Breathed - Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy

Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...27

Table of Contents

All animals dream.
But only dogs dream of us.

AUTHORS NOTE

The recently released Congressional Report on the Westminster Dog Show Riot is rubbish.

The source of that days injuries and property destruction is not so easily written off to the violent reaction to a panicked poodle peeing in the punch, as President Obama famously said when trying to calm the anxious nation.

This country has prided itself in facing its most traumatic events with the courage that comes from the unblinking truth, no matter how shocking.

After months of careful, courageous research into the lives of those responsible for this disaster, I am happy to deliver the true story to you now.

BERKELEY BREATHED

ONE

SCENT

The Rough-Handed Man carried him through crowded rooms empty of heat and kindness. The hands were shaking, but not from the cold. He became aware that the man was whispering to him: Its our turn, little buddy, little tough guy. I know you can do it. I need you to do it. Youre not so big, but you got a big stubborn heart biggern all of... of...

The voice paused.

Well, its biggern mine.

He was small for a dachshund and was being held upright like a fat salami on end. His bony spine lay against the mans chest, his front feet bobbing before him. His broken rib required that he be carried this way. His fourth leg was not a leg at all but a steel soup ladle taped to his stump.

He curled his tongue up to lick his nose, dry and cracked from the cold. He was aware of being carried past more menall mutts and mongrels, no purebredsbustling and shoving about him with arms tattooed, grimy, wet.

Human-being smells enveloped him like a foul blanket: Smoke. Sweat. Chewing tobacco. Alcohol. Roasting meat.

And money.

The human beings money smells of all those other things. Among all the stuff they love socars, kids, wood floors, driveways, socks, hair, teeth, feet, plumsonly their money they dont wash, he thought.

They should.

And this time, it smelled of something else.

Something new.

He couldnt identify it, this scent so unfamiliar. Long ago in a different life he could put a nose to the June breeze and tell you that the marigolds in the North Meadow had bloomed and new paint was on a fence somewhere and the furry-shoed Fat-Fingered Lady three miles down the road had just pulled a blackberry pie from the oven, sprinkled it with nutmeg and then farted.

But here, now, he didnt know this new scent. He knew he didnt like it. He also didnt care. He was past caring about anything.

The man bore him through the jostling crowd, down some stairs, into more darkness, before entering a large space with a soaring ceiling filled with more men in shadow that he could not see but he could smell. And hear.

They shouted and argued and spoke harshly and waved paper in their hands. There it is again. Money.

He was lowered over a plywood wall formed in a circle, down farther until he felt dirt below his three paws. Dirt. At the bottom of a room in a building at the edge of a concrete city, how strange to feel dirt.

He would have thought about this more if he hadnt raised his eyes to see fifty pounds of bull terrier opposite him, five body lengths away, both front feet lifted off the ground. A reddening human hand held the collar and much of the huge beasts weight as it strained forward, the muscles of his neck bulging and looking to explode. Pulses of hot mist shot into the frigid air from a gaping pink throat: a slobbering murderous locomotive building up steam. The eyes were unblinking and wild and fixed forward on a single point opposite the terrible mouth.

You want to kill me, the dachshund said aloud.

I do, said the other dog.

Isnt there anything youd rather do instead?

The big bull terrier stared at him, thinking hard. Hed never considered that question.

But the dachshund understood now why he was here, in this dirt, in this pit.

He looked up and found the face of the Rough-Handed Man staring down at him, looking crazy scared. Ya gotta fight, little buddy!

Fight.

The man might have just as well said, Float. Or, Fry up a haddock. Better would be, Faint.

He backed up until the wood planks found his tail, which folded below his rump as he pushed back, back.

At that moment he also knew what that new smell was. He looked down and saw it, a dark crimson ribbon woven amidst the filthy dirt and food wrappers.

It was blood. It was life.

But here, spilled and dried in this terrible place, it was death.

And here, finally, he knew it was the end of a long, unexpected road. He would go no further. Here I stop.

And here I die.

Slowly, he dropped his head and laid his long bony back down along the curved wall, three stubby brown legs out straight as if stretched on a porch on a hot day.

One of the men in the mob yelled out: Hes a-gonna take a snooze!

The crowd hushed into stunned silence as they stared.

Then they exploded into twice the frenzy, waving their smelly money harder. The raging dog across the pit twisted against his restraints. The Rough-Handed Man leaned over the wall, waving at him: Up! Get up! UP! YA CANT LIE DOWN, LITTLE BUDDY!

Watch me.

He dropped the side of his head flat against the dirt and looked sideways at the end of his world. He looked for somethinganythingto fix his eyes on rather than the drooling, corrupted fighting machine soon to be upon him with its broken fury. His gaze went up to a single arc bulb overhead flooding the pit with light. Blue, cold and blinding; yes, this would do.

He stared at it and then closed his eyes. A new light took its place: the sun on a cobalt sky above the rolling green hills of another time and another world long ago. It was dazzling. Its warm, he thought, and closed his eyes tighter. He traveled back and felt wild grass below his paws and breathed other, less cruel scents on the wind while he ran in a blur through a forest of exploding dandelions. And he heard her voice calling his name. Sam! Sam the Lion!

Her voice!

Heidy

Next page

1234567...27

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy»

Look at similar books to Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Robert Calder

The Dogs

Cassius Amicus

A Few Days In Athens: With Notes and Appendix by Cassius Amicus

Dawn Antoniak-Mitchell

Terrier-Centric Dog Training: From Tenacious to Tremendous

Gordon Thorburn

Cassius--The True Story of a Courageous Police Dog

Stuart Cosgrove

Cassius X

Westminster Kennel Club. Dog Show.

Show dog: the pampered life and trying times of a near-perfect purebred

Bradshaw

In defence of dogs: why dogs need our understanding

Atkinson

Bundle 319

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Pulitzer Prize Poetry

Eli Saslow

American Hunger: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Series

John W. S. Bradshaw

In Defence of Dogs

John McPhee

Annals of the Former World

Discussion, reviews of the book Flawed dogs: the 2004 catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pounds very available leftovers, unpolished gems! one-of-a-kind finds! some minor blemishes, presented for your consideration by Heidy and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.