Free News For Dogs by Lois Duncan Page A

now asked Connor. “I can’t seem to find it on the Internet.”
    “It’s so new, the search engines haven’t picked it up yet,” Connor said. “And I have you to thank for finding it. I hadn’t realized how popular dogs were in Elmwood. I figured you wouldn’t mind if we added it to our subscription list. Business is business, and people who read a dog newspaper will read a dog magazine. Now that you’re selling off the Internet, we’re not in competition. No hard feelings, right, pal?”
    He smiled his wonderful smile, and Bruce smiled back at him.
    “No hard feelings,” he said. “Like you say, it’s all business.”
    Despite his resemblance to Jerry, it was impossible not to like Connor.

CHAPTER NINE
    Now that Mr. and Mrs. Walker’s trip was no longer a secret, it was suddenly all they could talk about. Bruce and Andi couldn’t have imagined that a trip abroad took so much preparation. Their parents had to get passports, purchase new luggage, and buy voltage converters so they could take their hair dryer and electric razor. And there were endless discussions about what clothes they should pack, since parts of Europe were cold and others were hot.
    “I just wish they’d leave and get it over with,” Andi said irritably after what seemed like hours trapped at the family dinner table where their father had spread out maps and explained their travel routes and their mother had read aloud from an assortment of brochures.
    Andi was so worn out by the demands of editing two newspapers that she had little energy to focus onanything else. Although the print edition of
The Bow-Wow News
was a weekly, they had decided to publish the Internet edition once every two weeks. To Andi’s surprise, that required more work than the weekly. The second page of the online edition had to be sent individually to people who mailed them quarters, and typing all those e-mail addresses took forever.
    There was also the challenge of having to select which lead article to feature on the Web site and exactly where to break it off so readers would be willing to pay to read the rest of it.
    “Our second edition has to be about Barkley,” Tim insisted. “Next to the issue about Bully, that one’s our most popular.”
    “That picture doesn’t look as clear as it did in the paper,” Andi said, studying the image on the computer screen. “If Mr. Murdock says that’s a stone, people might believe him.”
    “It is not a stone!” Bruce was outraged by the suggestion. “I know what it is! I was there when it happened!”
    “But you weren’t close enough,” Andi said, continuing her critical examination of the photograph. “It actually
could
be a stone. Or maybe a dead bird.”
    “You can’t have it both ways,” Tim told her. “Ifwe use a picture that was taken from a far enough distance away so it shows both the dog and Mr. Murdock, the lump on the sidewalk won’t show up in any detail. If we zero in on that, Bruce will have to crop out Mr. Murdock.”
    “I think I can fix that,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “I can enlarge just that one little section of the picture. It won’t be any harder than enlarging Bully’s meat loaf.”
    “That would solve the problem,” Andi said. “And I’ll write a poem about it. I’ve already got the first verse:
    The sidewalk glistened, clean and white,
Till Barkley ambled by.
His owner shouted, ‘Hurry up!’
And hit him in the eye.”
    “You can’t say that!” Bruce told her. “Mr. Murdock didn’t hit Barkley in the eye!”
    “On the thigh!”
Andi hastily revised the verse. “That would rhyme. I’ll change it. ‘
And hit him on the thigh!
’”
    “He didn’t hit him anywhere,” Bruce said in exasperation. “All he did was yank his leash.”
    “That’s almost as bad,” Andi said. “He could have broken his neck. And ‘leash’ is hard to find a rhyme for. Debbie, how are you coming with the gossip column?”
    “It’s Bebe’s turn to go to the Doggie Park,”