To read or not to read... about the life of a famous Australian
Read the opening paragraphs of this book and you decide whether to read or not to read the rest of the book!
'Strewth!' exclaimed Jack Collins, 'that dogs a real stinker! I don't know how he puts up with himself. If I dropped bombs like that, I'd walk around with my head in a paper bag, just to protect myself.
'Everyone likes their own smells,' said Mrs Collins. Jack raised his eyebrows and smirked at her, so she added, 'Or so they say.'
'Well its too much for me, Maureen. He's going to have to go out in the yard.'
'It's his diet', said Maureen, 'eating what he eats, it's going to make smells. And he gulps it down so fast, he must be swallowing air.'
'Tally would let off even if you fed him on roses,' said her husband, shaking his head, half in wonder.'Shame it's a talent you can't be paid for. We'd all be millionaires. You know what I think? We should hire him out to the airforce. You could drop him in enemy territory, he'd neutralise it for three days, more or less, and then you could send in the paratroops. It'd be a new era in airborne warfare.'
Don't light any matches, he's done it again,' said Maureen, holding her nose with her left hand, and waving her right hand back and forth across her face. 'Tally you're a bad dog'.
Tally Ho looked up at her with one yellow eye, keeping the other one closed for the sake of economy, and thumped his tail on the floor a couple of times. He had noted the affectionate tone of her voice, and took her words for praise. He was lying on his side, a little bit bloated after gnawing on one of his oldest bones. He was only a year old, so his oldest bone was not too old, but it certainly had plenty of flavours and all the wind-creating properties of which Tally was particularly fond.
Tally was the most notorious canine dustbin in the whole neighbourhood, and people delighted in presenting him with unlikely objects and encouraging him to eat them. With apparent relish he ate paper bags, sticks dead rats, butterflies, feathers, apple peel, eggshells, used tissues and socks. On top of that, Tally ate the same food as the rest of the family, and at this moment carried in his stomach a goodly load of mashed potato, gravy and steak and kidney pie.
This is not to say that Tally ever raided dustbins or browsed on garbage. This would have been very much beneath his dignity, and in any case, he had never found it necessary. He had never lacked success in obtaining perfectly good food from human beings, and ate odd things in good faith, just because human beings offered them to him. He made up his own mind as to what was eating again, and whilst he would probably be happy to eat more eggshells, as long as they stil had some traces of egg in them, he probably wouldn't try another feather.
To keep reading this book, you can request it from the Library.
