News For Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page A

professional that the four of them could hardly believe they had created it. The headline, “Bully Bernstein Loves Meat Loaf,” ran across the top of the front page above Bruce’s picture of Bully in his high chair. The flash from the camera had illuminated the dog’s bulging eyes so they glistened like diamonds, and the stream of saliva at the corner of his mouth reflected the light from the candles on the beautifully set table.
    Andi’s article was indented beneath the photograph, and next to that, in a separate column, was Mrs. Bernstein’s meat loaf recipe.
    “That’s a sidebar,” Tim explained to Andi. “It’s a box for extra information that goes with an article but isn’t exactly part of it.”
    “It looks wonderful!” Andi exclaimed enthusiastically. “This is just like a paper you’d buy at a newsstand!”
    Her resentment at having been blackmailed into having Tim as their publisher had been quickly erased when he had agreed with the girls on the name of the paper.
    “I expected you to be on my side,” Bruce had grumbled. “How can you agree to a name like that?”
    “We want to sell papers,” Tim said.
“The Canine Gazette
sounds so intellectual that people might worry that their dogs aren’t smart enough to enjoy it.”
    “How much should we charge?” Andi asked him.
    “Fifty cents is standard for newspapers,” Tim said. Then, just as Bruce was getting irritated at the way his friend had walked right in and taken over, Tim went on to say, “I think we should agree right off the bat that all the money we make will go to Bruce until Red Rover is paid for. After that we can start dividing it up.”
    Neither of the girls objected to that suggestion, so Bruce made no more complaints about the name of the paper.
    It had taken Tim several days to master the newspaper format, but now, at last, the first issue of
The Bow-Wow News
was right there in front of them. Its pages lay in neat stacks on Tim’s computer desk, crisp and glossy and still slightly warm from the printer. Andi stroked the photo of Bully’s face with her fingertips as lovingly as if she were stroking the heads of Bebe and Friday. Then she turned the sheet over to look at the second page, which contained a poem she had written called “Ginger’s Heartbreak.” The poem was about an Airedale whose master wanted to drown her puppies because they weren’t purebreds. It started with the lines:
    T’were just five little balls of fur,
    But, oh, they meant so much to her!
    Then, as an afterthought, Andi had added an additional verse about the puppies’ father, who was denied visitation rights:
    The fence between was high and mean
And not a puppy could be seen.
    Every time she read those lines she felt a terrible sadness. Even though the Bulldale puppies had ended up in good homes, Ginger had found a new love, and Bully would soon see pictures of the puppies he had fathered, she still found the situation heart-wrenching. Because, what if there
hadn’t
been a happy ending? What if Mr. Tinkle had followed through on his threat to drown those puppies, and Ginger had died of a broken heart, and Bully had lived a whole lifetime without ever learning what happened to the family he never had a chance to know? The mere thought of so much misery made her want to rush straight to her room and write another poem. But that would have to wait until the second issue. First they had to sell this first one.
    They decided to conduct their sales in an organized manner by making a list of people they knew who owned dogs and working in pairs to visit all of them.
    Tim suggested that each of the boys be partnered with a girl.
    “People are more inclined to buy things from girls,” he said. “My sisters sell tons of Girl Scoutcookies, because they’re little and cute and people can’t say no to them. If Debbie and Andi could be cute, we’d make a lot of sales.” He studied the girls for a moment and then said, “I’ll go with