It took a while for the sun to find us again, what with all the trees and moody clouds in the way. The clouds weren’t the heavy Oregon kind that push all the air out of your chest and make Mom as jumpy as if a cereal killer were hiding behind the next tree. Instead, Washington clouds were the kind that a real sun could burn off by lunch time. Its first rays found us as the Wagon pulled up to the trailhead.
I sniffed the air and the loamy smell set my tail wagging. “I knew Washington would be great,” I told Mom so she wouldn’t make up her own mind first. The delicious stench pulled my nose toward a log fence outlining an area of packed dirt and dry, flattened turds. “Horses poop here, Mom! Lots of them, by the smell of it!” I looked from her face to the fenced-in dirt and back to her face again to make sure she got it. “Do you think they’re already up the trail? Let’s catch up.”
“Hold your horses, Spud,” Mom strained against the leash like she was the one holding back a whole herd of wild horses. “I don’t think anyone’s here, but I want get through the horse camp before I let you off the leash.”
“You’re doing it wrong!” I whimpered. “You’re supposed to drop the leash because there might be horses around. You wouldn’t even know what to do with a horse if you met one, Mom. You’d probably scream and run away from them.”
We kept walking, past one horse pen after another. With so many log fences, it’s a wonder there was any forest left on the other side.
“Sheesh. You could keep a whole cavalry brigade here,” Mom said.
“Do you really think there's a whole parade of them out there?” I asked, looking toward the trees. I caught a whiff of something even more exciting than a horse parade drifting from the woods behind the last horse-cage. I stopped for a better sniff.
“Good boy,” Mom said, thinking I was sitting because of the pressure she’d been putting on my collar. She leaned over and unclipped the leash.
A moon-colored streak of fur flashed through the forest and was gone faster than a shooting star. Now that I didn’t have to wait for Mom anymore, I launched myself after it at warp speed.
The forest around me blurred as I chased the pale streak until it was little more than a scent.
Behind me, Mom was shouting like a seagull with a horse standing on his toe, but there was no time to worry about Mom. She could never catch my canine pace anyway. I let her squawks fade into the background like birdsong.
I lost the scent of the streak for a moment and stopped to find my bearings. Mom’s screams were so pathetic that I was about to turn back and check on her, when a twig snapped somewhere in the brush beside me. I forgot all about Mom and kept chasing.
When I finally lost the mysterious scent for good, I looked around. I was surrounded by a Jillian identical trees. If it weren’t for Mom’s crowing, I might never have known which way to go. I found her by echolocation like a dolphin, following her squawks like the pings of the world’s most obnoxious submarine.
“OSCAR! OOOOOOOSSSSS-CAAAAAAAAAAr!” she shrieked, forgetting the rrrrr sound at the end of my name like she sometimes does when she’s shouting, mad, or both. “Oscar, fraudspammit, get back here!”
When I found her standing alone on the trail, her face was twisted from the effort of all that screaming. Dogs don’t understand blue, but I was pretty sure this was what it meant to scream until you’re blue in the face. Thank goodness she hadn’t screamed her whole head clear off yet.
“Mom! Guess what!” I wagged. The blue melted out of her face as I got within petting distance. “You’ll never guess who I just chased! He was extra fluffy and—“
“Oh my Dog! Never do that again!” Mom grabbed me in a headlock and smooshed my face with messy kisses. “You scared the dog doo out of me!”
“Yeah, it’s nice to see you, too...” I said, eager to move on to more exciting news. “But you’ll never guess who I almost-saw! Go on! Guess!”
Mom was already being so grabby that I didn’t even notice that she had my collar until I heard the leash click back on.
“Good idea! Don’t ruin the surprise. Let’s chase him together.” I took off in the direction where I last smelled him.
I didn’t get far before the leash pinned me down like an anchor. “I don’t mean to ruin the surprise or anything...” I leaned into my collar for extra suspense, “But I think there’s a wolf in there somewhere!”
“Mmmhmm,” Mom hummed, but in that way where agreeing is supposed to show I’m wrong. “You know there’s a story about that, right?”
“I know. You think just because I’m a dog I can’t appreciate litter-ature?” To prove I really did know the story, I recited:
“Hey spittle piddle,
“The cat played the fiddle,
“And who gets to lick the spoon?
“The brave dog chased,
“But the wolf went into space,
“And they chased each other over the moon.”
Mom gave me a long look like she wasn’t sure if I was joking. “I was thinking of the Boy who Cried Wolf,” she said finally.
“That’s a fun one, too,” I said. “I think it’s only a myth, though. Unfortunately. If the wolf really does eat the boy at the end, do you think he’ll share a helping with us? I’ve never tried boy before.”
“I still think you’re missing the point of the story.”
“I still think you’re silly to be scared of somewolf you haven’t even met yet,” I told her. “You'll never make friends with that attitude.”
I dragged Mom tripping and grumbling into the the woods.
“Stop pulling!” Mom whined for the gaJillianth time.
“No, you stop pulling on the leash and keep up,” I urged.
“Something bad is gonna happen, I just know it,” she whined. “You jerking me around is just making me even more anxious. Go easy. I’m still getting over watching you get swept away a dozen times yesterday.”
I let up on the leash, just a little. If I got away, Mom would never pull a Hollywood-furteen, Westminster-ten like me again. I was out of her league. Losing me would probably be devastating for an uggo like her.
I led Mom into the woods at a slow-motion pace that was more her speed. The trees lined up one behind the other to block our view of anything but the next turn. It was like those moving pictures Mom’s loaptop shows when it’s bored where I can never tell if I’m looking at the same picture over and over, or something new each time.
At long last, Mom got tired of pulling and stopped altogether. “Fine, go. See if I care.” She reached down and unhooked the leash again.
“I thought you’d never come to your senses!” I called over my shoulder as I zoomed up the trail.
But I only made it a few steps before the trail twisted away and left nothing but infinitrees falling one behind the other down a slope too steep to be fun for chasing anything. I followed where the trail was leading, but it just turned me around backward until I was watching Mom catch up through a single layer of trees.
“See? There’s nowhere to go,” Mom hollered to me, or the woods, or the wolf. “You might as well just hang out with me.” She shook the baggie with my brunch kibble in it. “C’mere, Spud!”
I looked over my shoulder at the endless layers of trees. My tummy grumbled.
“Okay,” I said, meeting her at the tip of the turn. I took a faceful of kibble as payment. “Mmf. I was just testing you,” I chewed, “to see if you’d follow when I let you off leash.”
Mom gave me a gimme-a-break look.
“And you passed!” I wagged.
I led her through the trees for a millionty turns until I couldn’t bear to take another step at her two-legged pace. When I could take it no more, I tested if I could pull her with the invisible leash that connects us in our minds.
I ran ahead until Mom yanked on the imaginary leash by calling for me to wait up. I did wait for a breath or two, but not enough for her catch up all the way. When she looked down at the Witch again, I took a few more steps than the last time before she shouted again.
“Stay close, Oscar!” Mom hollered, barely looking up from the Witch as she did.
That’s the problem with the psychic telepaphone between a dog and his mom—she doesn’t even have to look up to know where I am.
“But you’re going so slow!” I said.
“I’m just looking to see if Wilbur has gotten back to me yet. And looking at the forums to see what other people have done when their Facebook pages disappear.”
“What do they know? Only you could lose a dog who’s hiking right in front of you.”
“According to these people on Reddit, it doesn’t look good for you, Spud.” Mom wagged her head sadly. “I swear, if I... I mean, if you lose that page...”
There’s no sense in listening to prophesies you can’t do anything about, so I went back to testing the limits of my invisible leash. It wasn’t really speeding Mom up, but I could stretch the telepaphone cord more if I paused for a moment before she told me to stay close. I started listening for the sound of her looking up so I could be waiting like a good boy whenever she checked on me.
When she looked back down again, I took one step... two... three... fo—
Mom looked up from the Witch again. “Stay close.”
I waited, but she only chased for a step before her eyes dropped back to the Witch.
I was about to set a new telepaphone-stretching record when I caught another whiff of something wolfy.
I looked back at Mom. She was giving the Witch an intense scowl.
So I went after him.
I raced through the trees after the scent. I hardly noticed when it took me down a hill so steep that I had to run at top speed to keep from falling. In the distance above my head, Mom’s dragon voice growled for me to come back. But I was already too far away for her fire-breath to reach me, and the smell of wolf was getting stronger.
It would be impossible to lose Mom anyway. I bet every dog, wolf, and squirrel in Washington and Oregon knew where she was. And with Mom making all that racket, maybe my future-friend wouldn’t notice me gaining on him.
At the bottom of the slope, a little brook swallowed all the smells. I sniffed around the rotting leaves on its banks trying to piece together the scattered bits of smell that remained.
When the trail went cold, I turned back uphill. I was still out of breath from all that sniffing when I reached the break in the trees where the howling was coming from.
Mom stood in the middle of a clearing, swiveling this way and that as her stubby ears tried to figure out which direction my snuffling was coming from. “Oscar, get back here!” she shouted to the sky. Finally, she spotted me and stabbed a finger at the ground. “Oscar! Get over here!”
“Mom! Mom! You’ll never guess who I—“
“Don’t run off like that again!” she said to squeeze out the last bit of anger before collapsing into a crouch. She held my head so she could scratch behind both ears while she kissed the spot between my eyes. I sat in her headlock for what felt like a dog-year with all that wolfy excitement still pounding in my chest.
When she was done, Mom stood up and said, “Good boy” in a stiff voice, like she didn’t want anyone to think she was a softie.
“But Mom!” It was a real, live—“
“I have enough to worry about without you scaring the dog doo out of me like that.”
“...wolf," I finished, but she was already too busy scowling at the Witch to hear me.
