001Hello boys and girls. I'm Miss Nance and today I will be reading Dog Town chapters 66- 70. Chapter 66, a discussion with Mouse. Mouse wasn't happy with me. He didn't like it when I took matters into my own paws without consulting him. He looked me in the eyes and gave me a real talking to with his busy little hands. There's nothing like getting balled out by a 3in mouse. Mouse kept pointing to his wrist, which meant we needed to get back to supper time. He had mouths to feed. I had to be back, too. It was Wednesday poker night. Mouse seessawed his head. We'll be back before lunch, I said. We'll wait for front desk to go to the restroom and then we'll duck back inside. No one would miss me. Dog Town was a
002pretty big place, and I was always moving around. Mouse nodded. He didn't look happy about the plan, but he agreed. Meadowhead just sat there watching. When I told him we were coming along, his tail began to wag, something I had not seen before. Chapter 67. Why we steal socks. Meet couldn't wait to get home. But he was kind about letting me stop and rest when I needed to. He'd been right, though. I was in good shape from all the trips up and down the basement stairs. It was the telephone poles that slowed me down. Sometimes it was a poster for a play or an ad for perfume. I will never understand perfume. Why would you want to cover up your hind smell? Humans don't understand why we steal their underwear and socks. But how do
003you know a person if you don't smell their feet? Mostly though, the posters were for lost pets. I saw flyers for two cats and a dog. The dog had been in Dog Town when I first got there. His humans had found him and brought him back home. See, that was the other thing I didn't like to think about. If you were missing your dog, wouldn't you call Dog Town to see if your dog was there? I'd heard management field calls like that. There were lots of them. Chapter 68. Puppy love. Of course, we weren't the only shelter in town. There was South City and Pet Rescue. Maybe my humans had called those places. Or maybe they didn't post a sign because they didn't have a staple gun. More likely, they had a new dog, a
004puppy with four legs. He was probably sleeping in my bed, eating from my bowl, and getting petted by my people. Thoughts like these stung. I wish I could stop myself from thinking them. Chapter 69. The house on Spring Valley Road. The trip went quickly. The second I'd get tired, I'd see another telephone pole, and that would get me going again. Metalhead was so confident that I began to wonder if the situation with robot dogs might be different. You didn't have to feed a metal dog, fill his water bowl, or take him on walks. If you got tired of him, you could shove him in the closet. I'd heard management talking about how hard it was to find old robot dogs when she started Dog Town 2.0. On the other hand, closets got full, didn't they?
005And somebody had given up Metalhead, hadn't they? Anywh who, I stopped worrying about Metalhead. Clearly, he knew more than I did about the lifespan of a metal dog. After a while, Metalhead began to prance on his clunky metal paws. He was so excited, his tail was sticking straight up in the air. We were getting close to a yellow house with a white pickked fence and a wraparound porch. It had a lovely evergreen tree and a small yellow playhouse with white trim just like the real house. 22 Spring Valley Road was the kind of home a dog only dreamed about. And I was about to tell him that when he said, "I have a gift for you, a token of my appreciation for your help." He had something for us. My mind filled with visions of
006bacon glistening with grease. Buffalo burgers and butterbasted beef. "We'll go in through the garage," he said. "June leaves for school at 8:30 and the garage door will open." That worried me. Why wouldn't we go in the front door? But then I thought about the gift, which might be table scraps. I would do anything for table scraps. What dog wouldn't? Chapter 70. The garage door. At 8:30, the garage door opened. just like Metalhead said it would. And the car shot backward onto the driveway and into the street. The driver, a teenage girl with blue hair, shifted to drive, then ripped up the road without looking back. If she had glanced in the rearview mirror, she'd have seen a three-legged dog, a metal pooch, and a mouse steel into the garage before the door closed with a
007clunk. I jumped at the sound. We were locked in. Metalhead must have seen the expression on my face because he pointed to a button that operated the garage door. That's how you open the door. Mouse can climb up should that be required. Now, I thought you might enjoy some cheese. Cheese? He instructed Mouse to hook a small rope through the handle of a refrigerator. Then he pulled it open and rummaged around in there before producing a plate with two cheese sandwiches. A big one for me and a little one for Mouse. The smell of cheese is simply divine. The taste of it is even better. It was almost worth the trip just for that.