was watching a show next to someone who was giving a running commentary on what they were watching.

Continue reading “The Hydrant” →

The Dog That Talked – Episode One – Mayonnaise & Tuna

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

It’s Monday. I sit on a park bench across from the restaurant where the guy I’m following has gone inside for lunch. I sink my teeth into my sandwich, a foot-long Italian I got at the corner deli, when a mellow, slightly slurred voice says from behind me, “That sure is a big sandwich, one of the biggest I’ve seen yet.”

Portland has a transient problem. Following my guy through the Southwest Park Blocks was a begathon of the homeless asking for spare change, but not my dimes and quarters. One got snarky when I offered him that. He wanted nothing less than a fiver.

I don’t normally spend my afternoons following people, but I got a call last night from an old girlfriend I hadn’t spoken to since I shot the photos for her wedding. As Eva and I small-talked on the phone, I did the math. It had been seven years since their wedding and the title of that old Billy Wilder movie, The Seven Year Itch, popped into my head.

I’ve never been very good at the long-term relationship thing. I must have ADD when it comes to relationships. How do people do it? How do they keep it interesting? After years together don’t they wonder what it would be like to be with someone else? Or considering how much we base our identity on who we are with, do they ever daydream of being someone else? Seven years seems to be as good a time for that as any. But for me and my attention span, seven years would be poison ivy from hell.

Eva was calling about her husband, Stan. She was worried about him. “Call it what you will, women’s intuition, but I know something is up with him. He’s acting odd. He’s not himself. I think he’s up to something.” She still had that soft voice I remembered from our time together that sounded kind even when she was voicing her suspicions, a trait I don’t remember her having. I guess people change.

“And you think he’s stepping out on you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I appreciate the chance to catch up, Eva, but why call me with this? Isn’t this what you talk about with a girlfriend?”

“Actually, I’ve hashed it out a lot.” She cleared her throat, paused for a moment, then rushed on. “It’s like this. I could ask Stan to his face and he’d deny anything and everything. You never got to know him but that’s how he is, at least that’s how he is now, not so much back when we married. I need proof that he’s stepping out. Hard proof. That or to know what’s making him act weird. And then I thought of you. You’re handy with a camera, you can get me that proof. I can put it in his face and say, hey, what’s up with this?”

I had learned to keep my nose out of other people’s business. “It sounds cheesy but wouldn’t a private investigator be better suited for this? Someone with experience?”

“A stranger? Ugh.” She pauses and I picture her scrunching up her face in distaste. “Look, Dixon, you and I haven’t kept in touch but we remained friends after we dated and I always respected your honesty.”

I laughed. “Not everyone feels that way.”

“That’s their loss. I’m not asking you for a freebie. I can pay you. Come on, what else do you have going during the week? It’s not like a lot of people get married on a Monday or Tuesday and need a photographer.”

She had a point; business had been slow. Not a lot of Millennials were getting married so they could start a family in their parents’ basement. Besides, being asked to look into someone’s personal business was different than just sticking my nose in it. “What do you want me to do exactly?”

“Just follow him around and take some photos if gets up to anything, especially during and after lunch. If he’s up to anything it’s then.”

“Why do you say that?”

“His phone habits. He’s hard to reach during that time, he never picks up, and it’s a while before he calls back. Plus, he’s around someone with a cat. I’ve seen the hair on his clothes. I know lots of women with cats but very few men.”

My imagination ran with the intimate details of their failing marriage. We settled on a daily rate, she gave me the pertinent info on where they lived and where Stan worked, and I told her I’d get back to her.

*   *   *

I can see Stan through the restaurant window as I chew my sandwich.

“That mayonnaise sure does smell good,” the guy behind me slurs.

I don’t turn around to look. Acknowledging him will just encourage him to hang around. His slurred speech paints enough of a mental picture of who is behind me and where this is going. I don’t want to see him and endanger my appetite. Though it’s curious the drunk has asked about my sandwich because they usually just want cash to buy more fortified wine. Who eats when they can get juiced?

The drunk slurps as he smacks his lips. “Are you going to eat all of it? That’s a lot of sandwich, even for a big guy like you.” Continue reading “The Dog That Talked – Episode One – Mayonnaise & Tuna” →