Chapter 1 – A fun day out

Our story starts one sunny March weekend, just as the Phillips family are arriving home after having a long day of play at the park. Mom and Dad walked straight into the kitchen, mumbling about what there was for dinner. Mona, leisurely strolled in after them, into the lounge and put her feet up. From her seat she gave a little sharp demanding shout, for a drink. The reply she received was “you’ve got two legs, so use them little lady”, which bellowed out of the kitchen, from both of her parents in unison. Before Mona could get up from her seat she watched Molly stumble in. Molly’s disposition was somewhere along the line of really shattered, ending up at absolutely knackered. As she walked into the front room and attempted to waddle over to her favourite spot on the rug close to the fire place, but collapsed halfway across the living room floor in a heap which resembled a mound of furry coats.

Earlier that day.

The whole Phillips family had enjoyed their day out at the park; today however some maybe had more fun than others. Molly’s day at the park started out fine; she’d had some snacks and played with Mona on the jungle gym. Trouble for Molly began when Mona’s five second attention span kicked in and she insisted that they played something different every other thought. One of Mona ideas was to play fetch with Molly (normal enough for most dogs) and so she searched through the picnic hamper for something to throw. Buried at the bottom she found an old tattered tennis ball which would be perfected for play, so she showed it to Molly and said “would you like to play fetch”. As Molly saw

the ball she realised that there would be a problem with this game, because Mona had without knowing it, picked up her own very favourite lucky tennis ball. The one that she’d used to beat the cat next door (not in a game of tennis, but just throwing it repeatedly at the poor cat) and it had brought her luck ever since. Molly loved that ball and she wasn’t going to lose it now in a simple game of fetch. But before she had chance to speak, Mona had wound her whole body into a coil, like a professional baseball player and slung it as hard as she could away…
Being a basset hound, Molly isn’t the kind of dog that’s evolved for speed (or even kept in shape), but when she saw her lucky ball, being sent into orbit, her body dug deep down inside of itself to muster up every ounce of speed that her little legs could manage. The speed that she achieved seemed physically impossible and it looked like she had a lit rocket stuck up her behind. Her eyes didn’t leave the ball as it was in flight, this meant she didn’t see the barbecue and two picnics she’d ruined, as she pounded through the h’orderves of one picnic, and knocked the barbecue over onto the second. When the ball finally landed it carried on rolling, disappearing into a hawthorn bush, at which Molly was still pounding full speed towards. Her little legs and large rolls of fur were being thrown along by her unrelenting need to get her ball back. As she was almost on top of the bushes the dusty cogs of her mind ticked over, reminding her of the only fact she new about hawthorn bushes, which was that they’re normally full of hundreds of sharp pointy thorns. At this thought, Molly tried frantically to stop herself in front of the needlely bushes of pain, this was done in vain, due to the enormous momentum that she’d built up that was still carrying her forwards. (A quick