Buddy's Diary - February 1 - The Life of a Puppy Stories in English

Sweet, Funny Simple Stories in English for Intermediates

The Tyrant and the Late Night Heist

So unfair! What’s wrong with a good old bone or two?

Girl lets me off the leash when we go out, which is super great. At first, I always followed her feet. Then I began to explore at a small, safe distance from her. And one night… I found it! Something absolutely amazing. A heist. A mega-strega heist.

“What uneducated pigs!” Girl gasps, staring at it and then up at the second and third-floor balconies.

Yep. Almost every night now, it’s right here in the same spot. In the parking lot, right beneath the balcony of Building C. BONES. And not just one or two little scraps that fell out of someone’s garbage bag. NOPE. This is the FULL CARCASS. Tonight I sniffed it out and found an entire chicken’s carcass. Just missing the head and feet. Ribs, spine, limbs, and all. And some bits of chicken flesh still attached to it all over.

It’s funny how it appears here. Splattered all over, as if it dropped right out of the heavens and crashed hard on the asphalt parking lot ground. Girl stares in disgust up at the neighbors’ balconies. “Pigs,” she mutters, and glances over her shoulder at the three large nearby blue garbage bins. “Five steps away and they can’t walk over to them to toss it in?” she mutters.

Thank goodness they don’t! I think as I greedily gobble as fast as I can, choking on it as I inhale and swallow at the same time. I have to be fast, you see, because each time Girl sees me eating something she runs over. “What are you eating, hmm?” she asks. I quickly swallow, and if I didn’t manage to swallow yet because it’s too big, I clamp my jaws tight, tight, tight shut.

“Open up,” she says sweetly. As IF! I know what will happen if I do.

“Come on, darling, open up and let me see what you’re eating,” she cooes.

Bah. Don’t sweet-talk me! I’m not dumb.

“Okay, fine,” she says, and presses her fingers against my bottom and top gums. She pushes hard. I fight back, clenching down even harder. I lower my head, dig in my feet, fighting with all my might to keep my yummy little find.

But she always wins. With a frustrated growl, my mouth is forced open. I try to hide it. I move my tongue fast and maneuver the piece around so it’s out of sight, at the back of my mouth, under my tongue. Whenever she pokes around trying to reach it and pull it out, I move it the other way even faster. Like a duel.

Sometimes I manage to swallow faster than she can fish it out. Other times, she plucks it out and throws it far away with a “Fooi! Yuck! Don’t eat that!” And sometimes she can’t get it out at all because it’s too far back in my mouth. So you know what she does? It’s so brutal. So cruel! She holds me upside down and gives me a shake. And then gravity—oh, evil gravity—wins. And it falls out. Plop. Clank. I look at it longingly. Miserably.

“There,” she says, pleased. “Now you’re safe.”

Safe! Pfff! I’m safe when I’m deep under that low car where you can’t reach even with your long, long arms. That’s where I and my yummy finds are safe.

“Why do you want to eat rotten garbage when I give you fresh, healthy meat each day?” she asks me.

Because yours is in my plate. And this is a treasure. A special treasure I FIND. You can’t compare.

Once, I found the spine of a big fish. She found it moments later. I growled and dashed like mad along the bushes. She gave chase. But I was faster. Ha! I dived through the hedge and hid behind it. She couldn’t reach. Hahahaha! She yelled at me, called me, parted the bushes. I gazed at her. But she couldn’t reach. Ha!

But then I made the terrible mistake of trying to hide it INSIDE the bush. Where no one could see it. But where it was, unfortunately, too close to her. Some days later, when we went out, I sniffed it out and she—that watchful tyrant, that detective with eagle eyes even without glasses—she saw my casual sniffing at the spot. “Ha!” she said and pulled me away, pinned me under her arm, and dug out my fish bone. It was such a nice big one. All greasy. Stinky. Very rotten. Very old. Fermenting in the sun. Slimy. Really attractive. I had kept it there for a week, innocently walking past it at times just sniffing with joy KNOWING it was there, even when I didn’t dare go to dig it out since she was around.

But now… PLONK! It landed in the big blue bin. Never to come out again. I gave a miserable whine and protested, but she just patted my head as if THAT would appease me and make up for the loss of the most delicious find I ever found so far! “There, there, you’ll get some more meat at home,” she said. I huffed in disgust. No, I’m not forgiving that. Nothing can fill its place.

The next day, Girl approached the woman with the very, very white sneakers who squeals in fright when I run up to her wanting to make friends, and stamps her sneakers at me to chase me away—the one who sits in the little office all day. She pointed at the building, at the garbage, and then pointed at the nearby creek that runs through the area and said something about “two big rats down there.” The woman with white sneakers looked alarmed. “Rats?!” she gasped.

Something happened. And I think Girl did it. Because after that… I never found any more treasures by the cars again! They’d been there nearly every night. Some other bones broke and splattered all over. But now… nothing. No more treasures. Nice surprises. Rotten scraps. I’m so sad. I keep sniffing and hoping and crawling under the cars. But nope. All gone. Clean. Boring. Bah.

Now, when I feel like biting something, I sometimes pick up a small stone. “What are you eating?” Girl says. I angrily clamp down shut. What, now I can’t even chew on a plain old rock?! But when she pries my jaws open and looks at it she says, “Ah, a stone. Okay, you can chew that.” Hmph. Sometimes now she even tries to be extra nice. When she sees me chewing on a nice little stick I find, she carries it home and lets me rip it apart on my bed.

And something else. Very tragic. Happened. I used to run free all around the parking lot and along the nice earthy, grassy riverbanks. But then one day Miss WhiteSneakers looked severely at me and said something to Girl.

Girl pulled her handful of poop bags out of her pants pocket and flapped them at Miss WhiteSneakers. But Miss WhiteSneakers wasn’t impressed. Girl looked sadly down at me and tied me on the leash. After that, I’m never allowed off it! Each time I pull to go through the fence to play on the other side by the river, Girl pulls me away.

Such a spoilsport! Nothing fun left in life. Sigh.