Lost! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Read Free

beside a hedge so I crawled beneath it.
    It was ages before I got to sleep. I kept thinking about home and my gorgeous pups with their floppy sloppy tongues, and Trevor. He hasn’t got a floppy sloppy tongue of course but he’s good fun and I can play with him and take him forwalks. We make a good team, Trevor and me. I even help with his homework sometimes. He had a problem with triangles the other night and he had to ask me because it was a difficult problem.
    ‘Listen, Streaker, the question says: What do you call a triangle with two equal sides?’
    Well! That’s a stupid question, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t call a triangle anything except a triangle, can you? You can’t call it biscuit or walkies or donuts can you? It’s a triangle — so that’s what you call it.
    Trevor read the question over and he got more and more angry and eventually he shouted at his homework.
    ‘You call it a triangle! Because that’s what it is, stupid!’
    See? That’s what I’d said too! I love helping Trevor, and we think triangles are stupid. And they are too.
    Anyway, if I’d been at home I would probablybe lying on the end of Trevor’s bed with my pups and he’d be snoring, because he does, even if he is only eleven. Sometimes he sounds like a road drill.
    I don’t mind him snoring because that means he’s deeply asleep. Then I can creep up the bed and lie right next to him because I don’t see why he should have all the cushy pillows while I only get the bottom bit next to his smelly feet. Besides, if his snoring gets too loud, I climb on top of his head and he stops. That’s because he can’t breathe. Then all of a sudden he gives a big jerk, mutters Gerroff , turns over and goes back to sleep.

    But I wasn’t at home and I didn’t have Trevor to cuddle up to, and I didn’t have my puppies. I was under an old, damp cardboard box that stank of cranky-manky soap, a long way from home — wherever that was. All on my own.
    When I did get to sleep at last I was immediately woken up by that stupid owl. It landed on top of the box and scrabbled about going scritch-scratch until my brain went banana-bonkers.
    ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I muttered. ‘Stop tap dancing.’
    Then it started making silly owl noises. ‘Whooo. Whoo-hoooooo.’
    ‘Whoo-hoo to you too,’ I wuffed back.
    Silence. A minute passed.
    ‘Did you speak?’ whispered the owl.
    ‘Yes, I told you to stop tap dancing’.
    ‘Whooooooooo!’ went the owl. ‘A talking box!’
    ‘Oh, please,’ I groaned. ‘I’m a dog!’
    ‘Whooooooo! A talking box that thinks it’s a dog!’

    ‘Will you please stop whoo-hoo-ing and go away and find a bit of brain to put in your head?’
    ‘WHOOOOOOOOOOO!’ went the owl, so I decided to get up.
    Of course I was still under the box so I ended up wandering round wearing a box over my head and back, with a large owl riding on top and whoooo-ing with alarm. I barked at it until it flew off. Hooray. That’s owls for you. They are the stupidest birds ever. Blackbirds sing. Thrushessing. Robins sing. What do owls do? They go ‘whoooooo’, and sound like someone stuck in a wardrobe with a family of giant bats.
    I settled back down, fell asleep and had the weirdest dream. I was running, running, running and panting madly. My eyes were bulging. Something was chasing me. A big, black shadow. Why was it so scary? It was a shadow galloping behind me, like I was being chased by a piece of night. There was a strange, hot smell in my nostrils, like somewhere far away and dangerous.
    I was running as fast as I could but it felt like my feet were stuck in donut jam, and my puppies were calling out to me, ‘Mum! Mum! Save us!’ My heart was thundering and I woke by leaping to my feet, my eyes wide. I couldn’t see! I’d gone blind! Terror seized me.
    Then I realized I still had the cardboard box tipped over my head. I shook myself free and stared out at the coming dawn, panting, heart racing. There was nothing to be