Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog (12 page)

Stick Dog smiled and said, “Let's go get them.”

Chapter 9
Stackifying

With Karen safely rescued from the bearded man's house, the possibility of eating a whole bunch of those delicious-smelling frankfurters was now at the forefront of all of their minds. From the corner of the house, the five dogs waited and waited for Peter to turn his head in the other direction so they could sprint to the remaining sheet on the line and hide behind it.

“I'm not going alone this time,” Karen declared. “No way.”

“We'll all go together,” Stick Dog agreed. “We just have to wait for Peter to turn the other way.”

Do you like waiting? Not me. In fact, I think waiting is one of the worst things in the entire world. If I have to wait for something—like in the grocery line or at the doctor's office or to fall asleep at night when I'm really, really NOT TIRED and THERE IS NO REASON IN THE WORLD WHY I SHOULD HAVE TO GO TO BED SO EARLY AND LIFE IS SO INCREDIBLY UNFAIR THAT I COULD JUST SCREAM!—then I try to occupy my mind with something else. Like maybe I'll count to 1,056 by sixes, or try to name twenty-two flavors of ice cream.

Do you know what my favorite flavor is? You're not going to believe this. It's vanilla. The most boring flavor of all. Now, that doesn't mean I'm boring, okay? In fact, I can prove how NOT BORING I am. Yesterday I fell
up
the stairs. That's right: UP. Anybody can fall
down
the stairs, but not too many can fall up like me. That is definitely not boring.

It's painful. It's a little embarrassing. But it's not boring.

Anyway, I don't like waiting. Yuck. You know the worst waiting thing of all time? Waiting to get to a really exciting conclusion of a story. Yeah, that's terrible, all right.

Oh. Umm, yeah.

Back to the story.

Finally, Peter turned his head. And when he did, all five dogs sprinted to where the laundry was hanging from the clothesline in the yard of the blue house. They skidded to a stop behind the sheet, where they couldn't be seen.

But there was a problem.

The sheet was hanging almost all the way to the ground. They couldn't see Peter from under it. And it was flapping in the wind just enough that they might be seen along either side of it if they tried to peek out that way.

“How are we going to tell if he's turned his head again so we can go grab the frankfurters?” asked Mutt.

It was a very good question—and Stick Dog did not have an immediate answer.

But Poo-Poo did. First, he explained their situation.

“Look,” he said, “we can't see under this big cloth thing because it's hanging down to the ground. And we can't see around either side because the wind is flapping it all over the place and we're going to get spotted. There's only one thing to do. We have to look over it.”

“Great idea,” said Karen. Then, with all her mighty dachshund strength, she began jumping up and down to try to see over the top of the sheet. There was, of course, only one problem. Karen could only jump several inches off the ground. She stopped after a few more attempts, realizing that it was absolutely useless. “But how?”

“We climb on top of each other until we can see over the top!” said Mutt.

All the dogs nodded their heads with great enthusiasm at hearing this suggestion.

Except for Stick Dog. “No way,” was all he said.

“Why not?” asked Poo-Poo.

“We'll never keep our balance. We'll fall down all over the place and break our legs and tails. It will be a mess. A total mess.”

“Oh,” said Stripes, sort of quietly and knowingly. “I see what's going on here.”

“What?” sighed Stick Dog. His stomach was beginning to hurt a little. He wanted to taste one of those frankfurters. “What do you think is going on here?”

“I think that you don't like this idea because it's not
your
idea,” said Stripes. “We all went along with your idea about running over here and hiding behind this big, square, flappy, soft whatchamacallit. But now that
we
have an idea or two,
you
become the Mister-Always-Says-‘No'-to-Everything-He-Ever-Hears Man!”

“That's not . . . ,” Stick Dog began, but he realized he was too late. All the other dogs were nodding along with Stripes.

“Yeah, come on, Stick Dog,” said Mutt. “We all went along with your plan—now you can go along with ours.”

“Yeah, come on!” said Karen and Poo-Poo.

Stick Dog wanted those frankfurters. He wanted them badly. Even if it meant four dogs were going to be falling all over him and breaking his legs and his tail. “Oh, all right.”

“Hoo-ray!” the other four dogs exclaimed.

And with that, they started climbing up all over each other. There was not much organization or thought behind the process. And Stick Dog had given up trying to convince them of the proper way to do it—with the biggest dog at the bottom and the smallest on the top. Instead, they just started bashing together and climbing and falling and climbing and falling and climbing and falling. They got all tangled up and then untangled themselves and then got all tangled up again.

One time, Stripes asked, “Whose tail is in my mouth?”

Stick Dog looked back over his shoulder to look at Stripes and see whose tail was in her mouth. When he saw the answer, he said, “It's yours, Stripes. It's your own tail.”

“It is not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I would know my own tail, wouldn't I?”

“You would think so, yes.”

“So, then it's not my tail.”

“Try this,” suggested Poo-Poo, overhearing the conversation. “Bite down a little bit.”

“Okay,” said Stripes, and she bit down. She then yelped and winced at the pain in her own tail and quickly knocked down the entire stack of dogs again.

This is kind of an example of how things went for about ten minutes or so. After much strenuous effort, the dogs finally got stacked up. And, thankfully, Karen was on top. She was the smallest, and it worked out nicely that way.

So now it was time for Karen to take a peek over the top of the sheet—and see when Peter, the frankfurter man, turned his head in the other direction. When he did, they could de-stackify themselves, run to the cart, grab the frankfurters, and hightail it back to Stick Dog's pipe for the feast.