Skidboot 'The Smartest Dog In The World' Read Online Free Page B

socks, ate underwear, and scent-marked everyone's clothing, finishing each piece by flipping it into the air to catch on fixtures on the way down. No, bad dog! polished off lunch by snacking on a shoe, usually one of Barbara's. No, bad dog! peed on David's LazyBoy rocker, the puddle so deep that it shorted out the television and cost them a week's work to get it back and running. David, angry, once hoisted the puppy overhead, but Barbara intervened.
    "Poor baby," she'd say, holding out her arms, unaware of Skidboot's raised eyebrow, cocked at David. Oddly, the puppy reminded him of his childhood, of being teased by neighborhood kids. Although Skid's dark eyes, unblinking, held something other than mockery, something he'd never seen in a dog before, a kind of intelligence that caused the dog to tremble with…something. Maybe the need to communicate, to tell him…something. What was it, a challenge? An offer of friendship? An insult?
    Meanwhile, shredded newspaper fluttered around the trailer, mingled with fugitive feathers, mounds of poop and gnawed toys. They might wonder whose feathers , and also why so destructive? Skidboot was a home wrecker whom his wife, for unexplained reasons, protected unduly. If he banished Skidboot to the barn, Barbara cradled the mutt, nuzzled it, and said to David, "You go sleep in the barn!" She was joking, of course, but jokes score only if there's truth behind them. At times, David wondered, who's in charge? The dog? Truth be told, the situation was getting out of hand.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Bad Dog
    The possibility of a throwback to the wild Australian dingo had crossed his mind. Dingo packs wiped out the entire population of Tasmanian devils as well as a prevalent population of Black-tailed Native hens. Dingoes ravaged sheep herds from one side of the continent and down the other. Even though the puppy was an American, he was also a mutt hybrid who could throw himself into compulsive fits so primal, so self-defeating, and so congested that it seemed almost demonic, or more kindly stated, OCD, or "Out Of Control Dog." The only difference between this pup and its wild forbearers was that dingoes had short periods of rest between dawn and dusk.
    What's wrong with you? David thought as he watched the dog windmill around their tight trailer, mouth snapping, saliva flying, shaking himself into a frenzy. A grocery bag, Barbara's shoe, an unsecured personal item threw it into a hyper-drive of yipping, panting, shaking, gnawing, followed by prey-dragging the item off into a recondite corner beneath the trailer where the panting, heaving and growling mounted with embarrassing intensity. The sight of a stuffed toy turned him insane. He moaned, howled, kicked his legs into a frenzy and gnashed his sharp teeth. Skidboot could repurpose a tennis ball into shreds in a minute flat. He could dismember a doll as quick as eating cobbed corn. And the more he ripped things apart, the more obsessed he became. Skidboot knew no limits, and the family sank beneath a tsunami of destruction that roared through their daily lives. In more forgiving moments, David thought ambition , followed by another thought, mayhem , followed by some punishment or another, usually insignificant.
    "Into the barn!" David roared.
    "This is not your dog to throw around," Barbara read his mind and scooped Skidboot up, nuzzling him, and David saw the puppy smile! But even without Barbara the dog held his ground. A handsome animal by now, rounds and hollows once thin had filled out, his sleek flanks glowing with mottled flecks of blue. If such confused coloring turned up on a flower, it would be a toxic bloom warning its predators away. His coat was mottled, as if someone had shaken oil with blue and white paint, then jiggled it around so that it flecked and spotted but never really mixed. Skidboot often lay, snout in paws, watching David with such intensity that David's back hairs crawled. It was like being stalked by a resting cougar. He felt as