Dudes Dog Days

By Emily Kay Johnson and Tyler Reynolds

A Dude’s best friend is his dog!
It’s summertime, so Deven gets a new video game, Grandad gets a new used RV, and Jayden finally gets a dog!
You know how it is with dogs--you want to take them everywhere:
On a police chase
Up the elevator
On the roof
To the theater
See how the Dudes handle a bear’s snack attack, rooftop ammo retrieval, and soccer-bombs from the Treehouse of Doom!
Get the most out of the Dude days of summer in Dudes Dog Days!
Book Five of The Dudes Adventure Chronicles.

Read this hilarious series in any order!
Madcap adventure featuring five suburban friends and their creative approach to home, school, and dart guns! Intermediate readers 8-14 love this series of hilarious hijinks for the modern generation. Featuring: how to outwit the PTA, cell-phone stunts for fun and profit, a DIY eighth-grader, and an attack Chihuahua. Best of all: Not a fart joke to be found!

Fun on an epic scale for your kids!
Each chapter book provides several stories realistic enough and wacky enough to keep them reading to the delicious conclusion.
The Dudes are a modern, diverse group of preteen boys whose clever ways to screw up turn their suburban neighborhood upside down.

Crazy funny book series for middle-graders!
Start with Save the Dudes or read in any order! In ebook and paperback. Or get the new audiobook with terrific voice actor Mark Sanderlin!

Praise for Save the Dudes (Book 1):
"With one priceless, laugh-out-loud scenario after another, the mother and son team of Johnson and Reynolds delivers a fine tale...

"...the story is given depth by emotional challenges each friend must face, described with subtlety.

"Readers will likely be eager to read the next adventure.

"Hilarious comic mayhem, rounded out by affection and insight." --Kirkus Reviews

Don’t miss the madness in: Dudes Dog Days

Spoilers: Classic humor without movie tie-ins or fart jokes!
Appeals to kids who like funny, realistic fiction without a tacked-on message or ripped-from-the-headlines problem. The perfect read for boys who will run a mile from an "award-winning novel". If you like Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins or Barbara Robinson's The Worst Best Christmas Pageant Ever, you'll love the Dudes!

Warning: The Dudes’ insane take on parents, school, and the PTA just might be catching.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that readers of the Dudes may imagine some resemblance between the Dudes’ parents and their own.

Makes a great gift or a perfect stocking stuffer.
Hilarious read-a-loud for the whole family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emily Kay Johnson
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781949212167

Emily Kay Johnson

Emily Kay Johnson lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two boys, and two cats. If you don't know who she is, that's okay. The important people to know about are the Dudes. At least, that's what her writing partner, Tyler, says. Luckily, no madcap plans or crazy schemes EVER happen in Emily's quiet suburb!Her goal, like that of most writers, is to spend as much of the day in a fantasy world as possible.

Book preview

Dudes Dog Days

Book Five:

The Dudes Adventure

Chronicles

By Tyler Reynolds

And Emily Kay Johnson

Epic Spiel Press

This work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Text copyright © 2020 Emily Kay Johnson

Cover illustration copyright © 2020 Jacquelyn B. Moore

All Rights Reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Smashwords Edition

Epic Spiel Press

To the pets who give us confidence and teach us grit.

And to Arden Lo who already knows how to turn her parents’ world upside down.

The Dudes Adventure Chronicles

Save the Dudes

Dudes Take Over

Summer of the Dudes

Dudes in the Middle

Dudes Dog Days

Check them out at thedudeschronicles.com

Available in ebook and Print on Demand

Return to the Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. Dads Day Dudes

2. Dudes-turbing the Peace

3. A Dude Named Rob

4. Dudes Training Day

5. Freewheelin’ Dudes

6. Dudes-turbing Again

7. Dudes Dog Wash

8. Groomer Dudes

9. Cats and Dudes

10. Dudes Going Up

11. Dudes Make Do

12. Dude’s Best Friend

13. Dudes Play Fetch

14. Rob and His Merry Dudes

15. Dudes Got Grit

16. Dudes and the Treehouse of Doom

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About the Authors

Other Dude Books

Coming Soon from Epic Spiel Press

Prologue

If you’re new to the Dudes, here’s the lowdown: me and the guys, that’s Tyler Reynolds (me), Nate Howe, Ryan and Connor Maguire, and Deven Singh, are best friends and live in Sherwood Heights. Ryan’s our leader. Deven’s in charge of laughs. Connor takes care of stunts. Nate excels at designing equipment as well as general knowledge. And me? I write it all down so the kids of the future will have a starting point for their own adventures.

During the last school year, we Dudes were kind of busy, what with creating a fake eighth-grader and using our mind-control talents on the entire middle school and all. (If you want to know more about that, read Dudes in the Middle.) But now it was summer. The Dudes were about to have plenty of time on our hands out from under the eyes of teachers and other adults. We ought to be able to really get stuff done.

Lots of people think there is something wrong with kids today. (Usually, it’s the kids of yesterday who think that.) But, despite what people say about modern kids being lazy and glued to their screens, the Dudes are tougher than we look. Truth is, we’ve got more grit than most people can handle. And this summer is where we had a chance to prove it.

1 Dads Day Dudes

So, you knew Father’s Day is in June, right? Yeah. Me neither. Luckily, Mom doesn’t rely on us kids to know what day it is or anything. (By kids, I mean me and my little brother Jayden and my little-er brother, Leon, who’s really still a baby even though he can walk now.)

Anyway, every time Father’s Day comes around, Mom gets something for me and Jayden and Leon to give to Dad. Jayden wraps it up in some of his best drawings, and we pretend it was our idea—which he might believe if Jayden kept his mouth shut.

What is it? Jayden asked (again) this year after Dad had opened his present.

Why, it’s soap-on-a-rope! said Dad just exactly like that was a thing.

What’s it for? asked Jayden while Leon stomped on the wrapping paper with cries of angry triumph.

It’s for washing, I hollered over the noise. Don’t you remember from last year?

Of course, he remembers, said Mom.

But what’s the rope for? Jayden asked, holding it up like a hangman’s noose.

Mom turned to me. "Why don’t you explain it to him, Tyler, she said.

It’s so you don’t lose it, I said, like a keychain, I added, trying to avoid sounding like I thought dad was the kind of guy who could lose his own soap in the shower.

Can’t you put a Bluetooth tracker on it? asked Jayden. I knew he was referring to the tracker Dad had put in Jayden’s third jacket just in case it got left somewhere (after he’d already left the first two jackets somewhere).

A tracker would slip right off the soap, I pointed out to Jayden.

And the water wouldn’t be too good for it either, Dad added.

What’s that smell? asked Jayden, nearly inhaling the whole bar.

Sea Spice, I said, reading the box.

Arrrgh! growled Dad. It’ll be a nice change from land-lubber soap smell, he added, prompting Leon to glare at him.

My littlest brother had reached what Mom called the angry stage. Having mastered walking and talking, he was alert for any changes that might screw up his world. I guess Dad talking in his spicy sailor voice qualified.

Soap at Nate’s house doesn’t have any smell, I informed them, changing the subject before Leon could erupt again. His mom buys everything unscented to protect her family from chemicals.

Hmm, said Mom, like she was newly considering the danger to our noses. Since my mom was too busy to research stuff on her own, she liked to use Nate’s mom, Mrs. Howe, like her own personal internet search on the dangers of modern life.

I’ll just go put this in the shower, said Dad, for later.

We usually never saw Dad use his present, of course, but, when we went to Grandad’s house this year, his present was hard to miss.

It was a new used RV called the Freewheeler which he bought for himself. He said the soap-on-a-rope we brought him was just the thing for the little shower cubicle. While Jayden and I checked out the inside, Grandad stood in the driveway and told Mom and Dad and Leon that, someday, he wanted to take me and Jayden on a driving trip through North Cascades National Park and maybe even as far as the Canadian border.

Really? said Dad.

I’m not sure… said Mom, trailing off.

She glanced toward the RV, but she didn’t see me where I was lying in the top bunk over the cab, peeking out the screen vent and listening.

It’s just that Jayden is going through a nervous phase, Mom said quietly.

Jayden lives in a nervous phase, said Dad.

I’m just not sure how he’d feel about being away from home…, said Mom.

And out at night, added Dad.

Nonsense, said Grandad. Every boy loves a good campout. We can try it tonight with a sleepover. I’ll park in your driveway. That way he’ll still be at home. And he’ll have me with him.

And the Dudes! I shouted, making Dad jump and Leon squeal as I scrambled down from the bunk and burst out the door.

The Dudes can have a sleepover to show Jayden how fun it is! I suggested.

I hadn’t had a sleepover since Leon was a newborn and Mom and Dad had let me have the Dudes over to make up for kind of forgetting my birthday what with all the baby junk going on.

It was great, but, for some reason, ever since then they’ve said no sleepovers. I don’t know why. The Dudes didn’t wake them up or stain things more than baby Leon was already doing. But parents are weird that way.

Just a minute, said Grandad. This RV only sleeps four.

That’s okay, I said, seizing my chance. You and Jayden can sleep in the RV, and the Dudes and I can sleep in the dojo. The dojo is the treehouse we built two summers ago. It has three floors and no walls, and it’s perfect for ninja training and video gaming. I guessed it was about time we tested it for sleeping.

Well, said Mom, Jayden does look up to Tyler’s friends.

She wasn’t kidding: To Jayden, the Dudes were babysitters, supervillains, and rock stars all rolled into one. Last year, Jayden even had a Dude-themed birthday party.

Dad was always looking for an angle. None of them would be in the house! he realized, his eyebrows lifting.

You’ll see, said Grandad. Bunking out with his old grandad will be an experience Jayden will never forget.

As usual, Grandad was right.

Grandad drove the RV over that afternoon and showed us how to hook it up to the garden hose and the extension cord.

Jayden was pretty excited about the new