Go Fetch!

by Nancy Krulik

  The two-leg jumps. He stares at me with his mouth open. Then he quickly moves away.

  “Hurry, Sparky. Catch up!” Fala barks as he enters a building.

  Fala is running into a room. I run in there, too.

  “Okay, Sparkster, here we go!” Fala says as the door to the room closes.

  “Go?” I ask him.

  Uh-oh. This room is starting to move. It’s going up, up, up.

  I don’t want to go up, up, up. I want to go down, down, down.

  “Let me out of here!” I bark.

  All the two-legs in the room move away from me. But they can’t go very far. The room is small.

  The two-legs point and shout at Fala and me.

  Just then, the doors open. Fala runs out. I follow right behind.

  The two-legs leave, too. Some of them are still pointing at me and yelling lots of words. The only words I understand are no and dogs.

  “Sparky! Over here!” Fala calls from the other side of the room.

  I run over to Fala and look out the window that he’s standing next to. Gulp! The ground looks far, far away. I don’t like it up here.

  But Fala is happy. He starts pointing with his snout. “See that building with the round roof?” he asks. “That’s the Capitol building.”

  “What’s a ‘capitol’?” I ask Fala. “Is it a kind of two-leg? Do all the capitols live in one building?”

  Fala laughs, like I’ve just made a funny joke. He doesn’t answer me. Instead he smiles and licks his lips. “One time I found a whole hamburger on those stairs,” he tells me. “With ketchup!”

  Yum. I would sure like to find a hamburger on the ground right now. Actually, I’d just like to be on the ground—instead of all the way up here.

  “Another time, a two-leg spilled a box of popcorn,” Fala continues. “I had to fight a whole bunch of pigeons, but I got a lot of that popcorn.”

  I look down at the ground again. We’re so high in the sky. Suddenly, my head feels all woozy. My stomach starts flipping and flopping.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I tell Fala.

  Blehhhh . . . Suddenly all the chewed-up pretzel pieces go flying out of my mouth.

  The two-legs turn and look at me. They use their paws to cover their noses. The two-legs do not look happy. I don’t blame them. I’m not happy, either.

  “I gotta get out of here,” I tell Fala.

  “Follow me.” Fala turns and starts running down some stairs.

  There are two-legs on the stairs. But I don’t let them stop me. I keep running, pushing them out of the way.

  The two-legs yell as I push past them.

  Down. Down. Down.

  There are so many stairs. My heart is thumpety, thump, thumping. My paws are aching. But I don’t stop until I’m outside again.

  “Are you okay?” Fala asks me once we are standing outside.

  “I am now,” I tell him.

  Grumble. Rumble.

  My tummy starts talking. It’s hungry because it’s empty now.

  Grumble. Rumble. Fala’s tummy is talking, too.

  “Come on, Sparky,” Fala tells me. “Let’s go find some food!”

  “I’ll go anywhere,” I tell him. “As long as I get to keep my paws down here on the ground.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “This is yummy!” I say as I bite into my very first blueberry muffin. “I’ve never tasted anything like this.”

  “What did I tell you?” Fala asks. “My two-legs used to go into that muffin shop all the time. I would wait outside. When they came out, they would give me muffin scraps.”

  “Your two-legs sound nice,” I say.

  Then I frown. My two-leg, Josh, is nice, too. He was nicer before he found his new friend. But he’s still nice. And I bet he would like these muffins.

  “They’re not my two-legs anymore,” Fala corrects me. “I’m a free dog. I don’t need two-legs to get muffin scraps. They’re not here today, are they? And I’m still eating muffin scraps.”

  That’s funny. Fala should sound happy that there are so many muffins for us. But he doesn’t. He sounds a little sad.

  Achoo! Fala sneezes, and muffin crumbs splatter all over the place. I laugh.

  Fala gives me a weird look, like he doesn’t know why I’m laughing. But then he laughs, too. “You’re a funny guy, Sparkster. I’m glad we met.”

  “Me too,” I tell him.

  Fala looks around. “We’re all out of muffins,” he says. “Maybe we should go hang out near the National Air and Space Museum next.”

  I start to ask Fala what that is. But he doesn’t give me a chance. He just keeps talking.

  “My two-legs used to take me on walks past the National Air and Space Museum,” he says as we start off. “The little two-legs would get pretzels and share them with me. I really loved those little two-legs . . .” Fala stops and shakes his head. “I mean I love all little two-legs, because they drop their food a lot. That’s the best. Right, Sparkster?”

  I don’t think Fala was really talking about food. But I still have to agree with him. Dropped food is great.

  “It sure is, Falster,” I tell him.

  Fala laughs. Achoo. And sneezes.

  I go to cross the street. Then I stop. And jump back.

  Whoosh! A metal machine with four round paws zooms past me. Then another. And another.

  My tail flops sadly. I wonder how many of the two-legs in those metal machines have left their dogs home alone with no one to play with.

  Maybe Fala’s right. Maybe dogs don’t need two-legs. I kind of like not having anyone around to tell me what to do—or what not to do.

  But there’s no one around to pet me or tell me I’m a good dog, either.

  “Okay, Sparky,” Fala says a few minutes later. “Here we are. The National Air and Space Museum.”

  I see a big building with lots of stairs and windows. There’s something tall and shiny near the building. On the very top, there are sparkly things that look like the dots that come out when the sun disappears.

  “Check out all the little two-legs,” Fala tells me.

  “I wonder what food they’ll drop,” I say. “I’m hoping for a hunk of . . .”

  But Fala isn’t listening to me. He’s staring at two young two-legs sitting on a bench, eating pretzels. One is a girl two-leg with long curly fur. The other is a boy. I can’t see the fur on his head. It’s covered up.

  Fala’s tail starts going crazy. The next thing I know, my friend is running over to the young two-legs. He goes right up to them and sniffs their feet. The girl two-leg laughs. But the boy jumps up and holds his pretzel close.

  Fala shakes his head. His tail droops.

  “Let’s get out of here, Sparky,” Fala says sadly as he walks back over to me. “They’re not the two-legs I thought . . .”

  Fala doesn’t finish his sentence. He just shakes his head.

  Hmmmm . . . I don’t think Fala was looking for pretzel scraps after all. I think he was looking for someone. Or maybe someones.

  “Fala?” I ask. “Do you ever miss your two-legs?”

  Fala’s eyes open wide. He looks surprised. “What kind of question is that?” he barks angrily.

  Maybe I better not talk about that anymore. I don’t want my new friend to be angry. “Let’s go find more scraps,” I say. “Maybe pizza crusts.”

  “Sure, I know where we can get pizza crusts,” Fala says. He starts to walk away. But his tail doesn’t wag and his mouth doesn’t smile. He just looks back at the two-legs on the bench and sneezes.

  Achoo.

  CHAPTER 6

  Toot. Toot. Toot.

  There’s a lot of tooting coming from under my tail. It happens whenever I eat a hot dog. And Fala and I just finished sharing a whole hot dog that we found next to a tree.

  “I haven’t eaten a hot dog since the time my two-legs made that fire in our yard and . . . ,” Fala begins.

  Toot. Toot. Toot.

  “Stop tooting!” I bark at the
part of me that’s under my tail.

  Fala laughs.

  “Hot dogs sure are yummy,” I say. “I really like the way they . . .”

  This time I’m the one who doesn’t finish what he’s saying. That’s because all I can think about is a big shiny stick that’s flying toward me. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t care. I just gotta have that stick!

  I leap up in the air, open my mouth, and . . . YES!

  Ow. This is not a normal stick. It’s cold. And hard. It hurts my teeth when I bite down.

  “Good catch!” Fala tells me.

  Just then, a girl two-leg runs over. This must be her stick. I drop the stick at her feet and wait for her to throw it again.

  The two-leg picks up the stick.

  Wiggle, waggle, hooray! This two-leg wants to play.

  “Throw it! Throw it!” I bark.

  But the two-leg doesn’t throw the stick. Instead she walks over to a group of other two-legs. They’re also throwing shiny sticks in the air and catching them.

  The two-leg who threw the stick to me throws her stick up in the air. But she doesn’t catch it. It falls to the ground.

  The other two-legs shake their heads and move away.

  The two-leg who dropped the stick looks sad. Water starts dripping from her eyes.

  I know why. The other two-legs are playing together. But she’s alone. It’s no fun playing by yourself.

  Achoo! Fala sneezes. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “There are too many cherry blossoms. I don’t know why two-legs love them so much.”

  “How do you know they love cherry blossoms?” I ask.

  “Why else would they have a parade for them?” Fala replies.

  “What’s a parade?” I ask him.

  “It’s like a big two-leg party,” Fala says. “They march down the street and make a lot of noise. Some of them throw sticks.”

  That doesn’t sound like much fun. Except for the throwing-sticks part.

  “Those girl two-legs are getting ready to throw their sticks up and down in the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade,” Fala tells me. “I don’t know why two-legs get so excited about those rotten flowers. All they do is make me sneeze.” Achoo!

  I know why the two-legs like the flowers. They’re pretty. And they smell nice.

  Achoo! Achoo!

  But I also know why Fala doesn’t like them.

  “Let’s go,” Fala says. “There are scraps out there with our names on them!”

  “The scraps know our names?” I ask him.

  Fala laughs. “I just meant that there are probably a lot of scraps on the ground. We should find them and eat them.”

  Oh. That makes more sense.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Hey, you two better get out of here!”

  As Fala and I turn a corner, we hear a dog barking at us. I look over and see a dog with black-and-white shaggy fur. He’s running around the biggest yard I’ve ever seen.

  The yard is surrounded by a tall fence. The black-and-white dog can’t get out. And Fala and I can’t get in. But we can all still talk to each other through the fence, the same way I talk to my buddies Frankie the German shepherd and Samson the mixed-breed dog back home.

  I wonder what Samson and Frankie are doing right now. I wonder if they’re wondering what I’m doing right now.

  “You don’t want to be here when the Big Guy arrives,” the black-and-white dog tells Fala and me.

  “Who’s the Big Guy?” I ask nervously.

  “His two-leg,” Fala explains. “Haven’t you heard of the Big Guy?”

  I shake my head. The only big guy I know is Josh. He’s pretty tall. But he’s not here.

  “Doesn’t the Big Guy like dogs?” I ask.

  “Sure,” the dog behind the fence says. “He just doesn’t like them being off-leash.”

  “Your two-leg sounds mean,” I tell him.

  “He’s not,” the dog behind the fence assures me. “He plays ball with me, and he lets me curl up on the floor under his big desk.”

  “That does sound nice,” I say. “My two-leg . . . ,” I begin. But then I stop. I don’t know if I’ll be able to curl up at Josh’s feet anymore. And he sure didn’t want to play with me today.

  Achoo. Fala sneezes. “Stupid Rose Garden. Roses make me sneeze worse than cherry blossoms.” He wipes his nose with his paw.

  “The Big Guy thinks dogs should be in their own yards or on leashes,” the dog behind the fence continues. “And everyone listens to the Big Guy.”

  “Cats, too?” I wonder.

  The dog behind the fence thinks about that. “Actually, I don’t know about cats,” he says finally. “They don’t really listen to anybody. But if they did, they’d listen to the Big Guy.”

  I want to say that the Big Guy would like Fala and me if he got to know us, but I don’t get the chance. Suddenly the biggest bird I’ve ever seen flies over the giant green yard.

  It sure is a strange bird. It doesn’t have wings on the side of its body. This bird’s wings are over the top. And they whirl around and around instead of flapping up and down. This bird doesn’t chirp, either. It whirs. Loudly.

  The big whirring bird is really scary. And it’s just about to land!

  Thumpety, thump, thump, thump. My heart is thumping. My tail is drooping. And my paws are starting to bounce. They want to get out of here. Right now.

  Before I even know what’s happening, my paws start to run. Fast. Faster. Fastest!

  “Hey, Sparkster! Wait for me!” Fala shouts.

  I want to wait for Fala. But I can’t. I’m too scared.

  Achoo. Fala’s running behind me. “Sparky, wait up,” he calls to me again.

  Screech! This time my paws stop short and wait under a tree for Fala.

  “That was one scary bird,” I say once Fala catches up to me. “I’m glad we don’t have birds like that in my yard.”

  “My yard is . . . I mean, was . . . way too small to fit a bird like that,” Fala says.

  I look up to make sure there aren’t any more giant whirlybirds in the sky. I don’t see any. But I do see a piece of paper hanging from a tree.

  The paper has a picture of a dog on it, just like the one I saw before.

  “Fala, isn’t that you?” I ask him.

  Fala cocks his head. He looks at the picture. Then he says, “That could be any dog. There are lots of terriers in this town. Why would my picture be hanging from a tree, anyway?”

  I don’t know why. I just know the dog on the paper looks like Fala.

  Fala starts walking down the street. I follow close behind. While we walk, I think about how lucky the dog behind the fence is, because he has the Big Guy to play with. It’s nice to have a two-leg to play with.

  I wish I had my two-leg to play with. I sure miss Josh.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Aahhh . . . This is the life,” Fala says a little while later. “There’s nothing better than a peanut-butter sandwich with hardly any dirt on it. Yum.”

  I swallow a big bite of peanut butter and bread. Then I roll over and scratch my back on the steps of the Capitol building.

  I know it’s the Capitol building because Fala showed it to me before, when we were way up high in the sky.

  “The people who work in the Capitol building bring the best lunches,” Fala tells me.

  “How do you know that?” I ask him.

  “One of the two-legs I used to live with came here every day,” he tells me. “Sometimes the other two-legs in my family would bring me here so I could play with her while she ate lunch.”

  Fala sounds happy when he talks about his two-legs, which is weird, because he keeps telling me how happy he is without them.

  I wonder if the family Fala used to live with still thinks about him.

  I wonder if Josh is thinking about me.

  Suddenly, Fala’s tail starts to wag. His ears perk up. His paws start moving toward a two-leg with curly yellow fur on her head. She’s walking up the stairs.


  I don’t know what’s so exciting about that two-leg. She’s not throwing a ball or holding food.

  Still Fala is zooming after her.

  “Hey, Fala! Wait for me!” I bark as I run after him.

  But my friend doesn’t wait. He keeps running. And so do I.

  The next thing I know, Fala and I are inside the Capitol building!

  The two-leg turns around and looks at us. Her eyes open wide. She scratches her curly yellow fur, and says something to another two-leg who is standing near the door.

  I don’t know what she’s saying. But I can tell when someone is trying to catch me. And that’s what the two-leg near the door is trying to do. He’s running right toward Fala and me, with his arms out.

  “Run, Fala, run!” I bark.

  Fala looks back at the two-leg woman. His tail isn’t wagging anymore. He doesn’t look happy.

  I don’t blame him. You can’t be happy when you’re about to get caught!

  “Run, Fala, run!” I bark again.

  This time Fala runs. So do I. We run right into a big round room filled with two-leg statues—and a whole group of real two-legs, too.

  The statues don’t care about Fala and me. But the real two-legs do. They’re yelling and pointing.

  “Run, Sparky!” Fala barks.

  He doesn’t have to tell me twice. My paws already are on the move. They’re running. Fast. Faster. Fastest.

  My fur flies in my eyes. I can’t see where I’m going. But I can hear Fala’s paws on the ground.

  Achoo! I can hear him sneezing.

  “Right behind you!” I bark.

  I shake my head hard, to try to get the fur out of my eyes. But the shaking doesn’t work.

  “Bad fur!” I bark. “Let me see.”

  My eyes may be covered, but my ears aren’t. I hear a whole lot of two-legs. They’re yelling. But they don’t seem to be yelling at me. I haven’t heard the words no or bad dog. Not even once.

  I stop and shake my head. This time the fur moves away from my eyes. Wiggle, waggle, whoopee! I can see.