The Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog

by Jeremy Strong

  The first Alsatian spun me round like an egg-whisk, the second knocked me straight back into the nettles and the third simply pounded across my chest as if

  some kind of very useful bridge had magically appeared in front of it. The Alsatians carried on the chase, barking away merrily and obviously thinking that the whole business had been set up for their entertainment. Meanwhile, I sat in the only clump of nettles in the world that needed a set of traffic lights.

  Tina dragged me out and we hurried down the road, just in time to see Streaker go whizzing into somebody’s front garden, closely followed by three slavering Alsatians. Poor Streaker was trapped.

  SEVEN

  By the time we reached the house Streaker was crouching down on the front doorstep. Charlie’s Alsatians were inching towards her, cheerfully showing great ranks of glittering teeth. As far as I could see there was no escape.

  At that moment a ginger cat sauntered round the side of the house.

  Now, you know as well as I do that dogs chase cats, but this cat was different. It was a monster. It hardly even looked like a cat. It was more like a ginger panther. As soon as it saw the three Alsatians all its fur stood on end so that it looked like an inflatable ginger panther. Its claws stuck out. It began to screech like some nightmare creature from a horror film and hurled

  itself at Charlie’s dogs. In two seconds flat the dogs had vanished, tails between their legs.

  Tina and I grinned at each other. Even Streaker looked pleased – until the nightmare turned on her. Before we could do a thing the cat had flung itself at Streaker. For a brief moment it looked as if she was going to get shredded by the Moggy-from-Hell. But Streaker had quite a different idea up her sleeve. (Not that dogs have sleeves, but I’m sure you know what I mean. If Streaker had got a sleeve, then that’s where she would have kept her idea.)

  Streaker turned and – this was quite astonishing really – made a single flying leap from the front doorstep and straight through an open window. The cat plunged after her and in no time at all a fight had broken out inside. I started praying silently: please don’t let anything happen to Dad’s phone. Tina peered desperately through the window while I banged on the front door.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I shouted, still thumping away with my fists and getting no answer.

  ‘I don’t know. I saw something large fly through the air. It may have been the cat, but I think it was your dad’s mobile phone being a bit too mobile.’

  That was it. I had to do something. Pushing Tina away, I saw Streaker and the cat go skidding out of the room. I started

  clambering through the window. ‘I’ve got to get her.’

  ‘Supposing somebody comes?’ Tina asked anxiously.

  ‘They’re all out. I’ve got to get Dad’s phone back before it’s completely smashed.’

  Tina only hesitated a fraction longer. ‘I’m coming too,’ she said and hopped in behind me.

  There were quite a few tufts of fur lying around on the carpet, some black and some ginger. I found a bit of plastic and my heart dive-bombed into my boots and hid there squealing with terror.

  ‘There’s another bit over here,’ Tina called out helpfully, picking up a large but useless lump of ex-mobile phone. ‘At least it wasn’t the cat,’ she added.

  To find Streaker all we had to do was follow the noise. The two animals seemed to have started Round Three upstairs. It was a bit spooky creeping around somebody else’s house, but I hardly had time to think about it. This was an emergency. If Dad’s phone was beyond repair, then I was going to end up a hospital case.

  Tina and I had just reached the top landing when a door opened as if by magic and this woman appeared, wrapped in a towel, her face smeared all over with thick white paste and her head smothered in curlers. She looked so weird that I just stood there and screamed. So did she, and she could scream much louder than me. Even Streaker and the cat stopped to see what all the fuss was about.

  The woman grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be a rather large and menacing laundry basket,

  and came straight at us, yelling like a Red Indian on a scalping mission. I was terrified, and so was Tina. She yanked open the nearest door, dashed inside, pulled me into the room with her and slammed it shut behind us.

  It took me one second to realize that Tina had made a BIG MISTAKE. We weren’t in a room at all; we were locked in a broom cupboard. It was dark, the handle was on the outside of the door, and there was no way out. I sank to the floor and buried my head in my hands.

  ‘Well done, Tina,’ I murmured. ‘Nice one.’

  It seemed like ages before we were released. I heard voices outside and the door was opened. I stumbled out, eyes blinking against the bright daylight and walked straight into the outstretched arms of a policeman.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ smirked Sergeant

  Smugg. (I used to think policemen only said ‘well, well, well,’ in bad films. Maybe this was a bad film – it certainly felt like it to me.) ‘We’ve caught two petty criminals red-handed. Breaking and entering private property with intent to steal – that’s a jail sentence of five years or so.’

  ‘Listen,’ I began, ‘it’s all a mistake. My dog came…’

  ‘Your dog!’ Sergeant Smugg roared with laughter and turned to the lady. ‘This is what he said last time. He always blames it on his dog.’

  ‘There wasn’t any dog,’ said the woman. ‘Just these two – on my landing.’

  ‘But there was,’ Tina insisted and she tried to explain. The sergeant wouldn’t have any of it and we were carted off to the police station, where they made a great show of taking our fingerprints and all our details before they would telephone home.

  Dad came to fetch us. He wasn’t very pleased – in fact he was managing a pretty good imitation of an erupting volcano on two legs. This was because Streaker had finally returned home, with half a mobile phone still strapped to her collar.

  The woman decided not to press charges against us after all, probably because she could see that having to go home with Dad was going to be a far

  worse sentence than going to jail. I would have been a lot safer in jail, I reckon. The only good thing was that when Dad discovered the Smuggs’ Alsatians had been involved, he had a real go at the sergeant. Dad didn’t like the Smuggs’ dogs any more than I did.

  So, there you are. I had now ended up at the police station twice in one week. I still had to walk Streaker and I now owed Dad billions of pounds for his broken mobile.

  Isn’t life wonderful?

  EIGHT

  Parents do go on sometimes, don’t they? And on and ON and ON. I thought Dad would never let the subject drop. The first hour was the worst, of course. You know what it’s like. We’ve all been there. I never can understand why people shout when they get angry.

  What’s the point? Usually they’re standing as close to your ear-holes as they can possibly get, so why do they have to shout?

  Dad had a good rant and rave. So did Mum. This bawling-out was delivered in full deluxe stereo. There was nothing I could say in my defence. Well, what could I have said? I just let Mum and Dad get on with it and patiently waited until they had finished. Then they began shouting at me because they thought I wasn’t listening. I ask you! Even the Eskimos in Greenland were getting fed-up with listening to them.

  ‘Aren’t you the least bit sorry?’ Dad repeated again and again, and his face kept switching from red to purple to white and back to red again. Of course I was sorry! I’d said I was sorry about fifty times already, but apparently that wasn’t enough. I wanted to say: ‘Look, Dad, me saying sorry for the millionth time is not going to repair your mobile phone,’ but I had a strong feeling that it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to pay for a replacement,’ Dad growled vengefully.

  Where do parents get these crazy ideas from? There was no way I had the money to pay for a mobile phone. If I walked Streaker until Christmas I still wou
ldn’t have enough money. Secondly, all my pocket money comes from Mum and Dad in the first place. If you look at it logically, that meant that they would be buying the phone with their own money anyway! (Another strong feeling told me that it would not be a good idea to point this out to my parents.)

  Luckily Mum asked Dad if the phone had been insured, and it had. That meant that all Dad had to do was ring the insurance company and tell them that Streaker had run off with it or that some monster-moggy had eaten it, and they would pay for a replacement. Dad was quite pleased when he realized this. I’m sure he knew that there was no chance of me coming up with the money. On the other hand, he was still annoyed because he reckoned I was getting off lightly.

  ‘How long were you trying out this totally stupid idea of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘About half an hour.’

  ‘Half an hour!’ (Another explosion from Dad. I was beginning to reckon that if there was some way of harnessing Dad to a power station, his explosions could be turned into enough electricity to light up half the country. Imagine it. People would be sitting at home when the lights began to dim, and somebody would say, ‘Hey! Lights are fading! Somebody go and poke Trevor’s dad – that’ll get them going again!’)

  ‘Half an hour!’ repeated Dad. ‘Do you know how much it costs for a half-hour call on a mobile?’ This is another continual source of astonishment to me. I’m eleven: does Dad really think I know how much his phone calls cost?

  To cut a long bawling-out short, Dad decided I must have run up a bill of at least five pounds, which I would have to repay. Dad seemed fairly satisfied now that he had delivered his punishment and I was left in peace. At last. So that was another five pounds gone. So far I had lost at least ten pounds, because of paying for the dog-biscuits and the phone bill, and I hadn’t actually earned anything yet.

  I decided to keep a low profile for a while. You know how it is when your parents get in one of their blame-you-for-everything moods. Mum ran out of yoghurt – that was my fault. Dad couldn’t find his golfing cap – that was my fault too. The car wouldn’t start – my fault again.

  They kept glaring at me and muttering, ‘What’s that boy been up to now?’

  I wanted to jump up and confess: ‘Yes! It was me! I really don’t know what made

  me do it. I must have been born to be bad. I filled Dad’s golfing cap with yoghurt and stuffed it in the car’s petrol tank.’

  Needless to say I kept quiet.

  I didn’t go and see Tina for a couple of days and walked Streaker by myself, which was a real chore. I was getting desperate. Over half the holiday had gone and I still hadn’t trained Streaker.

  Just to make matters worse, I discovered what Charlie Smugg had tipped into the tin bath – frog-spawn.

  There were great dollops of translucent grey jelly slopping about on top of the scummy water. I stood and stared, imagining what it was going to be like climbing into that disgusting, clammy gunge. Charlie couldn’t go around doing things like this! It was cheating. I’d have to tell Tina.

  I bumped into Charlie on the way there. Or rather, he bumped into me. ‘Wotcha, lover-boy! Off to see your girl–friend?’ (Charlie’s got such a tremendous imagination – I don’t think.)

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’ve been up at the field.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You put frog-spawn in the bath.’

  ‘I never! It must have been the frogs!’

  ‘What frogs? The only frog I saw was pushing a shopping trolley across the field with a bucket of frog-spawn in it.’

  Charlie was really startled at first. ‘Where were you? I never saw you.’ Then he grinned. ‘So what if I did?’ he said cockily. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  He stepped closer and towered over me. (Have you ever noticed that when people are far away you can feel really brave about facing up to them? I reckon it’s because when they’re far away they look a lot smaller, so you’re not so scared. Unfortunately, the closer they get, the bigger they get and, just at this precise moment, Charlie Smugg was looking very big indeed.)

  ‘It’s cheating,’ I insisted, and all at once I saw a way out of the bet. ‘You’ve cheated and that means the bet is off. We’re not going to bathe in that old tin tub.’

  Charlie folded his huge arms across his chest. ‘I don’t care,’ he sneered. ‘Because if you don’t get in yourselves, I’ll just pick you up and put you in myself. Got it?’ He reached out, seized me by both arms, and lifted me six inches clear of the pavement. I could feel his fingers, like iron bands, squeezing round my puny arms. My heart was thundering away and I really thought I was going to become strawberry jam. Charlie shoved his fat, pimply face right up close to mine.

  ‘See what I mean?’ he grinned, and plonked me back down. He pushed past and went up the road, laughing.

  I was not in a very good mood when I reached Tina’s and by the time I had finished telling her about Charlie, she wasn’t very happy either.

  ‘Frog-spawn!’

  ‘Yes – frog-spawn. There wasn’t any frog-spawn in there before. It’s bubbling over with the stuff now.’

  Tina was seething. ‘He can’t do that!’ she cried. ‘It’s against the Geneva Convention! We’ll take him to the European Court of Human Rights!’

  I nodded glumly. ‘Yeah – he can’t do things like that. Trouble is – he has.’ After my most recent encounter with Charlie I knew for certain that there was absolutely no chance of escaping our fate, unless we wanted to become the latest batch of strawberry jam.

  I didn’t think life could get any worse. Streaker was uncontrollable and we were doomed to drown in frog-spawn.

  ‘What also gets me,’ I grumbled, ‘is that everybody seems to think we’re in love. They think you’re my girlfriend!’

  ‘You don’t have to look so disgusted by the idea,’ Tina pointed out.

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. They’re all stupid.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tina said quietly. Her face had this strange look on it, as if she was smiling. But she wasn’t – at least her mouth wasn’t, if you see what I mean.

  ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘You’re such a pessimist. We haven’t lost the bet yet and there’s still some of that thirty pounds left. I’ve been thinking about Streaker and I’ve had an idea…’

  What? Tina’s the Organizer. I’m the Ideas Man. I glanced at her suspiciously. ‘Yeah? What is it?’

  NINE

  Actually it was a good one. I had known all along that it was Streaker’s speed that we had to do something about. The roller-skates would have been OK if it hadn’t been for the fact that neither the skates nor the dog had any brakes. Tina’s idea was to use our bikes, which at least did have brakes, and her skateboard.

  ‘We can’t tie Streaker to your skateboard,’ I said. ‘That won’t exercise her.’

  ‘I’m not going to tie Streaker to the board. I’m going to tie her bowl to the board and fill it up with food.’ Tina had this big grin all over her freckled face. ‘We tow the skateboard and Streaker gallops along behind.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I agreed. ‘As long as we keep away from the main roads. We could use the track that runs along the edge of the field. Let’s do it!’

  We paid a fleeting visit to my house to collect Streaker, her bowl, some food and my bike and went back to the field. I let Tina take control since this was her idea. Anyhow, I needed both arms to hang on to Streaker, who was tugging at her lead in her desperation to get at the dog food. Tina got some string, tied the bowl to her skateboard and filled it with meaty chunks. She fixed some rope between her bike and the skateboard.

  ‘Wait until I’m a little way ahead and then let her go,’ she ordered. Tina climbed on to her bike and set off. I waited a few seconds and then unclipped the dog-lead. Streaker was off like a starving Exocet missile. I leaped on my bike and set off after them.

  It was working brilliantly! Tina raced ahead, with the skateboard skimming along behind her and Streaker just about
keeping pace, but not quite able to reach her bowl. She had half a mile of tongue hanging out. I went whizzing after them, and round the track we hurtled.

  ‘It’s great!’ I yelled. ‘Keep going!’

  The track ran parallel to the road for a short distance, with just a thin strip of tussocky grass between them. We were

  charging along this bit at a fine speed when a police car drew up alongside and kept pace with us. Sergeant Smugg wound down his window.

  ‘Hey! What do you think you’re up to?’ he bellowed, and the car’s siren burst into a high-pitched wail.

  Tina almost jumped out of her skin and swerved to one side. The skateboard lurched violently in the same direction. The dog bowl flew off, went sailing

  through the air, straight through the car window and splatted wrong way up on top of Sergeant Smugg’s head.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Streaker went pounding after it. She zoomed through the window and immediately set about eating the dog food, even though most of it was still stuck to the sergeant’s head.

  Unfortunately he was still trying to drive his car. He did manage to keep going a little further, even though Streaker was bouncing up and down in his lap and taking great slurping licks at his face. Eventually a thick hedge and a deep ditch stopped any further progress. Clouds of steam belched out from a punctured radiator. The siren gave a last feeble wail of despair and died.