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      Here’s some quick background on Stick Dog’s four friends.

      Karen is a dachshund who loves potato chips and once lived in the back of a French-Asian fusion restaurant.

      Mutt is a mutt. He once lived far away with a mailman named Gary. Mutt sometimes stores – or loses – things in his fur.

      Poo-Poo is a poodle and is not named after, you know, going to the bathroom. Poo-Poo really doesn’t like squirrels. Really. A lot.

      Stripes is a Dalmatian who once was a guard dog at the mall down Highway 16. She lost her job after the Nacho Cheese Grande incident. She is unwilling to talk about it.

      All five dogs are strays.

      It’s not sad. They have each other.

      The other thing you would know from the first book – besides that I don’t know how to draw so well and Stick Dog has four strangely named friends – is that Stick Dog’s main focus in life is food. He’s always trying to find something to eat.

      See, he doesn’t trust humans all that much. He thinks they’re kind of weird looking. If you really think about it, humans are kind of strange. I mean, why legs? How about wheels instead? And ten fingers? How about twenty? And two elbows on each arm would be better, wouldn’t it? Then you could reach more places and pick up more things. And TWO eyes on ONE side of your head? How about ONE eye that spins around on top? Soooo much better, don’t you think? And ears … don’t even get me started on ears.

      So Stick Dog doesn’t like humans because they’re weird looking. But he doesn’t like them for another reason too: they keep all the good food for themselves. They’re a bunch of no-good, sneaky, food-hogging, only-have-fur-on-top-of-their-heads, keep-everything-for-themselves evil beasts. This one family did give them some food once at Picasso Park (well, the dogs actually sort of earned the food with this great plan that sort of worked and sort of didn’t). They gave them hamburgers … but that was really just kind of a miracle thing. That was in the first book.

      Okay, Stick Dog basics: bad drawing by me, Stick Dog’s friends have weird names, finding food really important, can’t trust humans. Good enough?

      Great.

      Oh, wait, one more thing before we get started. The fact that I’m not such a good drawer is something that I accept and live with. But I sort of need you to accept and live with it too. In other words, you and I need to agree that you won’t interrupt me when the drawings are not so good.

      For instance, if I’m in the middle of describing a UFO that has landed right in front of Stick Dog, you’re not allowed to interrupt and say something like, “Excuse me, but that UFO looks more like the pancake I had for breakfast than a spaceship full of aliens.”

      We agree that this will be a hassle-free experience, right?

      Also, I tend to get distracted and sometimes go off on little side stories now and then. Or I might, for instance, stop and provide some small bit of wisdom or make a little comment. It’s just who I am. I can’t help it. You’ll need to bear with me through some of that. Okay?

      Good.

      Now, we can really get started.

      On this day, Stick Dog and his buddies were all at his home playing a game. Stick Dog lives in a big pipe out in the woods and sleeps on an old couch cushion. The pipe is nice and dry, and the couch cushion is nice and cushy.

      The game the five dogs were playing is called BARK! And the game goes like this: Whenever something moves anywhere – a leaf in the wind, a bird flying by, a triceratops charging out of the forest – the first one to bark gets five points. The second one to bark gets four points, the third barker gets three points, and so on. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game is the winner.

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