Read Online Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog by Tom Watson - Free Book Online

Mutt. “We all went along with your plan—now you can go along with ours.”
    â€œYeah, 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.”
    â€œHoo-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.”

    â€œIt is not.”
    â€œYes, it is.”
    â€œI would know my own tail, wouldn’t I?”
    â€œYou would think so, yes.”
    â€œSo, then it’s not my tail.”
    â€œTry this,” suggested Poo-Poo, overhearing the conversation. “Bite down a little bit.”
    â€œOkay,” 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.
    One problem.
    It didn’t work out that way.
Instead, here’s what happened.
    Karen raised her head ever so slightly over the top of that sheet. When she did, she could see what Peter, the frankfurter man, was up to. And do you know what he was up to?

    Nothing.
    He was just standing there at his frankfurter cart. He was looking around a little bit, sometimes away from the sheet the dogs were hiding behind, sometimes toward it, but never directly at it. He never turned all the way around. He leaned down to make sure his shoe was still tied. Then he double-knotted both of his shoelaces. He rang the bell on the cart once.
    Another time, he kicked a little pebble next to a wheel of his cart. A minute later, he rearranged the ketchup and mustard and salt and pepper, putting them in order from tallest to shortest—ketchup being the tallest. Then he rearranged them from skinniest to plumpest—ketchup being the skinniest.

    Well, all this looking around and rearranging (and re-rearranging) of the condiments resulted in three things:
    1. A very tidy frankfurter cart
    2. A long period of time when Peter didn’t quite look away
    3. An extremely tired stack of dogs—especially the ones at the bottom
    And do you know what happens to an extremely tired stack of dogs—especially the ones at the bottom?
    Here’s what happens:
    The stack doesn’t stay so solid and straight. It starts to wobble a little. It bends a little bit left. Then it bends a little bit right. It sways a little bit forward. Then it sways a little bit backward. And do you know what happens when more time passes and the dogs—especially the ones at the bottom—begin to get even more tired? Well, that’s when the swaying and the tilting start to get even worse.
    And that’s exactly what happened.
    â€œHold still down there!” Karen