Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog

For Elizabeth

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1: Let’s Get a Few Things Out of the Way

Chapter 2: BARK! Shake. Rumble.

Chapter 3: What Is a Frankfurter?

Chapter 4: Stick Dog Cannot Fly a Helicopter

Chapter 5: Karen Is Gone

Chapter 6: A Donkey?

Chapter 7: Someone Seeks a Girlfriend

Chapter 8: Plummeting Clumsily

Chapter 9: Stackifying

About the Author

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next Stick Dog adventure!

Copyright

About the Publisher

This is Stick Dog.

Now, I don’t really want to get into a big explanation about Stick Dog’s name. See, his name is not really about HIM. It’s about ME. When people aren’t such good drawers, they draw stick people. Well, I draw stick dogs because I stink at drawing.

So his name is Stick Dog.

Stick Dog has four main friends – you probably met them in the first book. Their names are Mutt, Poo-Poo, Stripes, and Karen.

Here’s some quick background on Stick Dog’s four friends.

Karen is a dachshund who loves potato chips and once lived in the back of a French-Asian fusion restaurant.

Mutt is a mutt. He once lived far away with a mailman named Gary. Mutt sometimes stores – or loses – things in his fur.

Poo-Poo is a poodle and is not named after, you know, going to the bathroom. Poo-Poo really doesn’t like squirrels. Really. A lot.

Stripes is a Dalmatian who once was a guard dog at the mall down Highway 16. She lost her job after the Nacho Cheese Grande incident. She is unwilling to talk about it.

All five dogs are strays.

It’s not sad. They have each other.

The other thing you would know from the first book – besides that I don’t know how to draw so well and Stick Dog has four strangely named friends – is that Stick Dog’s main focus in life is food. He’s always trying to find something to eat.

See, he doesn’t trust humans all that much. He thinks they’re kind of weird looking. If you really think about it, humans are kind of strange. I mean, why legs? How about wheels instead? And ten fingers? How about twenty? And two elbows on each arm would be better, wouldn’t it? Then you could reach more places and pick up more things. And TWO eyes on ONE side of your head? How about ONE eye that spins around on top? Soooo much better, don’t you think? And ears … don’t even get me started on ears.

So Stick Dog doesn’t like humans because they’re weird looking. But he doesn’t like them for another reason too: they keep all the good food for themselves. They’re a bunch of no-good, sneaky, food-hogging, only-have-fur-on-top-of-their-heads, keep-everything-for-themselves evil beasts. This one family did give them some food once at Picasso Park (well, the dogs actually sort of earned the food with this great plan that sort of worked and sort of didn’t). They gave them hamburgers … but that was really just kind of a miracle thing. That was in the first book.

Okay, Stick Dog basics: bad drawing by me, Stick Dog’s friends have weird names, finding food really important, can’t trust humans. Good enough?

Great.

Oh, wait, one more thing before we get started. The fact that I’m not such a good drawer is something that I accept and live with. But I sort of need you to accept and live with it too. In other words, you and I need to agree that you won’t interrupt me when the drawings are not so good.

For instance, if I’m in the middle of describing a UFO that has landed right in front of Stick Dog, you’re not allowed to interrupt and say something like, “Excuse me, but that UFO looks more like the pancake I had for breakfast than a spaceship full of aliens.”

We agree that this will be a hassle-free experience, right?

Also, I tend to get distracted and sometimes go off on little side stories now and then. Or I might, for instance, stop and provide some small bit of wisdom or make a little comment. It’s just who I am. I can’t help it. You’ll need to bear with me through some of that. Okay?

Good.

Now, we can really get started.

On this day, Stick Dog and his buddies were all at his home playing a game. Stick Dog lives in a big pipe out in the woods and sleeps on an old couch cushion. The pipe is nice and dry, and the couch cushion is nice and cushy.

The game the five dogs were playing is called BARK! And the game goes like this: Whenever something moves anywhere – a leaf in the wind, a bird flying by, a triceratops charging out of the forest – the first one to bark gets five points. The second one to bark gets four points, the third barker gets three points, and so on. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game is the winner.

Whenever you see two or more dogs barking somewhere, odds are pretty good that they are playing this game.

You should try it too. Get a friend or a sister or a brother or a grandpa and play. Hold real still and then as soon as something moves, bark real loud a couple of times. Keep score and everything. A couple things to remember when you play this game: First, don’t play it at school unless you want detention. Second, when you play this game, people are going to think you’re crazy.

After a couple of hours of playing BARK!, the five buddies went down to the creek to get a nice cool drink of water. They walked into a shallow part of the creek, lowered their heads, and slurped away.

“Have you ever seen little humans drink?” Karen asked the others after getting her fill. Now, Karen is a dachshund, so it didn’t take much to fill her up – several hearty mouthfuls and her thirst was quenched. “It’s kind of strange.”

“How so?” Stripes asked.

“They use this magic thing.”

Mutt had now walked into a deeper part of the creek, cooling off his whole body in the slow-running water. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the obvious way to drink is like we’re doing right now, of course,” Karen began to explain. To demonstrate, she dropped her head and took a quick lap of water in her mouth and swallowed. “You know, find some liquid, lower your head, and drink. No big deal. But the way they do it is bizarre.”

Mutt had risen, soaking wet, from the water and began to walk to the shore. “How’s that?”

“It’s crazy,” Karen said. “I see little humans do it at Picasso Park all the time. They have boxes that they shove magical sticks into.”

“Magical?” Poo-Poo asked.

“Oh, yeah! Way magical,” said Karen. “You should see them. They press their magic sticks into the boxes of liquid, then put their lips around one end of the stick and then the drink comes up! That’s why it’s magic. The liquid goes up!”

“It doesn’t. No way,” said Stripes.

“It does, I swear!” exclaimed Karen.

“That’s impossible. Liquid can’t go up. It only goes down,” Mutt said. He had reached the shore now and climbed out of the creek. “Rain comes down. The creek runs from higher points to lower points. Liquids do not go up.”

“I know that,” said Karen. “That’s what makes the sticks magical.”

Now, this conversation would likely have continued for some time, but by now everybody had had a drink and gathered around Mutt. Stick Dog, Karen, Poo-Poo, and Stripes knew that he was soaking wet, and it was a very warm day.

“Ready?” Mutt asked.

They all nodded.

And Mutt gave a lengthy and mighty shake, showering the others with water droplets and cool, wet mist.

“That feels wonderful,” Poo-Poo said.

“And smells even better,” added Stripes.

As a token of gratitude for the cooling shower, everyone helped Mutt collect all the things that had sprayed out of his fur with the water. There was a pen cap, a shoelace, a broken Ping-Pong ball, and a chocolate bar wrapper.

Now cooled off, the dogs relaxed. With the rippling of the creek water splashing across the rocks and against the muddy banks, it was a lovely and peaceful place to be.

Until the peace and calmness were interrupted by two sounds.

The first sound was Stick Dog’s stomach.

Stick Dog was hungry. And Stick Dog needed some food. And when Stick Dog gets hungry, his four friends get hungry too. That’s just the way it happens.

It’s kind of like when you’re in class and your teacher is up in the front going on and on about how red and blue make purple or three times three is nine or how neat handwriting is, like, the most important thing in the world. In fact, without neat handwriting, the whole future of the planet could be in jeopardy. If none of us knows how to put that little extra bumpy thing on a cursive Z, then the whole world is going to collapse under the horrible weight of bad penmanship. If handwriting isn’t neat, well, that’s just the end of everything. We all might as well crawl into a hole and wait for the inevitable crashing of all human life!

My teacher and I don’t really see eye to eye on this subject.

Anyway, when one of those teachers is giving one of those lessons and everybody in class is getting a little sleepy and droopy eyed, something happens.

Do you know what it is?

Somebody yawns.

And when that somebody yawns, it sets off a gigantic chain reaction among all the students, and everybody starts yawning. And then the teacher turns around so nobody can see – and then the teacher yawns too.

Well, that’s sort of what happened regarding Stick Dog’s stomach. When it started to rumble, then all the stomachs of all the other dogs started to rumble too.

But that was just the first sound that interrupted their cooling break down by the creek. The other sound came from something none of the dogs had ever seen before.

And someone else had heard it too.

They heard a single, small bell.

Karen asked, “What’s that jingling sound?”

Poo-Poo answered immediately, “Woo-hoo! It’s Santa. It’s his sleigh. Reindeer! Jingling bells! Doggie treats for everybody! Woo-hoo!”

“Umm, Poo-Poo?” said Stick Dog.

“Yes?”

“It’s June twentieth.”

“So?” said Poo-Poo. He was very distracted and was barely listening to Stick Dog at all. He was looking up at the sky, swinging his head back and forth, looking for Santa and his reindeer. “So what?”

“Umm, Christmas is in December,” said Stick Dog. “You know, December twenty-fifth, when it’s all cold and snowy and the humans have pine trees and lights up all over the place?”

Poo-Poo looked down at the ground. It sort of looked like he expected there to be snow all the way up to his knees. “It’s not winter, is it?” Poo-Poo whispered, and looked glum. Then his voice grew louder, and he smiled a little bit. “Maybe Santa made a mistake.”

“Does Santa ever make mistakes?” Stick Dog asked in the kind of way like everybody already knew the answer because it was so obvious.

“No,” said Poo-Poo. Then he whispered, “He never does.”

While Poo-Poo was hanging his head, the other dogs took turns guessing what it could be.

Karen said, “I think I know what that sound is.”

“What is it?” Stick Dog asked.

“It’s a giant flying cuckoo clock. Some of those things jingle. Maybe the little bird that pops out of the door and rings the bell when the hour changes has taken over the clock. And maybe it’s flying somewhere above us, jingling its little bell whenever it wants – even if the long hand isn’t straight up, meaning it’s whatever o’clock! Maybe it’s a cuckoo clock revolution!”

Stick Dog looked at Karen. Then he looked at her some more. “I must tell you, Karen,” Stick Dog began. “I’m very impressed that you know how to tell time.”

“Oh, sure. It comes naturally to me,” Karen said, puffing out her little dachshund chest. “I know all the o’clocks. Two o’clock. Seven o’clock. Fifty-three o’clock. Tomato o’clock. All of them!”

“I see,” Stick Dog said very slowly. He then waited a few seconds and added, “I really like your idea about the cuckoo clock revolution and everything. It might be absolutely right. In fact, it probably is. But I was just wondering – Are those birds inside cuckoo clocks actually alive? Or are they just little, carved, wooden models?”

Karen whispered, “Little wooden models. I guess it’s not a cuckoo bird revolution after all.”

“But it was a good guess,” encouraged Stick Dog.

“Yes. Yes, it was!” said Karen, feeling better already.

Now, Stripes and Mutt had their own ideas about that little jingling sound. Stripes’s theory was that a huge new species of miniature humans had emerged from beneath the earth and announced that they were going to take over the planet, ringing bells constantly to drive everybody crazy. Mutt’s theory was different. He thought there might be a human riding a bike and ringing the bell on the handlebar.

“Those are two very different theories,” said Stick Dog. “Why don’t we go look?”

“Should we bring weapons?” asked Stripes.

“Why?” asked Stick Dog, cocking his head.

“Because,” Stripes said, and then sighed as if this was the most ridiculous question she had ever heard in her entire life. “What if the new miniature, bell-ringing humans are just over the hilltop? What if they’re ready to charge at us with all their bell-ringing strength and ferocity? Don’t you think we should have weapons just in case?”

Stick Dog considered this question for a moment, then said, “Yes, Stripes. I think that’s a great idea. We should be prepared to meet and fight this new race of miniature, bell-ringing humans. Without question.”

“Exactly!” Stripes exclaimed.

“Unfortunately,” said Stick Dog, “we don’t have any weapons. Never have.”

“Darn it,” said Stripes.

“But if we did, we would most certainly put them to use,” said Stick Dog. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”

The five dogs ran from the creek and up the hill to investigate the jingling sound. They peeked over the top of the hill and down the other side. There, they discovered the source of that jingling bell.

It wasn’t Santa Claus.

It wasn’t a bicycle.

It wasn’t a cuckoo clock revolution.

And it wasn’t, believe it or not, a bunch of miniature humans emerging from underground to ring their bells and drive everybody crazy.

It was Peter.

Now, Stick Dog didn’t know for sure that the man’s name was Peter. But the side of his cart said “Peter’s Frankfurters.” So he just assumed that the man pushing the cart was named Peter. The cart was white, with printing on the side. There was an umbrella over the top of it. And it had four big wheels. Peter was pushing it and ringing an attached bell.

“That’s the strangest contraption I’ve ever seen,” said Poo-Poo. “Is it a car, a bike, a wheelbarrow? What?”

The five dogs peered over the hill and watched this strange man with the strange cart.

“What’s a ‘frankfurter’?” asked Karen.

“I have no idea,” said Stick Dog.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “Oh, yeah, right. The dogs are reading now. They went to school and learned phonics, and they know the alphabet and they can read everything – billboards, hot-dog carts, encyclopedias. Like I’m going to believe that.”

Well, come on now. These dogs have been talking in this story for a while now. Actually, I’ve been interpreting for them, if you want to get picky. So, if they can talk, they might as well be able to read. And I don’t mean to be rude here, but you did agree not to bug me about every tiny detail. Remember?

Who knows? Maybe in the next Stick Dog adventure, they’ll all be in college studying to be engineers, teachers, and botanists.

Anyway, they can talk – and read. Okay?

The five dogs continued to look over that hill, and every couple of minutes Peter would ring that bell. Then, something happened that explained what frankfurters were to the five friends.

A boy came up to Peter and asked him something. They talked for a minute, and the boy gave him a dollar. And Peter gave him something back. The boy sniffed at it and then took a great big bite. And smiled.

“What is that?” asked Karen.

“That must be a frankfurter,” said Stick Dog.

“Can you smell that?” asked Stripes, suddenly licking her lips. “It smells superb-i-melicious.”

Stick Dog looked at Stripes but didn’t say anything. He knew ‘superb-i-melicious’ was not a word. But he also knew that if it was a word, then it would be the most accurate word to describe the wonderful aromas emanating from that frankfurter cart. His stomach began to growl even louder than before.

Stick Dog firmly stated, “We have to get some of those.”

Now, before we continue, you all know what a frankfurter is, right? It’s a fancy name for a hot dog. I’m calling them ‘frankfurters’ in this story because using ‘hot dog’ could get a little confusing – or at least a little too repetitive. There would be too many ‘dogs’ everywhere. So we’re using the word ‘frankfurter.’

And Stick Dog’s right: They really are delicious. With a little ketchup and mustard, mm-mmm. On a nice, soft, doughy bun. Maybe a little cut-up gherkin. Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. A sprinkle of salt. Maybe just a little shredded cheddar cheese on the top. Superb-i-melicious indeed.

“We need a plan,” said Stick Dog. It was just then, however, that something caught his eye as he spied the frankfurter cart as a potential food target. It was a slight movement among the branches of a maple tree. The tree itself was a few houses down the road from where Peter had parked the frankfurter cart. It was very obvious that Stick Dog had become distracted by what he saw. He continued his thought, but his speech had become monotone, and his words came out much slower. “We … need … a … plan … to … get … those … frankfurters.”

“What is it, Stick Dog?” Mutt asked as he stepped closer. He had noticed Stick Dog’s change in demeanor.

Poo-Poo, Karen, and Stripes noticed as well. There was a sudden nervousness among them. It was quite unusual, they knew, to see Stick Dog lose his focus – especially when food was involved.

“I saw something in that tree,” he whispered. “It’s about four houses down the road from Peter, the frankfurter man. In the maple tree there by the road.”

The other four dogs instantly turned their heads in that direction.

“How far up?” Mutt asked.

“About five or six branches from the bottom,” Stick Dog answered. He had not stopped staring at the spot. “On the left side.”

As everyone calculated this and peered in that specific area, a branch there shook a little and then the branch below it shook a lot – as if something had moved from one tree limb to another.

“If it’s a squirrel,” said Poo-Poo, “I’ll take care of this problem in a jiffy. That maniacal little nutkin doesn’t stand a chance with old Mr Poo-Poo on the case!”

This startled Stick Dog out of his trance. His voice and speech pattern normalised. “It’s not a squirrel,” he said quickly. Stick Dog didn’t want Poo-Poo charging out of the woods and barking up at the tree. That would definitely put Peter on alert – and ruin any chance they had of getting those frankfurters. “I saw a strange set of eyes. Not a squirrel’s eyes or a bird’s. Something different.”

They all continued to stare at those upper branches.