Noodles the Cockapoo Stands Guard

Noodles the Cockapoo Stands Guard

  by Coleman Maskell

  Copyright 2013 Coleman Maskell

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  Chapter 1

  Noodles was a stalwart Cockapoo dog.

  Stalwart means strong, brave, and loyal.

  A stalwart dog is physically strong. He has inner strength too.

  A stalwart dog is outstandingly brave and extremely loyal.

  As for physical strength, Noodles could jump more than two feet straight up in the air from a standing position, without even trying very hard; and he could do it over and over again, like a bouncing ball. For a dog less than twelve inches tall, that's pretty good. With a little extra effort, he could jump high enough to bite a burglar on the nose, if a burglar would ever be careless enough to come around. If you could jump twice your own height straight up, you'd be a basketball star. So you know that Noodles was definitely good at jumping. Noodles could also run so fast you'd be very surprised the first time you saw it. At least, he could if he had some important reason, like chasing a squirrel. The squirrels always got away, because they always had a big head start, but he closed the distance on them so quickly that you'd always be a little afraid for the squirrels.

  His outstanding bravery we will read about soon.

  As to his credentials for loyalty, well, he was a dog.

  Cockapoo is a fancy name for a particular blend of dog: part Cocker Spaniel and part Poodle. People happen to like this mixture, so they give it a special name instead of just calling it a mutt. A Labradoodle is in the same situation, being a blend of Labrador and Poodle. As you can guess, a Poochi is part Poodle and part Chihuahua. A Morkie is Maltese mixed with Yorkie. You get the idea. If people happen to like the way a mixture turns out, they give it a special name, like Cockapoo. If they don't like the mix, they just call it a mongrel or a mutt. That's people for you.

  Noodles felt that being a mixture made him a thoroughly American dog. Americans are, after all, a mix of everything from all over the world. That's what makes them special. They have a bit of everything there is. America is a big collage of all the world has to offer.

  Though he weighed only 17 pounds, and looked a bit more like a poodle than he would have liked, Noodles was a tough enough dog, or at least he thought he was. Sometimes he felt a little embarassed about how much he looked like a poodle. It seemed, well, not stalwart-looking enough. Then he would stop and remember the things he had heard about the fierce French general Napoleon, who wasn't very big either. And he remembered having heard that the French helped the Americans win America's very first war, the War of Independence. That was when the French gave America the Statue of Liberty, as a present! That's where the Statue of Liberty came from. After all that remembering, Noodles again felt confident that it was okay to be a bit small, and look a bit French. He could still be tough enough. At least he thought he could.

  It was his job to stand guard at home all day while Granny was away at work. He had to protect the house and keep everything safe.

  Noodles had other things to do besides his main job of standing guard. Every evening and every morning he took Granny for a walk in the park. It was the only exercise the dear old lady got. In rain or sunshine, whether it was cold or hot, daylight or darkness, he made her go for her walks.

  If she didn't want to go, he would lie down by the front door and look up at her with big eyes. If she backed away a bit, he would whine sadly. If she came towards him, he would wag his tail and sit part way up. If she backed away again, he would lie down and look sad, his head down flat on the floor between his front paws, his big eyes looking up at her hopefully. Granny always gave up, gave in, and went for a walk with him. He was proud of the good job he did making sure Granny got her exercise.

  When they walked in the park, sometimes he would get to chase a squirrel or a rabbit, if he was lucky. He didn't chase them very far, and he never caught one. He enjoyed running, though. Maybe the squirrels and rabbits enjoyed running too. He didn't really know about that.

  Sometimes he would see other dogs in the park chasing balls or sticks or other items that people would toss. They tossed things just for the dogs to chase. Catching an item and bringing it back didn't seem like much fun to Noodles. If he happened to be off his leash, he would run along beside the other dog, because he liked to run, but he never tried to get the item. It was just the running itself that was such great fun.

  Some mornings, like today, Noodles saw that some dogs in the park, some very lucky dogs, had little boys to run with. That looked like the most fun of all. Little boys could run almost as well as dogs. It just looked like it would be the most fun thing in the world, if he could have a boy run with him in the park.

  Of course Noodles loved Granny. He was devoted to her. He just thought it would be the best thing he could imagine if he could also have a little boy to run and play with, and still have Granny too.

  He hung his head and sniffed at some especially fresh-smelling grass growing near a rock, then bit off a little and ate it like salad. He sighed. One can't have everything, he thought. He had a pretty good life. Then he sighed again, and returned to walking along on his leash beside Granny. He stepped up the pace. Best to keep trotting along quickly, he figured. Granny needed to get her exercise, and she didn't have all day to do it. She had to be going to work soon.

  Back at home after their morning walk, Granny sat on the sofa next to Noodles for a while. She rubbed his shoulders and scratched his ears and patted his head. Noodles closed his eyes halfway and opened his mouth halfway and let his tongue hang out halfway, panting gently.

  She scratched behind both his ears, with one of her hands on each of his ears, rubbing the ears very gently with a soft rotating motion. He panted and breathed little short breaths through his mouth, looking up at her through his barely open eyes, as if he were peeking through a crack in the window blinds. She seemed slightly out of focus when he looked at her that way. The image was softened, glowing around the edges. She looked like an actress in a classic movie, backlit by stage lights. Of course, he looked at her through eyes of love. He was a dog. He would have thought she seemed beautiful even if her nose had been attached sideways and her ears grew from the top of her head like a rabbit. Still, whether the impression was accurate or it wasn't, to Noodles she seemed like the most beautiful thing in the world, and being with her was the very best part of his life; that kind of devotion is a big part of what it means to be a dog. He panted and sighed, continuing to look at her happily through slitted eyes; but nothing lasts forever.

  After a while, this morning as every weekday morning, Granny took a deep breath, sighed, sat up straight, stopped patting him and looked at him straight in the eyes, her expression a bit sad. Noodles took a quick deep breath and let it out, then shook his head very quickly, as if he were wet. He stretched himself like a cat, as if he were waking up. Closing his mouth and opening his eyes fully, he looked straight up at Granny with all his attention. She looked straight at him.

  "I have to go to work now," she told the attentive dog.

  "I want you to be a good dog while I'm gone," she continued after a pause of a few seconds. "You stay here and guard the house. Keep it safe."

  She paused again, as if searching for the best way to touch on some unwelcome subject. "However," she finally said, "I want you to be quiet. No barking," she ended the admonition pointedly.

&nb
sp; So, he thought, the neighbor had been complaining again. Hmmmpf. Harumph. Grrrr. Again he shook his head side to side quickly as if his ears were wet. His dog tags made a tinkling sound. He let out a little low growl, followed by a quick whine, but he didn't think Granny heard.

  "Well, if you can't be completely quiet, then at least try not to bark any more than you have to," she told him, patting him on the head for an instant, then withdrawing her hand again just as quickly. "Do the best you can. Some of the neighbors get annoyed if you bark too much." She was still looking him straight in the eyes. She seemed serious, but not angry. Firm, but not harsh.

  Noodles was very still. He paid attention to every word she said, the way a soldier pays attention when a general is talking. General Granny was giving him his orders for the day. Noodles was not as likely to follow, or even to remember, his orders; but he listened just as closely as a real soldier.

  "No wetting on the floor," she continued. He whimpered a little. That didn't happen very often. He wished she wouldn't keep bringing the subject up.

  "Certainly no pooing on the floor," she added. That was embarrassing. It was true that had happened a couple of times. He'd been sick. His tummy had been hurting. Accidents happen. He snuffled his nose and snorted, twitching his head and shoulders a bit. He resolved to do the best he could to behave appropriately while she was gone.

  Granny rubbed his head with her left hand, and his head bobbed a bit. She rubbed his left ear gently. He very much liked having his ears rubbed. She took his head between both her hands and rubbed both of his ears softly for a few seconds, scratching the sides of his head with the tips of her fingers. After that she held his head very still and angled it so the two of them were looking straight into each other's eyes. Their noses were only a few inches apart.

  "Now, your job is to stay here and stand guard while I'm away at work," she told him in a serious tone. "You guard the house. If you see any spiders or centipedes invading, you're authorized to use deadly force. Under no circumstances are you to let any chipmunks or squirrels indoors, or rodents of any kind whatsoever. Just chase them right back out if they try to come in here."

  "You can bark at burglars if you happen to see any of those," she added as an afterthought, qualifying her earlier admonition against barking.

  Noodles imagined a burglar skulking in the shrubbery, looking like a giant racoon with a Lone Ranger mask over his eyes, carrying a big sack like the one Santa always carries, except that the burglar's sack was black instead of red, and he wanted to use it to carry things away from the house instead of carrying presents in. Noodles growled a little under his breath just thinking about it.

  "Don't fight with anything too much bigger or fiercer than you are, though," Granny continued. "Certainly not a rhinoceros, for example. Birds you can chase if they aren't too big. If you see any hawks or owls, you stay away from those. They're a lot tougher than you might think. Okay?"

  It was a lot to take in, but he understood it all. Granny didn't realize how well he understood human speech. She thought he only knew a few words and short phrases, words like "sit" and "treat" and "no", and phrases like "Let's go for a walk" and "come on back inside". However, the fact was that he understood almost everything she said.

  Even humans themselves don't understand absolutely everything the other humans say. He knew that. For example, once he'd heard Granny's brother telling Granny something he'd heard from her stepdaughter (who was apparently a witch). The stepdaughter had said that she loved Granny. Noodles had then heard Granny inform her brother that the stepdaughter didn't know the meaning of the word love. So, there it was. Humans don't understand all their own words. How could a dog, then?

  Also from time to time Noodles had heard Granny say things like "that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever," or "I have no idea what they could possibly mean by that." So, on balance, he figured he understood human language just as well as humans did. Certainly he knew what love meant. As for some of the things that made no sense whatsoever to Granny, he had to admit they made no sense to him either; but that only meant his understanding was no better than hers. Yes, on balance, he was pretty sure he understood human language just as well as human people did.

  Granny continued speaking to him, handing out the orders for the day. She had a tendency to talk at length, to repeat herself and overexplain things, but he liked to listen to the sound of her voice, so he didn't mind.

  "Keep the inside of the house safe," she was saying. "That's your assignment. Just the inside of the house. If any intruders try to invade -- or if any invaders try to intrude -- say for example, if a mouse or a chipmunk or a squirrel tries to come in and climb up the window curtains, or if a flock of bats or pigeons finds a way in somehow, or, say, bees, hornets, wasps, or even termites, fire ants, carpenter ants, tarantulas," she stopped and took a deep breath, looking off to one side in thought. The images raced through his mind, and in his imagination he trounced each adversary in turn. No problem so far.

  "Or, then again," she continued, giving the little dog another level look right in the eyes, "any truly evil villains: horse thieves, dognappers, anything like that -- chase them away if you can, but kill them if you must. (Make sure it looks like an obvious case of self defense, though)."

  Again she paused introspectively. She then repeated her warning about the need for caution: "Don't try to take on anything that's obviously too big and too fierce. For example, don't take on a lost grizzly bear or a polar bear," she warned, and he imagined a giant pair of bears, one black and one white, stalking the area, looking for something -- or someone -- to eat. He shuddered a little at the thought. Best to stay away from bears, he had to agree with that.

  "Absolutely leave skunks alone," she stated the obvious. No disagreement from Noodles there!

  "And don't mess with gorillas that might have escaped from the zoo," she continued, "or tigers, possibly wandered away from a traveling circus. Stay away from bulls trying to avoid bullfights, Pit Bulls and Rottweilers escaped from dog fighting rings, alligators who've gone off course and come swimming up our river here, then come ashore at the boat launching site right over there in the park . . . well, in a case like that, you just hide someplace.

  You could hide under a chair or a table or a bed, for example, or in a closet or a cabinet or under the sink; anyplace snug and cozy and safe. You keep safe. That's the most important thing. Other than that, your job is to keep the house safe from intruders of all sorts."

  She looked at the little dog fondly and patted his head. Then she hugged him gently.

  He was barely past imagining wet shiny green alligators with big sharp teeth and swishing tails, slinking menacingly up toward the house from the river, when she started back in, adding a few last warnings.

  "Keep the place safe from hypothetical out-of-control robots, for example," she suggested another possibile danger, "and from space aliens, if they're the bad kind who come to enslave the human race; from evil forces of any sort, for example evil interdimensional entities who might enter our world through a portal or a hole or a tear in space-time, if anything like that happens."

  She gave him a meaningful look, which he didn't understand. "As long as they're not too big, of course," she clarified with a smile, and patted him one more time, tousling the fur on the top of his head. Then she stood up to go.

  As far as he could tell, hypothetical meant imaginary. So, no problem there. But space aliens? Interdimensional evil forces? Had the stepdaughter, the witch, left a hole in space-time hidden around here someplace? This was the first that Noodles had heard about it. He'd seen the long black bathrobe hanging on a hook in the bathroom upstairs, so he knew the witch had left some items behind. But a hole in space-time? Isn't that something a witch would want to take with her when she left?

  Never mind. He had his assignment, and he was going to stand guard. Let the space aliens and t
he forces of evil look out for themselves. They would be in trouble if they tried to mess with Noodles the Cockapoo. He let out a gruff little woofy growl, and snuffled his nose, then snorted. He stood up strongly like a little canine soldier at attention, pulling himself to his full height. Noodles the Cockapoo was on guard. Let evil fend for itself.

  Granny turned on the stereo, which was set to play music with a lot of different instruments but no voices. It was something called Baroque music -- Bach and Mozart. It was supposed to be calming and soothing.

  Next she raised the Venetian blinds halfway up on a small front window next to a garnet red oversized armchair. That let in a lot of daylight right by the chair. It also allowed Noodles to see clearly out the front window, and even to put his front paws up and lean on the glass. On the seat of the red armchair there was a big soft comfortable pillow, with a pillowcase of gold-colored brocade-edged satin. It was the chair Noodles would occupy as soon as Granny left.

  Finally Granny gave Noodles a piece of something that looked like a stiff strip of striped leather and smelled like bacon. He usually played with those for a few minutes, then chewed on them for a while, and ended up eating them. She set an extra one on the floor, and patted Noodles on the head one last time. Then she went out the front door, closing it and locking it behind her as she went.

  She was gone.

  He was alone.