I
Pug sit in the passenger seat of the white Astro van reading about a dog named Sparky from the book of poems Lonny had laid on the padded dash. Lonny was driving to the bank to deposit his royalty check from his newest book of poems. The book was now in its third printing and when pug saw the amount of zeros on the check he wondered what made the book so valuable and decided to read it himself to see what it was all about. Pug read a couple of poems from the book and suddenly said aloud, "I'm going to write a book of poems."
The statement came out so matter-of-factly that it almost went by unnoticed. But after doing a double take Lonny asked, "What did you say?" "I said I’m going to write poetry," Pug repeated. "It looks like you are making some pretty good cash from your book. I know I can write some better rhymes than your dumb book. So I’m going to write one too and get rich."
This was the first time Lonny had ever heard his dog Pug speak anything but normal dog talk like, "Woof! Woof!" and a few snarls and growls. For a moment Lonny was himself unable to talk. Finally Lonny said, "I just didn't know you could speak English." It was a statement and a question all in one.
"Of course I can talk," said Pug. "So, why have you never talked to me before this?" Lonny asked.
Pug gave a kind of doggy yawn to show he was bored and said, "Well what, pray tell, has there ever been for us to talk about? But I can see this poetry thing is a great chance for me to make some worthwhile money, and I just may need your help to carry off my scheme."
Now, the idea of a talking dog wasn't entirely new to Lonny. Pug had come from a long lineage of dogs that had been in the family for several generations. Lonny's grandmother, who had helped his sick mother raise him, had owned an ancestor to this Pug who was also capable of human speech. Grandma Perry had told Lonny and his siblings quite an array of stories about the exploits of her own Pug dog when they were growing up. In fact, her tales had become legends and all the family referred to them as "Grandma Perry’s Pug Tales." Even Grandma Perry's dog wasn’t the first, however, because she had often told the kids that her own mother and grandmother had possessed talking dogs.
As far as Lonny knew, the first talking Pug dog came into the family about the time of the Civil War. He had been the result of some government breeding experiments to create a strain of dogs capable of being used to spy on enemy troops. The project was considered unsuccessful and the Union military had given up the experiments and sold off all the dogs to the civilian community. Grandma Perry's maiden name was Briggs and the Briggs family adopted one of these dogs whose name was Pug. It was only after the family had owned the original Pug for several years after the war had ended that he revealed he could talk.
"Of all those dogs, I was the only one that the experiment worked on," he announced one day. "But I kept it hid because I didn’t want anyone to know I could talk until all the risk of having to be drafted for military work was over. They shoot spies when they catch them, you know. Even if they are dogs."
The exploits of that first Pug were legends and over the years telling stories about a talking dog named Pug had become a family tradition. So Lonny had grown up quite used to hearing Pug stories about a talking dog. The family had kept one pup from every litter as each generation of dogs was born. And for reasons that nobody actually knows, every new puppy was named Pug. However, every new puppy born into the family was not a talker. In fact there had only been about four or five litters since the Civil war to now, which had produced a talker. And now it was being revealed in a most unexpected way, just a few weeks after Lonny's 65th birthday, that Lonny ownd a talking Pug dog just like his grandmother's.
"Gosh! I hope you are not really just like him," Lonny announced out loud the thoughts he was thinking.
"What is that suppose to mean?" Questioned Pug. "Just like who? What on earth are you muttering about?"
"Nothing," said Lonny. "Nothing at all. And if you are going to be a talker then learn proper grammar. It is Just like whom?" Actually Lonny had been thinking about all the fiascos and troubles the former Pugs had caused. And to himself this time he thought, "I hope this one is not going to be as criminally minded as his forbearers."
II
Not long after they had returned from the bank trip Pug was visiting the library in the poetry section. He had went on the internet to learn about the Dewey Decimal System and learned that the books he would use were located in the 811 section. He took notes from all the great poems he could find. His notes consisted of many lengthy direct quotes from the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Keats, Carl Sandburg and others.
Pug jotted down the words from these master poets and soon had about 100 poems to which he attached his name as the author. He bound them together in book form and sent the manuscript off to a publishing company with a letter in which he claimed authorship. "Now," Pug said, "all I have to do is wait for them to print up my books and I will soon be one rich puppy."
Had Lonny realized what Pug was about to do, he would have explained to him that putting your name on someone else's work is called plagiarism and is a crime. But Pug was not sharing his plan with anyone because he didn't want to have to share any money he made from the book with anyone else. And even though he may not have known that plagiarism was a crime, he knew that he was cheating by using someone else's work and calling it his. But Pug was greedy and lazy and like all the Pug dogs preceding him he wanted to take the easy way and make money fast without having to work. So by the time Lonny found out what was going on, most of the damage had been done.
The first inkling Lonny had that something was amiss was the day that the sheriff drove up to the house with a warrant for the arrest of a Pug Doug Carpenter. Now, how Pug had gotten such a strange name came about when he signed his name to the manuscript as Pug Dog Carpenter. However Pug spelled Dog with a "w" like this D-a-w-g. And since he had a pretty sloppy handwriting the editor read it as Doug.
Lonny couldn't stop the sheriff from taking pug to jail, so he did the next best thing and got him a lawyer with hopes of getting him acquitted. But when the lawyer got to the jail and discovered that pug was a dog, he refused to take the case. He told Lonny he needed to get in touch with the Animal Rights Society and he charged him a fee of one hundred dollars just for wasting his time. While Lonny sit at home trying to figure out the right thing to do for Pug, the notorious Pug Doug Carpenter was busy at jail planning his escape.
III
Pug had a pretty good idea what he would do when he learned that the prisoners took showers after supper. At the shower he managed to swipe a bar of soap and bring it back to his cell. Later that night when things were fairly quiet about the jail, pug used the bar of soap to lather his body all over and make it as slick as possible. Then he squeezed himself through the bars and slipped out the back door when no officers were around. Pug was free and he was heading straight back home to Lonny's house.
Meanwhile Lonny had been doing some research of his own at the library in the legal section. He discovered that there was no law on the books to stop an animal (even a talking dog) from stealing the writings of someone else. The laws in this area just didn’t apply to dogs. Lonny had called back the attorney and verified his findings and the lawyer decided to take the case after all. He had a chance to make some easy money on this one so he jumped at it. Later when they found out that Pug had escaped, they used the same loophole saying that there was no law against a dog breaking out of custody as long as no one was hurt in the process.
So it happened that Lonny now had a talking Pug dog just like the one in the stories his grandmother used to tell him when he was a boy. And it all happened just the way I have told it in this story. But somehow in the back of his mind, Lonny knew that this would not be the last adventure he and Pug would share. For, just as he had feared when he first heard Pug talk, He now knew for certain that this Pug dog had inherited all the criminal traits of his ancestors, as well as the ability to talk and think like a human.
end
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