by Duncan Ball
‘That’s Selby, our darling, wonderful dog. He’s gone all … all solid. It’s too complicated to explain. Can you unstiffen him?’
The man listened to Selby’s chest. ‘I think he’s gone.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’ Selby thought. ‘I’m right here!’
‘What do you mean, gone?’ Mrs Trifle asked.
‘We vets have a special word for it. The word is dead. I’m terribly sorry,’ the man said, looking at his watch, ‘Oops, I’ve got another appointment.’
‘No! No! No!’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘Oh, Selby, my dearest, darling dog!’
‘We love you, Selby,’ wailed Dr Trifle. ‘You can’t be dead!’
‘I’m not dead!’ Selby thought. ‘Okay, so I can’t move but I’m not dead!’
‘What are we going to do?’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘He was the most darling dog you could ever imagine.’
‘I was and I am,’ Selby thought.
‘He was just so lovable,’ Dr Trifle whimpered.
‘I still am!’ Selby thought. ‘Just thaw me out and I’ll be even more lovable.’
And so it was that Selby was stuck frozen to the spot, standing on his hind legs in the loungeroom. The Trifles sat on the couch with tears in their eyes, not knowing what to do with their beloved pet.
‘I can tell you what to do with him,’ Aunt Jetty said when she called around. ‘Put him out with the rubbish before he starts to stink. Come to think of it, he already stinks.’
‘What an awful thing to say!’ Mrs Trifle sobbed. ‘I can’t believe you said that!’
‘I was only trying to help.’
Dr Trifle tried everything he could to melt Selby. He put him in the bathtub and filled it with ice — real ice. Selby thought he’d die of cold. Then, after he’d dried him off again, Dr Trifle put a dozen electric blankets around him and turned them on.
‘He’s going to cook me!’ Selby thought. ‘But maybe this’ll work, after all.’
But it didn’t.
‘I guess the soldiers are still holding hands,’ Mrs Trifle sighed. ‘If only there was something we could do to make them let go.’
But there wasn’t. It seemed that once water turned to Nice there was no going back.
Dr Trifle rang all his science and inventor friends who tried everything they could think of to melt Selby. They zapped him with electricity and they jiggled him and they even tickled him.
‘We’ve never seen anything like it,’ they said. ‘The strange thing is that his brain scan is still showing multi-morphic auto-synchronicity between the frontal and backal lobes. It’s as if his brain’s still working. But of course that’s not possible.’
Crowds of people came from all over Bogusville, Poshfield and then from every corner of Australia and, perhaps, the world to see The Frozen Dog.
Newspaper people wrote stories about him and TV news people stood in front of him, talking about him, while their cameras buzzed and whirred.
‘I hate this!’ Selby thought. ‘For years I kept my secret a secret because I didn’t want to be studied by scientists. And I didn’t want everybody coming around and bugging me. Now it’s all happening and I can’t even run away and hide! Oh, woe woe woe. The only thing that hasn’t happened to me yet is being dognapped!’
(Funny he should say that because that very night Mrs Trifle chased away some robbers who had come to steal him.)
‘We have to do something,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘We can’t go on like this. I think we’ll have to send him away. We can’t have him in the house any more. I just can’t stand it.’
‘But where would we send him?’
Dr Trifle’s old friend Professor Krakpott had the answer.
‘Put him on display,’ he said, ‘in the Museum of Old and Crusty Things.’
And so began the second part of Selby’s frozen life. He stood in the middle of the museum surrounded by dinosaur bones and lots of other old museum stuff.
Days went by and then weeks and months. And, just when it seemed like everyone in the world had seen The Amazing Frozen Dog, more people came.
‘I can’t sleep,’ Selby whimpered in his brain. ‘I can’t even close my eyes. This is the worst thing that could ever happen to a dog — or a person.’
But, deep in Selby’s little non-beating heart, he knew that when things were really really bad suddenly everything could change. And he was right — things got worse.
It was on a weekday and lots of school groups had been to the museum to see him. It was when the girls of St Lucre’s School for Polite Young Ladies came through the museum that Selby knew his problems were really starting.
Among the group were Mrs Trifle’s uncle’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s stepson’s daughters, Cindy, Mindy and Lindy. Selby spied them out of the corner of his eye.
‘Oh, no, not them again,’ Selby thought, as the line of little girls in their cleanest, neatest school uniforms filed by.
‘Hey, look. It’s that awful Trifle dog,’ Cindy whispered.
‘Frozen stiff,’ Mindy giggled.
‘Let’s have some fun,’ Lindy said.
‘Oh no!’ Selby thought. ‘They’re up to no good. Though how could they make things worse than they already are?’
Soon, all the other girls had filed by and the terrible tripets were left alone.
‘I know,’ Cindy said, pulling a big bone from a dinosaur skeleton.
‘Good thinking,’ Mindy said, grabbing another bone.
‘One, two, and …’ Lindy said, swinging another dinosaur bone,'… three!’
The first blow hit Selby on the back with a smack!
The next blow was to his side. Thwack!
And the third blow went right to his middle. Crack!
Selby stood there for a moment with cracks all over him. Then, in one big crash, he shattered into hundreds of pieces and landed on the floor.
A guard came running.
‘What happened?!’ he yelled. ‘Who did this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cindy said sweetly.
‘We didn’t see a thing,’ Mindy said, twirling her hair with one finger.
‘He just cracked, that’s all,’ Lindy said.
‘You don’t think we did it, do you?’ the girls all said together in their sweetest voices.
‘Of course not,’ the guard said. ‘Hurry along now, girls.’
And so it was that Selby lay shattered on the floor in bits and pieces like Humpty Dumpty.
His head was still in one piece and he watched helplessly as Professor Krakpott and his helpers went to work on him. But all the museum’s scientists and all the museum’s men couldn’t put Selby together again.
‘Well, I guess that’s the end of him,’ the professor said, starting to sweep up the pieces of Selby.
That would have been the end except one last person happened along. And that person was famous film-maker and expert jigsaw puzzler Jigsaw Jabbar. And there was nothing that excited Jigsaw more than a puzzle.
‘What are you doing?’ Dr Krakpott cried.
‘Stand back, everyone,’ Jigsaw said, ‘there’s a puzzle to be solved.’
He picked up two pieces of Selby and put them together. His quick eyes scanned the floor and he picked up another and joined that to the others.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Professor Krakpott said.
Piece by tiny piece, Jigsaw put Selby back together again. He got bigger and bigger and bigger until finally Jigsaw lifted Selby’s head onto his body.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Selby thought. ‘I’m back together again and I’m not falling apart. Goodness me, I can move my toes! I can move my legs. I can bend! The soldiers aren’t holding hands any more! The Nice has melted! It’s a miracle! The guy is a genius!’
‘This dog looks familiar,’ Jigsaw said. ‘Hmmm, I wonder where I’ve seen him before.’
It was a very happy and un-frozen dog who was taken back to his home in Bogusville.
‘Selby! Oh, Selby! You’re here!’ Mrs Trifle cried.
‘You darling dog!’
‘Yes,’ Dr Trifle said, ‘you are the most wonderful dog there ever was.’
‘And you two,’ Selby thought as he blinked back a tear, ‘are the dearest, most wonderful people in the whole world.’
Paw note: If you haven’t already read the story called ‘Selby Meets the Triple Terror’ in this book, maybe you should do so right now.
S
Paw note: Remember him from ‘The Movie Magic of Jigsaw Jabbar'?
S
Gary Gaggs’ Heckler Busters
When hecklers interrupt Gary Gaggs’ comedy shows, he has lots of what he calls ‘heckler busters’ to make fun of them and get them to stop. Here are some good ones:
‘I never forget a face but in your case I’ll try.’
‘Oh my goodness! Look at your face! Was anyone else hurt in the accident?’
‘This guy is descended from royalty. His grandfather was King Kong.’
‘Thanks for your point of view. Come to think of it, it matches the point on your head.’
‘But seriously folks, this guy tried to leave his brain to science but they rejected it.’
‘I’m not saying that he’s dumb but mind-readers only charge him half price.’ if ‘So you think you’re a wit? Well at least you’re half right.’
‘You’ve got a lot of well-wishers here. These people wish they could throw you down a well.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but did you get up bright and early this morning, or just early?’
‘You may not know it but you just won the lucky door prize. Will someone please show him the door?’ if ‘Your mother must have been a weight-lifter to raise a dumbbell like you.’
‘This guy isn’t bald, he’s just taller than his hair. It’s not a great head but I’m sure he’d never part with it.’
‘When he was at school he got nothing but underwater marks. They were all below C level.’
‘He had to leave school because of illness and fatigue. The principal got sick and tired of him.’
Tail
Acknowledgments
Of all the people involved in the making of this book, the author would particularly like to thank Jill Quin, Shona Martyn, Lisa Berryman, Jo Butler, Cristina Cappelluto and Barbara Mobbs.
Selby, the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world, is in a bit of a mess. So much of a mess, in fact, that you might call it a shemozzle!
Selby’s shemozzle starts when he tells a joke that’s so funny, he puts the whole town of Bogusville in the hospital. And he doesn’t stop there …
Between being coated in chocolate and almost eaten by those horrible brats, Willy and Billy, falling in love with the world’s first talking cat, pretending to be a seeing-eye dog and maybe — just maybe — changing the recipe of Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits, Selby is in a right shemozzle. But the biggest shemozzle of all is when he becomes invisible.
How does he get himself out of it?
Prepare to laugh yourself silly as you find out!
About the Author
Duncan Ball is an Australian author and scriptwriter, who writes popular books for children. This book, Selby Shattered, is the fourteenth story collection about Selby, ‘the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world'. There is also a collection of Selby stories taken from the other books called Selby’s Selection, and two jokes books: Selby’s Joke Book and Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book.
Duncan has also written the Emily Eyefinger books, a series about the adventures of a girl who was born with an eye on the end of her finger, and the comedy novels Piggott Place and Piggotts in Peril about the frustrations of a twelve-year-old boy, Bert Piggott, in a never- ending struggle to get his family of ratbags and dreamers out of trouble.
Duncan lives in Sydney with his wife, Jill, and their cat, Jasper. Duncan wanted to see if the Selby stories would be good bedtime stories so he read one to Jasper and, sure enough, Jasper slept right through it.
For more information about Duncan and his books, see Selby’s site at:
www.harpercollins.com.au/selby
By the Same Author
Emily Eyefinger
Emily Eyefinger, Secret Agent
Emily Eyefinger and the Lost Treasure
Emily Eyefinger and the Black Volcano
Emily Eyefinger’s Alien Adventure
Emily Eyefinger and the Devil Bones
Emily Eyefinger and the Balloon Bandits
Emily Eyefinger and the Ghost Ship
Emily Eyefinger and the Puzzle in the Jungle
Emily Eyefinger and the City in the Sky
Piggott Place
Piggotts in Peril
The Case of the Graveyard Ghost and Other Mysteries
The Case of the Vampire’s Wire and Other Mysteries
Selby’s Secret Selby Screams
Selby Spacedog Selby Surfs
Selby’s Joke Book Selby’s Selection
Selby Speaks Selby Supersnoop
Selby Snowbound Selby Snaps!
Selby Splits Selby’s Stardom
Selby’s Side-Splitting Joke Book
Selby Sorcerer Selby’s Shemozzle
Selby Scrambled
Copyright
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2006
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
Copyright © Duncan Ball 2006
Illustrations copyright © Allan Stomann 2006
The right of Duncan Ball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Ball, Duncan, 1941—.
Selby Shattered / Duncan Ball.
ISBN: 978-0-2072-0066-3 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9514-7 (ePub)
For children aged 8–12 years.
1. Dogs — Juvenile fiction. I. Stomann, Allan. II. Title
A823.3
Cover concept by Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs
Cover design by Matt Stanton
Cover and internal illustrations by Allan Stomann
