Free Lost! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong Page A

lot doing out of your box?’ And I was about to pick one up and put it with the others when I thought: Hmmm, this might be a pretend sausage roll.
    I know you can get pretend pies because I ate one once. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to eat it. At least, that’s not exactly true — I DID mean to eat it but that was because I thought it was a real pie, but it turned out to be made of painted plastic. It tasted horrible and I had to spit it out. SPLUUURRRRGH! Like that.
    All these splinters of plastic came shooting out of my mouth and made a mess and lots of people shouted at me and I got chased (again), but Ididn’t care because I can run like a crazy thing, like a rocket, like an un-guided missile. In fact, I am probably the fastest dog in the whole world. (Though I’m not very good at stopping.) Besides, they shouldn’t make plastic pies. What is the point of that?!

    Anyway, I thought: This roll could be like that nasty pie and there’s only one way I know to check if the sausage roll is real and that is to taste it.

2 The Pie Robber
    I picked up one of the rolls with my teeth. It certainly felt like a sausage roll. That was the first good sign. And it certainly smelt like a sausage roll. That was the second good sign, so I licked it all over just to make sure, and it certainly tasted like a sausage roll, and that was the best sign of all.
    I looked at the roll and the roll looked at me and I was thinking: Aha! Suppose it only tastes like a sausage roll on the outside, but the inside is made of something horrible, like mustard, or custard? Well, there’s only one way to check for that, so I bit into it, and guess what? It wasn’t made of custard or mustard. It was made of sausage. Right the way through.

    The roll was a bit chewed up by this time so I thought I might as well swallow it. Then I checked the other two sausage rolls that were lying on the floor to make sure they weren’t pretending, and guess what? They weren’t. So that meant the only thing to do was to stay there and guard the rest of the pies and rolls and make sure that nobody came along and tried to eat them.
    That was when I had my CLEVER IDEA. Now then, Trevor Two-Legs gets pocket money and he puts it in a piggy bank to keep it safe fromrobbers. So my clever idea was this. I thought: I can put all those pies in a special bank for pies, and then nobody can steal them. I haven’t got a piggy bank, but I do have a doggy bank. In fact, I AM a doggy bank!
    Wasn’t that a brilliant idea?! So I started eating as many pies and rolls as I could so they would be safe. Then I saw a two-legs coming towards the back of the van. He was a SAUSAGE ROLL ROBBER! I know he was a robber because he was wearing dark glasses. This was going to be my big moment. I’d definitely get a medal and a lifetime’s supply of pies for this!
    I crouched down behind a crate and got ready to growl and bark and leap up and throw myself at his ankles and go RAARGH! RAARGH!
    The thing was though, the man didn’t steal any pies or sausage rolls. All he did was shut the door. BANG! And I was still inside. I felt him climb into the front of the van and the engine started up and we were off. VROOOM!
    He wasn’t supposed to do that! He wasn’t supposed to steal the whole van! He was only supposed to steal the pies! I shall never understand two-legs. What was the point in taking the whole van when all he had to do was reach inside and take the pies from the back?
    We rattled off down the road and I was wondering what to do. I soon realized that my first duty as a guard dog was to protect the rest of the rolls and pies and get them safe inside my doggy bank. So I ate them, which meant getting them out of their boxes and everything. I’m so clever!

    Then I barked and barked, woof-woof-WOOF ! But the driver man didn’t hear me. I threw myself at the back wall of the cab. I leaped at it and scritch-scratched it and bit it and barked, but it was no use. HE WAS DEAF!
    Two-legs