But then…

  Yipes, his face began to harden, I mean, it looked like the trunk of a hackberry tree: rough, wrinkled, ugly. No, it was worse than that. Remember that sometimes in the morning, when his hair is in shambles, he begins to look like a vampire? Well, that Vampire Look was coming back, and all at once, I…I lost confidence that the man before me was really Slim Chance.

  Don’t laugh. If you’ve never been a dog, if you’ve never been involved in life and death struggles with vampires and Charlie Monsters, you just don’t know how strange this world can be. I mean, things never stay the same. Our enemies will show up in a clever disguise (a bachelor cowboy), then change into another (a burglar), and before you know it, they’ve change into a third disguise (a vampire).

  We know what they’re doing. They’re trying to confuse the dogs, and I’m sad to report that sometimes it works. We try to adjust our systems and tactics, but it’s impossible to beat them at their own game all the time. Once in a while, they change costumes so fast, they slip through our security net, and then we’ve got a problem that goes all the way to top management.

  And let me tell you, our toughest decisions come at us at seventy miles an hour. I mean, we’re standing in the middle of the highway, blinded by headlights, and we have about two seconds to choose from a narrow menu of options: run, fight, or bark.

  That’s where we were on this deal, and I had to make a decision, fast. I hit the button for Option Three and began blasting out some big ones, the kind of barks that produce such a powerful recoil, a dog bounces backward on every…

  “Hush!”

  …bark. Okay, maybe it was Slim again, but how’s a dog supposed to know?

  He pointed a bony finger at the strips of bunting paperwork, and spoke in a voice that sounded like a hacksaw cutting pipe. “Did you do that?”

  Who? I glanced around. Where was Drover? He had vanished, the little…wait, there he was, cowering beneath the coffee table, but Slim wasn’t looking for Drover. His eyes came at me like bullets.

  “Bird brain! First you wreck the lamp, then you toilet-paper my house! Out! Scat!”

  He flang open the door again and pointed, well, outside, it seemed, and maybe he wanted me to leave.

  Fine, I could leave.

  I shifted my ears and tail into the Rebuked Display and went slinking toward the door. I had a feeling that, as I slank past him, he would boot me in the tail with his foot, and he did.

  It didn’t hurt all that much (he was barefooted), but it seemed undignified. Our people just don’t understand how hard it is to be a dog.

  Moments later, the door opened again and Drover came flying out. Mister Grumpy McGrumble had pitched him out, and there we were on the porch of the house that didn’t burn down, two loyal dogs who had been tricked, rebuked and rejected.

  The runt skidded to a stop, collapsed on the porch, and began bawling. “He threw me out of the house and I didn’t do anything wrong! I was just tying to stay out of the way. It breaks my heart!”

  Would I go to the trouble of comforting him in his time of need? Sure. His little heart was broken and he needed a friend. I made my way over to the spot where he was kicking all four legs, and prepared for the ordeal of listening to him moan and whine.

  Chapter Five: Words of Comfort

  I sat down beside his potsrate body and gave him several fatherly pats on the rib cage. “There, there.”

  He stopped kicking his legs and stared at me through tear-soaked eyes. “What?”

  “I said, ‘There, there.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, it means…it’s a way of expressing sympathy.”

  “There, there?”

  “Yes, exactly. Those two words are filled with sympathy.”

  “Yeah, but it was only one word and you said it twice.”

  “Drover, I’m aware of that. When you repeat the word, somehow it picks up an extra load of sympathy.”

  “It doesn’t sound very sympathetic to me.”

  “Well, maybe you’re too picky for your own good. Look, I’m the one who came over here to show concern, and I can choose my own words. Those were the words that came from my heart.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t mean anything. You could have said, ‘There, there, it’s just not fair.’ That would have meant something, and it even rhymes.”

  “Yes, or I could have said, ‘There, there, I just don’t care.’ That rhymes too.”

  His chin trembled. “I’m going to cry.”

  “Don’t cry! It grates on my nerves.”

  “If it’s so great, why can’t I do it?”

  I stared into the vast emptiness of his eyeballs. “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Doe, I’b dod.”

  “What?”

  “It’s by allergies. Whid I gry, they stard ag-ding ub.”

  “That’s my whole point. Stop crying.”

  “Well, I guess I cad dry.” He sniffled and wiped his eyes. “There, does this sound better?”

  “Much better. See, when you talk with your nose stopped up, it makes you sound like a goofball.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, what were we talking about?”

  “You got me in trouble—again. I didn’t do anything wrong, but Slim yelled at me and threw me out of the house.”

  “And you’re blaming me for that?”

  “Well, you woke everybody up and said the house was on fire.”

  “Drover, everything had turned red. I was just trying to do my job. But if it will make you feel better, I’ll admit that I was misquoted. Does that help?”

  “No, ‘cause then you stole the toilet paper.”

  I groaned. “I did not steal the toilet paper, and it wasn’t yours to start with. I was merely trying to teach you a new and exciting way of decorating a house, but were you grateful? Oh no. And now you’re trying to blame me for your broken heart.”

  “Yeah, it’s smashed, and I need to cry.”

  “You will NOT cry. Be strong and brave. Shake it off.”

  “Well, okay.” He rose to his feet and shook his entire body, from nose to stub tail. It released a blizzard of white hairs into the atmosphere, and he grinned. “You know, I think that helped. I’m feeling better.”

  “Good, good. We’ve made some progress. Now let’s see if we can build on it.”

  “Gosh, how do we do that?”

  “First, we will bring this ridiculous conversation to an end. No more whining or sniffling. No more allergy attacks, and no more blaming me for all your problems.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Second, we’re going to sing a song about unrolling the toilet paper.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, what if we don’t know the song?”

  I moved my nose closer to his face. “Drover, nobody knows the song. We’ll compose it on the spot. We’ll write it from scratch.” Suddenly, he sat down and began hacking at his ear with a hind paw. “Why are you doing that?”

  “I don’t know. All at once, I had to scratch.”

  “Scratch on your own time. We’re fixing to burst into song. We’ll be doing it in the key of G-Whiz. Our starting note will be K-Sharp.”

  “BK-Sharp?”

  “K-Sharp.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not O-K. K-Sharp!”

  “You don’t need to screech.”

  “And you don’t need to scratch! Get the note right. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m all confused.”

  I glanced around and blinked my eyes. “You know what? I’m a little confused myself. Do you suppose it’s just us? I mean, let’s face it. If someone were listening, he might think that we’re a couple of morons.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but…never mind. Let’s knock out the song.”

  Whew! You see what I have to put up with around here? Carrying on a conversation with Drover is exhausting, and sometimes I feel that I’m trying to walk through a vat of glue. Never mind, let’s do the song. Here we go.

  Decorating Slim’s House

  Hank

  That toilet paper caper really flopped.

  Hey, I pushed the roll around until I dropped.

  I started out with expectation

  That this bit of decoration

  Would improve the looks of Slim’s ugly shack.

  I guess I should have known he wouldn’t see the point

  Of me trying to add some color to his joint.

  The problem was, he has no taste,

  And all my efforts went to waste.

  I wonder why a dog should even care.

  Drover

  The idea of rolling paper came from me.

  It wasn’t yours and you borrowed it for free.

  You butted in and then you rolled it,

  But the truth is that you stole it.

  I couldn’t believe you did that to a friend.

  I had to watch you while you had all the fun,

  Chasing paper through the house at a run.

  But it turned out not so bad,

  You made a mess and Slim got mad.

  And all that I can say is “Tee hee hee!”

  Hank

  Drover…sigh.

  It’s so sad to see you showing no respect

  For your leader who got caught up in a wreck.

  I was trying my very hardest

  To give expression like an artist,

  And I still say the result was pretty neat.

  So, oh well, I got in trouble, that’s not new.

  But Drover, don’t forget that so did you!

  Even though you tried to hide,

  You still got blamed and tossed outside,

  And here we are together, Tee hee hee.

  Drover

  Yeah, even though I tried to hide,

  I still got blamed and tossed outside.

  It isn’t fair and I think I’m going to cry!

  Well, that was our song. What do you think? It wasn’t the best thing we’d ever done, but it wasn’t so bad either. Actually, I thought it was pretty cute, and I liked the part about Drover getting into trouble. Hee hee.

  But I could see that it was about to set him off on another round of boo-hooing. All the symptoms were there: the down-turned mouth, the quivering lip, and big tears shining in the corners of his eyes. I searched my memory for words of comfort that might halt the slide of his tears: what could I say to make the little guy feel better?

  And you know what? As if by magic, the words popped into my mind, and maybe they were just the right ones for this moment. I rushed over to him, patted him on the back, and said, “There, there.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “You already said that.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, and it sounded dumb. We even talked about it.”

  “Hmm. You know, you could be right.” I paced a few steps away. “Drover, sometimes the deeper layers of meaning don’t appear at first. We have to repeat our words repeat our words and hear them again again.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes. Let’s try it again, but this time I’ll put more feeling into it.” I turned and faced him and delivered the message again: “There…there!”

  He blinked and rolled his eyes around. “Try it one more time.”

  I filled my chest with fresh carbon diego and leaned toward him. “There…THERE!”

  The corners of his mouth began bending upward into a smile, and I seemed to detect a...well, a look of tranquittery in his eyes. And he said—this is a direct quote—he said, “I’ll be derned. Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  The question hung in the air as we gazed into each others’ eyes. In that long, throbbing silence, I began to realize…I began to understand that Drover was one of the weirdest little mutts I’d ever met, and that most of what we’d been talking about over the past fifteen minutes made no sense—I mean, ZERO.

  Oh well, he wasn’t sobbing his life away and seemed to be feeling better. In fact, within seconds, he was hopping around on the porch and had returned to the happy little guy we’d always known.

  Wow. Sometimes I wonder…never mind.

  Chapter Six: Uh Oh, the Boss Shows Up

  You know what? Drover had raised a pretty interesting question: What was so comforting about a dog saying, “There, there”? Viewed from a certain angle, it sounded, well, empty, but that’s all the time we can spend on Words of Comfort.

  If you found parts of the last chapter confusing, don’t worry about it. Try to keep in mind a nugget of Cowdog Wisdom: The mind of a dog is an awesome thing, but the fact that it’s awesome doesn’t mean that we can always understand what it’s doing.

  So there we were on Slim’s porch. Drover and I had been ejected from the house on trumped-up charges. We had written and performed a pretty crackerjack song, and I had helped Drover through a difficult time in his little life.

  Things were looking better for us, but a cloud still hung over our world. Slim. The last time we’d seen him, he had been in a dark, foul mood. Angry. His morning hadn’t started well, shall we say, and he had blamed it on his loyal dogs.

  No dog on this ranch could have been surprised. Getting tagged for everything that had ever gone wrong in the world was just part of a normal day around here.

  Okay, in the interest of fairness, I have to admit that the Toilet Paper Caper might have gone over the line just a wee bit. Even though I had gone into the procedure with the best of intentions, a neutral observer might have pointed out that…well, it had made quite a mess, a hundred feet of paper strung out all over his house.

  In other words, somebody would have to clean it up, probably Slim, so maybe I should grit my teeth and accept some responsibility for adding another mess to his life.

  So listen up. Right here in front of everyone, I admit that a mistake had been made. Shame on the mistake for making itself! And shame on the paper for rolling itself through the house!

  Whew, that was tough, but there’s more. Remember the lamp? It was a priceless family heirloom, and it had shattered into a thousand pieces. Ruined. Slim had crashed into it all by himself but had tripped over me, hence I would get blamed.

  I needed to come up with a clarification. I began pacing around the porch, rehearsing my story. “Slim, let me begin by saying that I feel terrible about this. It was a beautiful lamp, I mean, the only object in the entire house that wasn’t Bachelor Ugly.”

  Wait. That sounds harsh, but that’s usually the way it goes with first drafts, right? You make a first pass, wad it up, throw it away and start another draft.

  Second Draft. “Slim, I never had the pleasure of knowing Aunt Olive, but she must have been a wonderful lady, and what a wonderful day it must have been when she gave you that wonderful lamp. Words can hardly express my sadness that you’re such a clumsy ox, you tripped over your dog and trashed a family heirloom.”

  Wait. That one started right but veered off in the wrong direction with “clumsy ox.” I continued pacing, composing Draft Three in a fog of deep concentration. This situation was going to require a lot more than “There, there.”

  I plunged into it.

  Third Draft. “Slim, at this very moment, my heart is a mirror image of Aunt Olive’s priceless heirloom lamp—a shattered ruin on the Floor of Life. And I understand that you’re going to pin the blame on me, just because I happened to be inside the house and you tripped over me.

  “I want you to know that it’s okay for you to dump all the blame on your dog. Dogs have been putting up with this for centuries. It’s what we do for a living. So, bottom line, if you want to be a scrounge, go ahead and tell everyone that it was all my fault. I’m strong enough to handle it.”

  What do you think? Would it sell? To make it work, I would have to come up with some good visuals: Tragic Ears, Lifeless Tail, Pleading Eyes, and the other body language that would give some emotional pop to the so-forth.

  I had a feeling that I could pull it off. Yes, I could sell this!

  But at that very moment, I heard odd sounds in the distance, perhaps tires crunching on gravel. My ears shot up and I switched on Scanners. Yes, it was the crunching of gravel, which meant that an unidentified vehicle was approaching the house.

  I reached for the microphone of my mind. “Hank to Drover, over. Tune in, son, we’ve got a UV coming this way!”

  His dreamy eyes drifted down from outer space. “Oh, hi. Did you just get here?”

  I lumbered over to him. “I’ve been here since dirt was invented.”

  “I’ll be derned. What was here before dirt?”

  “Drover, don’t start this. We’ve got a UV coming our way.”

  “A U-who?”

  “A UV, not a yoo-hoo, an unidentified vehicle. We’re back on Traffic and it’s time to launch all dogs. Let’s move out!”

  I sprang off the porch with a mighty leap, hit engines one and two, and went roaring around the north side of the house. Drover followed, running as fast as his legs would carry him (they were so short, they barely touched the ground) and firing off an occasion squeak. His squeaks fell way short of the heavy ordinance I was pumping out, but it was the best he could do.

  The impointant pork is that we launched all available aircraft, went ripping around the north side of the house, and put ourselves in position to intercept the intruder.

  Who would it be this time? We had no idea. The mailman? Not likely. He left Slim’s mail in the mailbox on the county road and never came to the house. Slim didn’t get much mail anyway, just a few bills, a couple of livestock magazines, and the monthly picture show calendar (that was a waste, he never went to the movies), so it probably wasn’t the mailman.