Boof a Quirky Dog’S Tale

By Arfer Apple

This is the story of Boof the intelligent dog in a mans world. A born leader amongst a gang of dogs where the owners really beleive that they live a shallow quite dog style life.
If they only knew the real truth.
It is a dogs life full of sex, drugs and of course fights, all between bowls of dog biscuits to share with your best friend with a club house under the apple trees for daily meetings in a world only fit for a dog
These are the adventures of the dog gang of the century in a real dogs world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503501799

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Arfer Apple.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/10/2015

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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Contents

Chapter One Our Home

Chapter Two The Arrival of the Razor

Chapter Three The Captain’s Crack

Chapter Four Ah, Dobby

Chapter Five The Power Struggle

Chapter Six The Ringer

Chapter Seven It Is a Very Mad, Mad Dog’s World

Chapter Eight The World According to Razor

Chapter Nine As I Come of Age

This book is dedicated to all dog lovers of the world who really believe that their own dogs lead a subdued lifestyle.

CHAPTER ONE

OUR HOME

Living a quiet life in a home I share with my master, Bill Wayland, life here is pretty boring, so I formed a gang of dogs in the street. I was elected the leader, and the piece of garden under the apple tree is where we hold our daily meetings to try and put our world straight.

T here was movement coming from the main bedroom and the door opened and I looked at the shadow and found it was not the master of the home. Instead it was Sweaty Betty, the barmaid from the local pub, the Captain’s Crack. She smiled and gave me a pat on the head whilst she looked for her knickers. I gave her backside a sniff when she bent down to find her precious pink undies on the floor. A creak at the back door and she was gone. I followed her out and decided to water the rhubarb again whilst raising my right rear leg. I had a drink of water and ate the kebab that fell out of the master’s back pocket last night on his arrival to this quaint home we share together. It was just him and myself. His ever-faithful dog Rodger the Dodger they named me. My master is none other than Billy Wayland or Uncle Bill to his friends or even Asshole Bill to most other people. He has had more jobs than I have had cans of dog meat. There used to be a lady in this house by the name of Fat Pat. When I was a puppy, she moved into the house next door with Bill’s best pal Sid the Lid. And she has been there for the past six years. Now Sid the Lid is a cook. Well, he could be if he could cook, but I think by the size of him he tends to eat more than he serves. My owner, Bill, sometimes goes to work with him, but most of his time, Bill sits in the corner of the pub looking at the racing page of a newspaper trying to pick a winner, with an inch of beer in the bottom of his glass, waiting for somebody to buy him a drink. I tend to wander off from the drop-off point at the front of the pub and go down the alleyway, pass the empty barrels of beer to be at the back door of the pub kitchen to see Able Mable, the pub cook who is my best human friend. Without her, I would starve some days. I always love a Monday because I always get the bone from the Sunday roast to chew on; this always tended to put a sparkle in my step on the journey home. Whenever Bill is working, it would be a can of dog food a day and some dog biscuits, but if no work, yours truly, Rodger the Dodger, the pure-bred black Labrador, only gets the dog biscuits or sometimes share a stale pie with Bill. When I was born in a litter of six puppies, I was the only male with five sisters who stole most of our mother’s milk, and that is why I was called the runt of the litter. I was last to leave home at the lost dogs home and was sold for one dollar.

A nice human female by the name of Virgin Sally purchased me and then she took me home to Bill Wayland’s rusty caravan. We now tend to live in a house in a down market side of town that tends to be on the back of the local sewage works, which on a windy day and with the wind blowing in the wrong direction is not a place a multi-gifted thoroughbred like myself should enjoy.

Living with Bill’s smelly socks and shoes left laying around all the time, the air had always an aroma that you can get used to. Now the four-bedroom house is only used downstairs by Bill. We have the kitchen, the lounge, and Bill’s bedroom where he likes to entertain the local bike Sweaty Betty on his bouncy castle. She is known as the local bike because every man in the area has ridden her at least once in their life, some more than once. Always on the way home from the pub with Bill and Betty, I end up wearing his cap whilst he staggers home with Betty, who always was in the same condition as Bill. I have never gotten lost for the past six, almost seven, years I have made this journey. It was the only piece of road I have ever been up and down in my life. Mind you, once when I was a puppy, I ran off to the park next to the Captain’s Crack public house and chased a ball for some children until Bill gave me such a beating that my rear right hind leg will still give me pain every now and then if I raise it too high when I want to relieve myself. I spend a great deal of time sitting under the three apple trees in our garden. I tried to eat the apples when I get really hungry, but they are not to my taste.

I was only reminiscing about my past when the larger-than-life Sid the Lid came up the garden path. ‘Hello, Rodger ole boy, is your dad Bill in?’ he asked. I just wagged my tail and let wind and then thought, You big fat asshole, go and look for yourself.

‘Bill, are you in there? Are you even alive?’

With great effort just wearing his cap, odd socks, and underwear, Bill appeared in the doorway.

‘Ah, there you are, Bill. I got a week’s work for you.’

‘Doing what this time, Sidney?’

‘Some furniture to be dumped and a few rooms painted virgin white for Stan the Main Man.’

‘Okay, okay, I will be there at the garden gate in the morning. Just blow your horn, you are good at that, Sidney.’

‘So what have you been up to then, Bill?’

‘Oh, just riding the Betty bike.’

‘Do you wear your socks and cap in bed, Bill?’

‘I like to keep both ends of the ole body warm so I am red-hot in the middle with the boiler on fire.’

With that, Sid left and reminded him not to sleep in. Bill looked down at me, gave me a pat and told me, ‘There will be food on the table tomorrow night, Rodger the Dodger.’

I gave him a bark and a wag of the tail for approval.

I did notice my master, Bill, had reverted to nature except for his socks, one white and one black, and his cap a little twisted on the side of his head. I looked down to his pot belly to see he had a full erection. It is known by me, whilst I was half asleep listening to the tales of Bill’s younger years, when his nickname was Big Bill Wayland or Bollocky Bill from over the hill, that every female in town loved him, according to Bill when drunk and boasting to just myself. I went for the morning daily check on the goldfish in the garden pond; everything was just normal with them. I looked up to see a short-legged friend stick his head around the garden gate; it was my dear friend Razor the Bulldog, a grumpy individual always coming here for a morning and sometimes an all-day conversation. Today’s moan was about Shepe the German Shepherd who had cocked his leg right outside on the tree outside the Razor residence. ‘Yes, it was him, that ex-police dog Shepe who belongs to that dirty, bloody ex-policeman who thinks he runs this street.’ I just looked at him and thought that just one day he will arrive and say, ‘Good morning, Rodger, what a lovely day it is.’

Next to arrive was Terry the Terrier, who had come around looking for Sid.

‘Sorry, Terry, your owner has gone,’ I barked. He gave me the famous Terry vacant look, with his moveable eyeballs.

‘So where have you been all night, Terry?’

‘Mind your own business, Razor. I have been out visiting the lovely female Daisy the Cocker Spaniel up the road but found a queue outside her gate, if you must be so bloody nosy,’ he barked back. He looked at me for sympathy, but being a virgin, I had no idea what he was on about.

‘That Flash the Greyhound and Czar the Russian Wolfhound and even bloody Waldolf the Great Dane were all in line waiting,’ he said in a low-pitch bark. With that, he turned and suddenly bolted out the gate when Razor told me, ‘He just spotted that black cat from number eighty–three.’

I thought Terry will never catch him; two years he has been chasing him and all the cat did was to bolt up a tree and sit there till Terry gets fed up and goes home once again. Sometimes Terry goes off down the park for a swim in the lake when the black cat urinates on him from up in the tree.

I asked him one day what happened because he was gone for hours. He told me he went for a doggy paddle when the park keeper started to throw rocks at him because he thought he was chasing the ducks. An extra mile detour through hostile dog territory, the Woodhatch area, he had to venture through. He told me he felt he had run a marathon. I had only one eye open when he was telling me the story; I can do that. It took a lot of training to sleep with one eye open; it always fools them.

‘Catch ya later, Rodger. Be a good boy now,’ shouted Bill.

I decided to go and have a sniff around the bedroom and found a half-eaten hamburger and some cold chips amongst his sheets. The hamburger had lipstick on, so it must have been left by Sweaty Betty. I went over to the sofa and positioned myself in front of the TV, which is always on twenty-four hours a day with all that silly news that never mentions our little town where we live. Being bored, I made my way out to lie under the middle apple tree and watch the birds have their morning feed. I used to have a kennel, but one day Bill and Sid decided to have a BBQ and used the wood from the kennel for the fire. This had nothing to do with them being drunk at the time, I thought. The next day, Bill was on the phone to the local police station, telling them somebody had stolen the dog kennel. A certain Constable Wine Gum arrived and, after a walk around the garden, found a half-burnt piece of wood left in the fire with the name Rodger on it.

Sid did not accept the conclusion by Officer Wine Gum and ended up wrestling with him on the ground. It was then that Fat Pat had come into the garden to take control of the situation. Now I had sunk my teeth into the trouser leg of Sid, much to the amusement of Bill, who stood there in his famous pose of underwear, socks, and a cap, drinking his beer. I was very surprised on my second attack. I bit Sid because I aimed at the leg of Fat Pat, who was now in her famous position of sitting on the face of somebody, which just happens to be Officer Wine Gum in this case. They both ended up arrested and fined the next day, much to the amusement of Bill, so much so that he changed his socks and underwear to go to court that day. But he still wore one white and one black sock like he had done the day before.

Bill headed for the pub after the court hearing, and held his own court in the corner of the public bar. Every time Bill told his version of the story, somebody would refill his beer glass.

I had my own version, when I told Razor the story, about all three of them—that was Wine Gum and Sid with Fat Pat all wearing black trousers. So it was not my fault I bit the wrong leg.

‘Now I would have bitten all three legs to make sure I got the right one,’ Razor told me.

Now it was time for a siesta when I suddenly noticed an intruder in the garden, wandering towards the apple trees. It was John the Bong, stoned out of his head and wandering around like a chicken in a minefield slowly with two paces forward and one back and then two steps sideways. He started to pick some apples when I also noticed that Humprey Bogart that joint for me had also arrived. It was time for me to call battle stations with a rather loud howl which brought Terry the Terrier from under the fence, and like a streak of lightning, Flash the Greyhound had arrived with Czar and Waldolf not far behind him. Terry led the attack on John the Bong until Razor barked at Terry to let go of his owner. Terry just stood there with some of John the Bong’s trouser stuck in his teeth. With this new development, Czar and Waldolf stood back and listened to Terry speak in a rather high-pitched voice.

‘Well, thanks for the help, gang. Thank you for bloody nothfink!’ he barked.

His poor little voice had hit rock bottom, and now Razor, Flash, and Waldolf all howled in laughter when John and Humprey ran out of the garden and Terry had a sulk and went home back under the garden fence.

Now everything was back to normality, and it was time to try and have my siesta. I had a majestic dream of a king-sized pork bone still with a little meat on and a little too big to get my teeth around, so I had to take little bites at a time till my stomach was full.

Now I must have been tired because the sun had gone and the moon had arrived, and there was no sign of Bill. But at midnight, in a drunken state, Bill arrived home with a fish supper for us both. Being a dog, I was not impressed with Bill and only ate all the chips while Bill fell asleep on my sofa. Early in the morning, I took the fish outside and placed it under the first apple tree for Minx the Cat to enjoy, who would arrive much later in the day. I could not wait to see the face of Terry the Terrier when he finds the remains of the beer-battered fish.

It was not long before that noisy little bastard from next door was on the case of the battered fish. After drinking from my water bowl and leaving an early morning deposit down in the corner by the unused garden shed now overgrown with blackberries, I had words with him, and he was not impressed and then he noticed the fish batter on the ground.

‘You have been feeding that bloody cat again,’ he barked at me.

‘Well, dear Terry, he gets rid of the mice and any rats from around here and the birds out of the tree so they do not shit on me!’

He was spellbound and just looked at me. With my loud bark back at him, he started to pant, and when he was thinking, his eyes used to go in all directions and not necessarily the same direction: one eye would be looking up and the other would be looking down. What was supposed to be a tail but instead was a knob of muscle stood straight up like a television aerial.

‘Next bloody thing you will be talking cat.’ He finally thought of something to say.

‘Sorry, I only talk fluent dog, no cat or human tongue will flow from these doggy lips.’

With that, Terry lost another battle and went home to sulk and left me to sit alone to enjoy the rest of my day.

It was then I heard a bang and a clatter coming from inside the house. It was Bill; he had risen from the dead.

I ran inside to see him naked, and that was not a pretty sight. He had showered but kept on his socks so he could wash them at the same time.

‘Morning, Boof,’ he shouted.

Boof—that’s not my name because I am Rodger the Dodger and have been for the past six years since I have known him. With that, Bill grabbed me by the collar and took off my name tag and threw it in the bin.

I followed him inside the bathroom and out again. I think he was looking for a towel but dried himself on a dirty T-shirt he found on the floor. With his wet socks on his feet, he placed them in his boots and ended up placing the dirty wet T-shirt on from the floor because he had nothing else to wear. He did not bother to shave because Friday night was shave night and his hair did not need a comb whilst he wore that cap on his head. I waited for an explanation to the name change, but all he said was ‘What happened to my fish and chips? I was going to eat them for breakfast this morning cold.’ I just stood and gave him a vacant doggy look.

When Bill finally rose from his bed after lying down again, he later found the fish and chips paper, then he remembered that he must have eaten the meal last night with me on the edge of the bed. ‘Or was it the sofa?’ he mumbled to himself.

I jumped up on my sofa and sat with him while he tried to get his head together for work today. He told me that he had met a real lady by the name of Yvonne Ketley who just happened to have a giant poodle who also went by the name of Rodger the Dodger, so really you cannot have two Rodger the Dodgers in the same street, so my new name was Boof! He told me there and then, much to my surprise.

He produced a bag of dog biscuits from the cupboard and put some into my food bowl with some fresh water next to them. I thought then that a name change was the last thing on my mind at this moment in time, and I placed my nose into the bowl of dog biscuits and filled my mouth. I had just finished my last mouthful when I noticed Bill had gone back to sleep on my sofa. He was woken by the sound of a car horn from Sid the Lid’s mobile wagon.

‘Coming, Sid,’ he shouted.

It was then Fat Pat had placed her head over the fence to tell Bill, ‘Get ya ass into gear, Wayland. You got work to do today, you Bill lazy lump of muscle.’

With that, Bill gave her a two-finger hello.

I had a quick drink of water and then a little sleep with that beautiful meal I had just eaten. I had nothing on my mind except later on a little discharge from my rear end. I awoke with the tummy rumbling, so I decided the hole under the fence dug by Terry could be given a better use, so I emptied myself out. I looked up to see Razor wanted an entry bark from me to enter the garden. I gave him the command, and he marched in like the little trooper he was.

‘Have you heard there is a new dog in the street?’ barked Razor.

‘Pardon, ole boy,’ I remarked.

With that, Terry arrived and looked at Razor and then again at me.

‘Never mind the bollocks about a new dog in the street, Razor, some dirty bugger had deposited his daily business in my under-the-fence tunnel,’ he barked at Razor.

I looked at Razor, and we both howled with laughter. Terry was not impressed with us. He knew it was one of us, but which one? I noticed his eyes moving again in all directions, but he gave no comment.

‘Well, guys, I already know about that bloody poodle, and my master, Bill Wayland, has changed my name from Rodger the Dodger to Boof.’

There was silence, then the arrival of Waldolf the Great Dane, who managed to catch my last bark.

‘Boof, that is not a name for a dog,’ Waldolf barked, and with that, they all barked together into a full howl.

‘Boof is no name for a dog.’

With that, Waldolf left us because he would hear Stan the Main Man calling him. That just left the three of us, Razor, Terry, and myself, to sleep the day off together. The sun was up, and I was hot, so I went over to the fish pond for a quick drink. It was then I heard a creak of the back door and thought, It cannot be Bill. It is too early for him to come home. I could then see a rather tall man walking out of the kitchen door and up the garden path with my television. He loaded the television into the back of a van and drove off. I went back to sleep only to be woken by my main man, Bill, coming down the garden path with a fast step in his feet and a whistle from his lips, but all that was about to change when he entered the house. I suddenly thought to myself.

Then there was a lot of shouting and my name was used a few times in anger, and within ten minutes, Officer Wine Gum arrived on his flashy new motorbike. His old pushbike had seen its last days, he told Bill, who was not interested in his new motorbike but more about the stolen television.

‘So that’s it, Bill, keep your ears open, and let me know if somebody has a cheap television for sale down the pub.’

‘Sorry, Wine Gum, I do not drink in the public bar any more. I drink now in the lounge bar with the new love of my life, Yvonne Ketley, at the residence of number eighty-five, Hitchings