It's a Doggy Dog World

by Tommy Greenwald

  It must have fallen off his collar.

  That was all the proof I needed.

  Suddenly everything made sense. The open drain pipe on the field. The broken bench. The sprinklers. The holes on the sideline.

  I ran back out onto the middle of the field and started yelling.

  “I know what happened!”

  Everyone looked up from their arguing.

  “I know what happened here! I know why kids on our team are getting hurt! I know why kids have been getting hurt all season!”

  Everyone started walking toward me. The first person to reach me was the man who had been walking Thor before the game.

  “You better watch yourself, son,” he hissed at me. “Making false accusations can get you in big trouble.”

  The man was just about to stick a finger in my face when a noise stopped him.

  “GRRROOOWWWWWL!”

  I looked down and there was Abby, standing next to me, walking slowly toward the man. Then she took a glance up at me, as if to say, I’m back.

  FACT: Sometimes, the growl of a dog is the best sound in the world.

  The man started backing up slowly. “Get that thing away from me.”

  “Not until you tell everyone what happened here,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said.

  My parents came running up to me, and Mrs. Cragg grabbed Abby and put her back on the leash.

  “Jimmy!” cried my mom. “What is going on here? Did this man do something to you?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.

  “Where’s Mr. Swab?” I yelled. My eyes searched all over the place, until they landed back on the man. “WHERE’S YOUR BOSS?” I took the leash from Mrs. Cragg and pointed at Abby, who was staring at the man, fangs and all. “If you don’t tell me now, Abby will make you.”

  A look of panic crossed the guy’s face. “I don’t know! I just did what he told me to do. It’s not my fault!”

  Everyone gasped. “What’s this guy talking about?” my dad said.

  But I didn’t answer him, because I was looking around, all over the field, and slowly realizing something.

  Necks craned, heads turned, eyes searched—and everyone else realized it too.

  Mr. Swab was nowhere in sight.

  “FIND MR. SWAB!”

  As soon as the cry went up, Abby and I started sprinting up to the parking lot.

  After ten more steps, I noticed someone on my right side.

  “I’m with you all the way,” Irwin said.

  “Let’s get this guy,” I said.

  He nodded, trying to keep up. Irwin wasn’t exactly in the best shape. He was pretty much in the same shape I was in, before I started playing lacrosse.

  “I didn’t even know you were coming today!” I told him.

  Irwin tried to talk and pant at the same time. “I … wanted … to … see … the game.”

  I stopped for just a second so he could catch his breath.

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” I told him.

  He bent over, grabbing his knees, then looked back up at me. “You think I’d miss all this excitement?” he asked. “Besides, we’re a gang, aren’t we?”

  I felt a warm feeling in my chest. “Yeah, we are.”

  We took off again, the three of us, Irwin, Abby, and me, with about twenty adults (including my parents) close behind. We scrambled up the hill, ran across the basketball courts, and got to the parking lot, where I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Daisy, of all people, was walking straight toward us.

  “Hey,” she said to us, a little nervously. “What’s going on? Why are you guys up here? Isn’t the game still going on?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked down. “You were right, Jimmy,” she said. “I made a promise to come to the games, and I let you down. So here I am.” She smiled. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  My heart flooded with happiness. “No need to apologize!” I said, trying to sound casual. “Thanks for coming.” I was just about to get totally distracted by that whole topic, but by some miracle I managed to remember why I’d run up to the parking lot. “Hey, have you seen a man go by, probably looked like he was in a big hurry?”

  Daisy nodded. “You mean him?” She pointed across the lot to where Mr. Swab was loading Thor into a giant SUV.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “You’re supposed to be a big-shot sports coach and you’re running away from a couple of kids?”

  Mr. Swab turned and looked at us angrily. “I’m not running away!” he sputtered. “This has turned into a charade! I want no part of it! This is a disgrace to elite competitive sports everywhere!”

  “Stop right there!” Irwin yelled. “In the name of the CrimeBiters!”

  Daisy and I looked at him.

  “Worth a shot,” he said, shrugging.

  Mr. Swab ignored Irwin and managed to get Thor in the car (no easy task when you’re talking about a 150-pound Saint Bernard) and shut the door, but he made one key mistake: He left the window open.

  FACT: There aren’t too many things Abby likes more than an open car window. (Just ask Barnaby Bratford.)

  WHOOSH!

  As Mr. Swab tried to pull out of his parking space, Abby flew into the open window and landed right on Thor’s head. Thor was thrilled to see her, and their third happy reunion in less than an hour took place in the backseat of Mr. Swab’s car.

  FACT: Dogs love reunions almost as much as they love food.

  After about ten seconds, Thor and Abby realized the backseat wasn’t quite big enough for their shenanigans, and they tumbled into the front seat of Mr. Swab’s car. Which was bad for Mr. Swab, who was busy trying to navigate a tight turn.

  “Get off me, dogs!” he yelled, but Thor must have thought that was part of a game, because he started licking Mr. Swab all over his face.

  FACT: It’s hard to steer a car when a giant dog is licking you all over your face.

  Mr. Swab proceeded to crash his car directly into a sign that said CAUTION! SCHOOLCHILDREN.

  “Argggggghhhh!” he screamed, which we could hear loud and clear, since the window was open.

  By now, there were a ton of people in the parking lot. Irwin, Daisy, and me; my parents, my sister, and Mrs. Cragg; Coach Knight; a bunch of parents and kids from both teams; and people who were just watching the game.

  Altogether there were about fifty of us, and we had Mr. Swab trapped.

  “Sir, you’re surrounded,” I said, in my best STOP! POLICE! voice. “Please step out of the car.”

  At least Abby listened to me. She hopped out the back window and jumped into my arms.

  “Hey, girl,” I whispered, nuzzling her ear. “Good job.”

  Thanks, she said, even though she didn’t actually say it.

  The front door of the SUV suddenly opened, and in a flash Mr. Swab stomped over in my direction, wagging his finger. “You’ve got this all wrong!” he hollered. Unfortunately for him, he only got about three steps before Daisy stuck her foot out and tripped him, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  “My knee!” Mr. Swab howled. “I think I hurt my knee!”

  “Suck it up,” muttered Chad Knight, who proceeded to use one of his crutches to pin Mr. Swab down.

  “Tell everyone what happened,” I told him. “Tell everyone what you did.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he gasped.

  “Fine, then I’ll tell them,” I said. I raised my voice so everyone could hear me. “You planned this whole thing from the beginning because you were worried that we would beat you and ruin your precious LaxMax perfect record,” I said. “And you used your awesome dog, Thor, to do all your dirty work for you.”

  Everyone looked at Thor, who was wagging his tail happily.

  FACT: Sometimes the less dogs know, the better.

  “You didn’t think you’d get caught be
cause everybody already thought our field was so terrible,” I explained.

  Coach Knight looked shocked. “Is this true, Ned?” he asked his friend.

  Mr. Swab shrugged. “The field is terrible,” he mumbled.

  I went on. “You must have snuck over to our field with poor Thor the night before the Northport game. Then you had Thor take the top off of the drain pipe, just like the Drag and Drop exercise that Shep taught us.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Swab claimed.

  I ignored him. “And you wrapped bacon around the legs of the bench so Thor would gnaw them off, like he did during the Just Chew It exercise.”

  “Absurd,” he insisted.

  I forged ahead. “You had Thor play Bury the Bone by digging holes on our sideline, yesterday at practice and today at the game. All so kids on our team would get hurt, and you could win the championship.”

  “Preposterous,” he muttered, a little less forcefully.

  “This is the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard,” muttered my mom.

  “If it’s true,” added my dad.

  “And somehow you had Thor chew a hole in poor Kyle Shuken’s stick!” I yelled, my voice rising.

  “THAT ONE’S NOT TRUE!” Mr. Swab wailed. “I NEVER DID THAT!”

  Everyone stopped murmuring and stared at him.

  He said he didn’t do that one.

  Which meant he did the other ones.

  When Mr. Swab realized what he’d done, his shoulders slumped. “Okay, fine. Maybe I did have Thor take the drainpipe cover. I thought maybe one or two kids might sprain an ankle, and your team wouldn’t be as good. I figured that would be the end of it. But then you started winning and you kept winning! So I had to keep going! I couldn’t lose the championship this year! Not when we’re about to build a big new facility that will be the best in the whole state!”

  “You’re a disgrace, Ned,” said Coach Knight, shaking his head. “I believed in you. But you’re nothing but a sneaky, no-good cheater.”

  “He’s worse than that,” I said. “He’s a criminal.”

  “If I lost the championship, then my whole dream would go up in smoke!” Mr. Swab sputtered. “I can’t lose. Everything would be ruined! My business, my perfect record, my reputation for being the best! Everything!”

  I smiled. “Like I once heard you say, it’s a doggy dog world, right, Mr. Swab?”

  He looked at me like I was the gum that got stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “That’s dog-eat-dog, you little twerp. Don’t you know anything?”

  FACT: “Doggy dog world” is a much nicer phrase than “dog-eat-dog world.”

  “I know one thing,” I said. “We win the game by forfeit.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, the police were there, taking statements from everybody in the parking lot. Eventually, they took Mr. Swab away for questioning.

  Everyone was finally starting to drift away when another police car pulled into the parking lot.

  “Oh boy,” my mom said. “Hasn’t there been enough excitement for one day?”

  A cop got out and said, “We’ve got a problem.” Then he pointed to his backseat. “Does anyone know whose dog this is? I found him wandering out in the street.”

  “Thor!” I yelled. There he was, the big Saint Bernard, hanging out in the backseat of a police car. Somehow, in all the commotion, he must have slipped away.

  “Is he your dog?” the cop asked me.

  I stared up at my parents. “Can we take him? Can we? Can we?”

  “Since you asked me three times, I’ll answer you three times,” my mom said. “No, no, and no.”

  “But we have to!”

  “One crazy hound in the house is enough,” my dad said. “Sorry.”

  “He’s Mr. Swab’s dog!” someone shouted. The policeman shrugged and said, “Okay. I guess I’ll take him downtown and we’ll figure it out there.”

  He started to get back into the car when a voice rang out. “I’ll take him!”

  Everyone looked to see who was volunteering to take a 150-pound, drooling, shedding beast.

  Mrs. Cragg stepped forward.

  “I could use a friend,” she said. “And I bet he could too. If for some reason he might need to find another home, then I’d like to have him.”

  Thor leapt out of the car, said hi to Abby, and then gave Mrs. Cragg a big lick on the face.

  My mom shook her head in disbelief.

  “Now I’ve seen it all,” she said.

  AS WE ALL STARTED TO WALK BACK DOWN THE HILL to get our lacrosse stuff, I noticed something.

  Daisy wasn’t moving.

  “Are you coming?” I said.

  “Yeah, Daisy, come on,” Irwin added.

  But she stood there. “I’m not sure.”

  Irwin and I looked at each other, and both decided the same thing at the same time.

  “The gang is back together,” I said. “For good this time. And that includes you.”

  “If you want to come back,” Irwin said.

  After a beat, I added, “And Mara can join too.”

  “Oh, Mara,” Daisy said. “Don’t worry about her. It turns out she’s in the Quietville Bagpiping Club, so she’s probably too busy to join.”

  Yes! I thought. Then I remembered that Jonny Galt, the kid who used to play goalie, quit lacrosse for the same reason. Jeez, who knew bagpiping was so popular?

  “HEY, GUYS!” a voice called.

  We stared and saw somebody walking up toward us. He was going really slowly, and as he got closer, I could tell he was walking on crutches.

  We all squinted. “Who is that?” Irwin said.

  After a few more seconds, I could tell who it was.

  “It’s Baxter!” I exclaimed.

  We ran down to greet him. “Are you okay?” we all said.

  He nodded, but I could tell he was in pain. “Yeah. I was getting ice on my knee. I heard I missed all the excitement.”

  “You sure did!” I launched into a play-by-play description of everything that happened, but Baxter stopped me after four words.

  “Can you just wait a second?” He turned to Daisy. “Did you guys all make up?”

  We all nodded.

  “Well, that’s good,” Baxter said. “Daisy is awesome and smart. But sometimes it seems like all you guys do is fight over her. And that’s not fair.”

  Irwin looked at me. “We promise not to act all crazy if Daisy wants to have a friend outside the gang, right, Jimmy?”

  “Right,” I said.

  Daisy grinned. “And Irwin and I promise we won’t go off and do things by ourselves just because you two are busy with sports or something else, right, Irwin?”

  “Right,” Irwin said. “And I also promise to treat Baxter like a full member of the club.”

  “Thanks,” Baxter said. “And I promise not to be jealous just because Jimmy is, like, the best lacrosse player ever.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Irwin said, but he was smiling when he said it.

  “Then it’s settled!” Daisy said happily. “No more arguing about silly stuff!”

  “We’ve got way more important things to do, anyway,” I added. “We’re the CrimeBiters.”

  “The CrimeBiters!” Irwin said.

  “The CrimeBiters!” Baxter joined in.

  We all formed a circle and put our hands into the middle.

  “CRIMEBITERS FOREVER!” we all yelled.

  As we all walked down the hill, I looked down at Abby.

  “What’s that, girl? You think we should go get ice cream? Great idea!”

  She barked, and the whole gang laughed.

  “Okay, now I’m finally convinced,” Irwin said. “She’s a superdog after all!”

  NED SWAB WAS CHARGED with endangering the welfare of children, and was released on bail to await trial. Meanwhile, Irwin made the fascinating discovery that if you mix up the letters of his name, they spell BAD NEWS.

  LaxMax was disbanded as a program, but most of the players on the t
eam joined a new program called LaxPro, which is just as intense and time-consuming as LaxMax. Jimmy, however, decided to stay with the Quietville team, because it’s a lot more fun.

  After Mr. Swab decided he didn’t want Thor anymore, Mrs. Cragg was able to adopt him. They have become best friends, even though Mrs. Cragg’s house is a mess and her yard looks like the surface of the moon.

  Chad Knight decided that sports were too dangerous, so he’s taken up ballroom dancing. He’s on the way to becoming a nationally ranked dancer in his age group.

  Coach Knight was dead set against the whole ballroom dancing thing at first, but once he saw his son do the tango, he couldn’t stop bragging about it. He wanted to coach dancing too, until he found out there was a strict no-whistle policy.

  Shep has expanded his dog obedience program to include a new class, Dogs Rock: How Music Can Soothe Your Beast’s Savage Soul. Jimmy and Abby continue to visit Shep at the shelter once a week, so Abby can practice following her star.

  The CrimeBiters continue to meet regularly at the clubhouse, awaiting their next opportunity to fight crime. And Abby hasn’t eaten a shoe in months! As far as we know.

  THANKS TO MY WIFE, Cathy, for letting me keep Abby even though she’s a total handful; my kids, Charlie, Joe, and Jack, for teaching me about the bond between children and dogs; my dogs, Coco and Abby, for being nonstop sources of pleasure (except when they’re nightmares); and my editor, Nancy, for letting me write books about Cathy, Charlie, Joe, Jack, Coco, and Abby.

  TOMMY GREENWALD is the author of the first book in the CrimeBiters! series, My Dog is Better than Your Dog, and the Charlie Joe Jackson series about the most reluctant reader ever born. Tommy lives in Connecticut with his wife, Cathy; their kids, Charlie, Joe, and Jack; and their dogs, Coco and Abby. Abby is not necessarily a crime-fighting vampire dog—but she makes Tommy and his family very, very happy, which is definitely a kind of superpower when you think about it.

  Copyright © 2016 by Tommy Greenwald

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Adam Stower