The Case of the Mixed-Up Mutts (7 page)

I thought Mom and Connor would take me back to obedience school. I thought I would see Jazzy there and tell her what Muffin told me.

But day becomes night. And then night becomes day. And day becomes night. And night becomes day. That keeps happening for eleventy-twelve days. I wonder if we are
ever
going back to obedience school.

Will I ever see Jazzy again? Will she and Muffin ever find a way to switch back?

Then one day, when I’m not expecting it, Mom calls, “Buddy! It’s time to go to obedience school.”

Oh, boy! We
are
going back. I will see Jazzy again. I’m a happy, happy dog.

But there is a problem when we get to obedience school.

Jazzy isn’t here.

Class starts, and Jazzy still isn’t here. Did Kathy decide not to come? How will I ever find Jazzy?

Today we are working on teaching the humans how to walk nicely. Without pulling on the leash. This is hard for some humans. I don’t know why.

While we are walking ’round and ’round and ’round the circle, the door opens. Jazzy and Kathy walk in.

“Jazzy!” I say. “I’m really happy to see you!”

“Buddy, heel!” Mom says, giving my leash a gentle tug.

See what I mean about this being hard for some humans? Even Mom has a hard time not pulling on the leash. But she’ll get the hang of it. I know she will.

Jazzy and Kathy look for an opening in our circle. I try to slow Mom down so Jazzy and Kathy can join the circle in front of us. But Mom pulls on the leash again.

There is a bigger opening in the circle between Ike and Rosie. Jazzy and Kathy go over there.

“Jazzy, I’ve got some good news,” I call across the circle. “I found Muffin! She says your human is sorry he switched you and Muffin. He misses you. He wants you back.”

“Jazzy! That’s great! We’re so happy for you,” the other dogs cheer.

We all stop walking and sit beside our humans.

“I don’t believe you,” Jazzy says. She turns her head away from me.

“It’s true. You can ask my friend Mouse if you don’t believe me. He heard it, too.”

Jazzy turns one eye back to me. “Really? Are you sure? Does Owen really want me back?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then I should go back,” Jazzy says.

I agree. “The only problem is I don’t know how to get you back to Owen and get Muffin back to Kathy. You can’t get out at night. And neither can Muffin. She’s not even at your house. She’s at Owen’s grandma’s house.”

“Can you meet at the dog park some afternoon and switch back then?” Ike asks. “That’s where you got switched in the first place.”

“I don’t know. Kathy doesn’t take me to the dog park very often,” Jazzy says.

“And,” I point out, “there’s no way to tell Kathy and Owen to take you both to the dog park at the same time because ... ”

“—humans don’t speak Dog,” all the dogs in class say at the same time.

We all spend the rest of the class thinking about ways to switch Muffin and Jazzy back. But no one comes up with anything until the very end of class.

Then Jazzy says, “I know how we can switch back.”

“How?” I ask.

“Wait until the door opens and everyone starts to leave,” Jazzy says. “Then follow me.”

“What are you going to do, Jazzy?” I ask.

Jazzy doesn’t answer.

“Jazzy?” I say again.

But Jazzy turns her back to me.

Whatever Jazzy has planned, I have a feeling I’m not going to like it.

Jazzy’s eyes are fixed on Kathy. She’s trying extra hard to make Kathy hold the leash loose as they walk around the circle.

“You’re not going to run away from Kathy when class is over, are you?” I ask Jazzy. I’m afraid that’s exactly what she’s planning. Why else would she say wait until the door opens?

I think of all the bad things that could happen if Jazzy runs away. She could get hit by a car. She could get caught by the dog catcher. She could end up at the
P-O-U-N-D.

And if I follow Jazzy, all those things could happen to me, too.

“We’ll see you next week,” the alpha human says.

The humans start gathering up their water bowls and treat bags. Kathy still has a pretty loose hold on Jazzy. Even looser than the hold Connor has on me.

All the dogs are watching Jazzy and me.

“Are you ready?” Jazzy asks.

“Jazzy, listen to me,” I say. “There’s got to be another way.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Jazzy says.

The door opens and Jazzy jerks her leash out of Kathy’s grasp.

“Peaches!” Kathy calls, lunging for the leash.

Peaches?
Is that what Kathy calls Jazzy?

Jazzy darts through an Irish setter’s legs and is out the door.

“Don’t let Jazzy go by herself!” the other dogs urge me on. “You have to go with her. You have to help Jazzy find Owen, and you have to help Muffin get back to Kathy!”

They’re right. I don’t know if Muffin could find her way back to Kathy by herself. I don’t even know if I can find Kathy once Muffin and I leave Owen’s grandma’s house. But I can take Muffin back to Connor and Mom’s house. And then together we can figure out how to find Kathy.

“I have to go,” I tell Connor. He is the one who is most likely to understand me. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back.” I pull my leash out of Connor’s grasp and make tracks for the door.

“Buddy!” Connor exclaims. “What are you doing?”

Connor starts to run after me, but he’s too slow. “Mom!” he screams. “Can you grab Buddy?”

“Go, Buddy!” the other dogs shout. “Don’t look back! We won’t let your humans catch you.” They all move in between Mom and me.

“Somebody, grab Buddy!” Mom cries.

But I am already out the door after Jazzy.

Jazzy glances over her shoulder as I catch up to her. “Hey, this is kind of fun,” she giggles. “I’ve never run away before.” She skips into the street.

“JAZZY!” I scream as a car swerves around her. “BE CAREFUL!”

“BUDDY! COME BACK HERE!” Mom yells. I feel her feet pounding on the pavement behind me.

There is an opening in the traffic.

I feel bad about running away from Mom, but I have to. I have to follow Jazzy.

“This way!” I tell Jazzy. I tilt my head toward a different street. There are houses over there.

Jazzy slows to look at me. “Is Grandma’s house that way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I say. “But we have to lose all those humans that are chasing us before we can look for Grandma’s house. I think we can do that if we run through those backyards over there.”

“Okay,” Jazzy says.

“Look for cars this time,” I warn her.

We look both ways, then dart across the street ... across somebody’s front yard, and around to the back. I hope there isn’t a fence back there.

There isn’t.

Jazzy and I keep running. Through backyards. Over and around fences. Back to a front yard. Across another street.

I put my nose to the ground. “Hey, I think we drove on this street to get to obedience school,” I tell Jazzy. I’m pretty sure I smell Mom and Connor’s car.

Jazzy sniffs the edge of the street. “I think I smell it, too.”

And we seem to have lost the humans. For now, anyway.

We follow the car trail back to Connor’s house.

We pass Mouse’s house along the way. He is resting under the big maple tree in his front yard.

“Mouse!” I call to him. “Look who I found.”

Mouse raises his head. “HEY ... IS THAT JAZZY?” He comes to greet us at the fence.

“Yes, it is!” I say as we hurry on past.

“Nice ... to ... meet you ... Mouse,” Jazzy puffs. She’s getting tired, I can tell.

We can’t slow down, though. “No time to chat,” I tell Mouse over my shoulder. “But guess what? I’m taking Jazzy home!”

“THAT’S GREAT,” Mouse calls back. “BUT THEN WHO’S GOING TO MOVE IN WITH CONNOR AND MOM WHEN YOU GO TO SPRINGTOWN?”

I can’t think about that right now. The trail Mouse and I left when we came back from Owen’s grandma’s house should be around here somewhere. If I can find it, we should be able to follow it in reverse.

“I have to get Jazzy back to her house before the humans catch us,” I tell Mouse.

I sniff. Ah! There it is!

“Switch to this trail,” I tell Jazzy.

We follow the new trail up one street and down another. For some reason it doesn’t take as long to find Jazzy’s house now as it took us to come back the other morning. But that’s probably because we have a trail to follow.

“We’re getting close,” Jazzy says, speeding up. “I smell Grandma. I smell Owen, too!”

I smell Muffin!

We round another corner and there, up ahead, is Owen’s grandma’s house. Muffin is outside. She’s sitting on the top step of the porch with Owen.

They both turn to look at us.

“Jazzy?” Owen says, his eyes growing wide. He rises to his feet. “Is it really you?”

Owen leads Muffin down the stairs. He bends down in front of Jazzy, and Jazzy licks his ears.

Owen giggles. “It
is
you. Isn’t it, girl?”

“Of course it’s me,” Jazzy says, wagging her whole back end.

“You came back,” Muffin says as she circles me. Her tail is going about a million miles an hour. “And you brought Jazzy with you. Now we can switch back.”

“That’s the plan,” I say.

“How did you ever find your way back, Jazzy?” Owen asks. He hugs Jazzy again. “I’m really sorry I took the wrong dog that other day. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I forgive you,” Jazzy says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Muffin says. “Now what about me? Are you going to take me to my human?”

The door to the house opens and an older female human steps outside.

“Owen?” she says as she marches down the stairs. She’s got a leash in one hand. “What’s going on? Where did all these dogs come from?”

“I don’t know, Grandma,” Owen says, rubbing Jazzy’s back. “They just showed up.”

Grandma looks from Jazzy to Muffin and back again. “You’d better put a leash on Jazzy.” She holds the leash out to Owen. “Do you know which one is Jazzy? Those two look exactly alike.”

“To you, maybe,” Jazzy says with a sniff. “Not to us.”

“This one is Jazzy,” Owen says, picking her up.

Grandma rubs her chin. “Are you sure? Do they have tags?”

Owen crosses his fingers behind his back. “I don’t know what happened to Jazzy’s tags,” he says in a low voice. “I think we lost them.”

He’s lying!
A dog can always tell when a human isn’t telling the truth. Jazzy told me what happened to the tags she and Muffin were wearing that day at the dog park.

“Well, what about the other dog?” Grandma reaches toward Muffin, but Muffin pulls away. She isn’t wearing any tags, either.

“We’d better go,” Muffin says.

I agree. We don’t want Grandma to call the dog catcher. “I’m glad you’re back with your human, Jazzy,” I say. “Let’s go, Muffin!”

As I turn to head back down the sidewalk, Mom’s car pulls to a stop in front of Jazzy’s house. Mom and Kathy get out of the front doors. Connor gets out the back.

How did they know where Jazzy and I went?

“Buddy!” Connor cries, racing toward me.

“MOM!” Muffin cries, racing toward Kathy. She runs straight into Kathy’s arms.

I let Connor hug me. “How did you find me?” I ask. But he doesn’t answer. He just keeps hugging me.

“Are these your dogs?” Grandma asks Mom and Kathy.

“Yes,” Mom says. “I’m sorry they’re running loose. They got away from us at the end of ... ” she pauses. “Obedience class.”

“Well, two of them did,” Kathy says. “Yours and hers.” She points to Mom. “My dog has been here for the last two and a half weeks.”

Grandma’s mouth drops open. “I beg your pardon.”

“Our dogs got switched. At the dog park,” Kathy explains. “But it’s okay. This one is mine. And I can tell by the way your boy is petting that one she must be his.”

“How did all these dogs end up here?” Grandma asks. “And how did you know they were here?”

“We didn’t,” Mom says. “We just started driving around.”

“
I
told Mom to go this way,” Connor says. “I saw Buddy running, and I thought he might be heading toward the river.”

“I don’t know how you knew that,” Mom says.

“Me, either.” Connor shrugs.

“It doesn’t matter how we got here,” Kathy says. “The important thing is we did. Can we take our dogs home now?”

“I don’t know,” Grandma says, scratching her head. “Maybe we should wait until my daughter and her husband get home to help us sort all this out. They’ve been in Europe for the last couple of weeks. That’s why Owen and his dog are here with me. I would hate to see them go home with the wrong dog.”

“But I know this is my dog,” says Owen as Jazzy licks his face.

“And I know this is
my
dog,” Kathy says, hugging Muffin closer.

“
How
do you know?” Grandma asks. “Neither dog has any identification. And they look the same.”

“They don’t look
exactly
the same,” Kathy says. “There’s more black around Muffin’s nose.”

“And there’s more white on Jazzy’s stomach fur,” Owen pipes in.