The Fast and the Furriest Read Online Free PDF

Kevin.
    Cromwell barked again.
    Kevin locked up his bike to a nearby rack, then pushed hard on the building’s front door. It creaked open reluctantly.
    Cromwell shot inside like a hairy, overweight bullet, with Kevin chasing after him.
    Kevin and Zach went down a narrow, dark hallway. Kevin smelled the distinct scent of dog, butdidn’t hear any barking. Cromwell sniffed excitedly at the dirty linoleum floor and pressed on. He dragged Kevin behind him and pawed at another metal door. Kevin slowly turned the knob.
    A high-pitched, gleeful noise emerged from Cromwell’s brown and white mouth.
    “Whoa,” said Zach quietly, looking around.
    An enormous white room was lined with airplane-hangar-size windows. Fluorescent lights glowed at the top of forty-foot ceilings. Green AstroTurf covered the floor. It reminded Kevin a bit of a Bears practice facility that he’d once toured with his dad, except that no one was shouting obscenities at sulking athletes.
    Instead, a row of dogs were sitting obediently in front of similarly obedient owners. Kevin’s eyes stopped on an icy-looking woman in a steel gray business suit standing behind a pristinely groomed King Charles spaniel. Next to her, a woman in apple green overalls stood at attention, her shaggy golden retriever wearing a bandanna that matched her overalls. Everyone’s eyes were open wide, but no one was looking at Kevin or Cromwell. Their gazes were fixed on the bizarre figure at the head of the class.
    Elka Brandt stood in the center of the room on a low platform. She had on a headscarf with a wildprint—a babushka, as Kevin’s grandmother would have called it. She wore weathered military-style boots that approached her knees, khaki shorts, and many bracelets on her arms. Surrounding her were neatly sequenced obstacles: a seesaw, pylons, wooden hurdles, a windmill, a series of plastic rings much lower to the ground than the tire swing, a kiddie pool, a long nylon tube, and a ramp.
    Cromwell whined anxiously. Kevin cleared his throat, but Elka spoke first.
    “Hello, Cromwell.” She squinted at the dog.
    Cromwell whined louder and wagged his tail frantically.
    “Um … hello,” offered Kevin.
    Elka smiled.
    “You’re late,” she said. “This class begins promptly at ten o’clock.”
    “Sorry,” Kevin said softly, wiping snow cone residue from his hand onto his shirt. “There was … um … I had to stop. And I’m just here to watch. We’ll stay out of your way—”
    But Cromwell was apparently not in a stay-out-of-the-way sort of mood. He lunged forward suddenly, which caused Kevin to drop the leash. Cromwell ran onto the green turf, up the ramp, through the kiddie pool, into the tube—which rolled no less than six feet with Cromwell inside—and thenhopped through the rings. The leash bounced behind him.
    “Cromwell!” shouted a horrified Kevin.
    Elka seemed undisturbed. The other dogs and their owners kept still. Eerily still. Statue-still. Cromwell woofed and ran for the seesaw. Elka watched from her platform with a bemused expression. Cromwell raced up the seesaw eagerly, but when it began to tip, he tried to stop. And he wasn’t any good at stopping. He rolled off, landed on his back, and let out a small, frightened cry. Then he backed up against the slowly turning windmill. Having no miniature windmills in his natural environment, Cromwell was startled.
    So startled, in fact, that he knocked the wooden structure over with his meaty behind, then ran for his owner.
    Kevin raced toward the dog, but stepped on a tiny hurdle that cracked under his weight. His ankle rolled and he fell to the AstroTurf, where he emitted a helpless
“Waaaahh!”
    Cromwell climbed on top of him. The dog whined, then licked Kevin’s face, then whined again.
    Elka clapped lightly.
    Kevin cleared his throat. A youngish guy with crispy hair and an oversized polo shirt did his best to hide a laugh, but couldn’t quite manage to. Even his schnauzer seemed to be smiling.