The Danforth Puppy

By Paul Wallis

The Danforth Puppy is based on a real dog with a sense of humor that could flatten a train. These are stories I wrote for a friend and her granddaughters. My friend read quite a few of the stories to the dog, who seemed to like them. That's my idea of a good review. The Danforth Puppy starts out alone and abandoned, trying to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Wallis
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005682163

Paul Wallis

Professional writer, author of at least 17 of my own books, and several for other people. Digital journalist, musician, graphic artist. I love to write, and if people get 1% of the fun out of reading my books as I do writing them, they're a good deal. I loathe formula writing and I detest conformity. My books and I have a lot in common. Somebody said- "Guys don't read!" My answer- "Nor do cockroaches." Interesting how philosophy bumps in to these ideas, isn't it? Smashwords customers please note: The reason for my relatively high prices is that like most pro writers I'm very tired of getting paid peanuts for my hard work. A decade's work for very little has made me less than keen on birdseed prices. The only other thing I can say in favor of my prices is that you definitely won't find anything like my books online, particularly in the sugary world of management science. I don't write for idiots. Recent books The Danforth Puppy is my first attempt to write a kids' book, and great fun, based on a real dog whose story nobody would believe. You're Looking Sane Today 2 (What if you couldn't ingratiate yourself with vermin?) is a murderous attempt to hit a few targets in this ridiculous society. This is a preferred style, which I hope to use to enter the armaments industry. Conversations for Tiny Minds is about the sheer futility of basic communications in a very information-hostile environment. It was originally written some years ago, and I needed to check if I still agreed with the original. Irritatingly, I still do.

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THE DANFORTH PUPPY

By Paul Wallis

Copyright Paul Wallis 2021

First published Smashwords 2021

All rights reserved

Introduction and dedication

The Danforth Puppy is based on a real Toronto dog called Zorro. Zorro was a huge King Shepherd, so big he was often mistaken for a wolf. This dog was no ordinary dog.

He’d go to the bank and the bank manager instructed the bank clerks to have treats for him when he came in.

People came up to Zorro in the street with Christmas presents for him – People his owner, my friend Joie Maccarone, had never met.

Joie was out one day. She came back to find a posse of the police and neighbors looking for her, because Zorro had convinced them she was missing.

Joie rang me to tell me that Zorro had hijacked a pizza out of the fridge. She only found out he’d done it because he’d left the garlic dip under the table. Go figure.

Dedication

To my dear friends Joie and Zorro for all the fun and the endless laughs.

Chapter 1 The Danforth Puppy goes to town

The people had left him, and even taken the kids with them! He was lost! Apart from a general idea to go home, the puppy really wasn’t too sure how to do that. 

He followed the road, being careful to stay out of sight of the cars, which he didn’t trust anymore, after being left alone. 

Dogs and even puppies have incredible senses of smell, much better than any human. The puppy’s problem was that he was too young to know what many of the smells meant. 

All he really knew was that some smells smelt right, and others smelt Yuk, which is dog language for really awful. 

Actually, he was heading in the right direction, but it was a really long way back to town, and it was a very long walk for a little puppy.

The cold wasn’t much help, either. It was making him tired, and he still needed to find something to eat. 

He discovered that humans made a habit of leaving food lying around like they’d dropped it or thrown it away. 

He found some very strange things. He found some sort of sticky thing that tasted sweet, and some things that looked like dog biscuits, but turned out to be human biscuits. 

Not really his idea of food, but he eventually found something partly wrapped up in paper, with bread and meat. It was actually a hamburger, which someone had thrown away, and it had an egg with it. 

That was a good find, because although the puppy wasn’t too keen on the vegetables, it was a lot of high-energy food, just what he needed.

He soon realized that keeping warm and out of trouble was the real problem. 

He smelt something very strange, like a gigantic dog. He was scared and hid under some snow-covered branches. 

There was a sort of shuffling sound, getting louder and louder, and soon after a monster appeared!

It was enormous, bigger than the car!

It was a moose. The puppy hadn’t watched much TV, but he knew after getting a whiff of the moose that it wasn’t a puppy-eating monster. 

That was a relief. He didn’t want to get stepped on, though, so he moved away from the moose.

He soon picked up another, very different, smell. This thing, whatever it was, smelled much more hungry, as far as he could tell. He was sure it was dangerous. 

He hid again, this time in a small rocky area with trees, which seemed to have places made to fit puppies perfectly.

There came past a big, alert-looking, animal. 

It wasn’t a dog or anything like a dog. 

It looked fierce, and it was.

This was a cougar, and it was hunting. The animal smelt like it was really dangerous, and The puppy stayed very quiet and motionless as it went past his hiding place. 

After a while, when The puppy couldn’t smell the cougar, he ran as far as he could in the other direction from the one the cougar had been going. 

Which got him away from the cougar, but also got him lost. 

He had to go looking for the road, and luckily for him, found it before nightfall. 

He was learning how to look after himself very quickly. He had also discovered he could always find nice, snug, puppy-sized places where he could sleep safely and not have to worry about monsters.

This time he found a little cave. It was quite warm, compared to