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Автор Кевин Хирн

Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries: The Purloined Poodle

Electronic Edition

Electronic ISBN

978-1-59606-810-0

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

Table of Contents

Cover

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1:

The

Boxer

Humans always miss the essential politeness of pugs. They see the smashed face, the eyes in a perpetual state of panic, and their tendency to freak out if you try to clip their toenails, but they don’t understand why pugs get along so well with other dogs. It’s the way their tails curl up and away from their asses, making them easy to sniff when you meet them for the first time. It’s a great first impression. There’s nothing more friendly than an easy-access back door.

In fact, the dogs you have to watch out for are the ones who don’t want you to sniff their asses. That always means they’re trying to hide something. And I say that because a good whiff of the back end tells you everything you really need to know about a hound. I’ve told Atticus this five billion or million or hundred times, I don’t know which is right, but it’s a lot. But even when he does his Druid thing and shape-shifts to hound form, he refuses to inhale the wealth of information found at the rear exit of any dog we might meet, and that makes no sense. He’s got the same filters in his hound nose that I have that keeps the stink from making you sick.

Those are the filters that allow us to find out what else is going on in the stuff we smell, whether it’s a fire hydrant or a tree or a French poodle’s cute curly derriere. I guess he’ll never get over his human prejudices about asses.

I shouldn’t judge him, though. He gives me sausage and snacks and belly rubs, and it’s not like I don’t have prejudices either. I mean, for one thing, there’s cats. For another, I think Chihuahuas are the clearest evidence we have for alien life on earth. And then any dog who tries to face me and won’t let me check out his backside? Yeah, I think that’s shadier than a walk in a cemetery.

I ran into one such shady customer at the Alton Baker Dog Park in Eugene, Oregon. We live in the Willamette National Forest now near the McKenzie River, but Atticus takes me into town every so often so I can see other dogs besides Orlaith, and he can get things like bad coffee and worse donuts—he calls them sugar bombs. He always buys a newspaper full of ads for luxury automobiles too, but he says he reads it for the articles.

Whenever I walk into a park all the other dogs are like hobbits saying, “It comes in pints?” because they’ve never seen a hound as big as me before. They either get real excited or real scared. Or real yippy, like some of the small breeds who don’t think I should be allowed. Yorkshire terriers don’t care. They bark at me every time.