Good Dogs in Bad Movies Read online

  Hurry up and fetch all of the Good Dogs adventures!

  Good Dogs on a Bad Day

  Good Dogs with Bad Haircuts

  Good Dogs in Bad Sweaters

  Good Dogs in Bad Movies

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022

  Text copyright © 2022 by Working Partners Ltd.

  Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Victoria Freeman

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  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wenitsky, Rachel, author. | Sidorov, David, author. | Freeman, Tor, illustrator.

  Title: Good dogs in bad movies / Rachel Wenitsky + David Sidorov; illustrated by Tor Freeman.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2022] | Series: Good dogs; 4 | Summary: “When the Good Dogs day care temporarily closes, Jasmine takes the doggy friends to a movie set, where the pursuit of artistic dreams leads to wild hijinks”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021034284 (print) | LCCN 2021034285 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593108550 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593108543 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Dogs—Fiction. | Motion pictures—Production and direction—Fiction. | Behavior—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.W4358 Go 2022 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.W4358 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034284

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034285

  Ebook ISBN 9780593108543

  Cover art © 2021 by Tor Freeman

  Cover design by Eileen Savage and Suki Boynton

  Design by Eileen Savage and Suki Boynton, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_6.0_140165839_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Hurry up and fetch all of the Good Dogs adventures!

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Illustrator

  About the Authors

  For Bagel, Hollywood’s brightest star

  —R.W. and D.S.

  For Steve, Steven, and Bob

  Love from Tor xx

  CHAPTER 1

  The Australian cattle dog galloped in slow motion down a beautiful white-sand beach. He had a determined and heroic look on his face, and the wind blew through his glorious fur. Ahead of him, in the ocean, a human man cried for help.

  “Help! Help! I swam out too far!”

  King thought that the human man looked a little like the mailman, who often brought doggy treats along with the mail, so he was immediately concerned for the man’s safety.

  “Don’t worry,” the cattle dog said confidently, human words somehow coming out of his mouth instead of barks. King wasn’t sure how that was possible, but he was impressed. “Surf Dog to the rescue!”

  Surf Dog hopped on his surfboard and expertly rode the waves to the spot where the man was swimming. The brave dog tossed the man a rope and successfully pulled him back to the beach. A crowd of happy humans gathered around Surf Dog to give him pets and rubs.

  “You saved me!” the man shouted. “This dog saved me!”

  Oh man, thought King. Surf Dog is definitely getting treats.

  “Great work, Surf Dog,” a lifeguard said. “Another flawless rescue. Never doubted you for a second.”

  “It’s what I do,” Surf Dog replied coolly while he used one paw to slip a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. “You know my motto: Sit. Stay. And hang ten.”

  Fireworks exploded in the sky as all the humans celebrated, and Surf Dog stood up on his hind legs and started dancing in the sand.

  “Dog! Dog! Look at him! Dog! Dog! Dog! Wowowow!” King barked wildly at the rectangle in the living room. He had watched plenty of “movies” and “shows” with Erin, Jin, and Cleo. And every time they featured a dog, he was overcome with a mixture of confusion and excitement. He had so many questions. Who is that dog? Is he trapped inside the rectangle? Does he need my help? Does he want to play? And the best way to ask those questions was to bark as loud as he could for as long as possible.

  “Hugo! Waffles! Lulu! Petunia!” King yelped as he jumped onto the couch. “Did you see that? Surf Dog just saved the mailman!”

  Waffles and Petunia stopped wrestling under the coffee table to look at the rectangle.

  “Whoa!” Waffles shouted. “Who is Surf Dog? Is he trapped? Does he need our help? Does he want to play?”

  “What’s everybody barking at?” Erin sighed as she walked into the living room. “Did the dog on TV do something funny again, King?”

  Erin was King’s absolute favorite person in the entire world, and she was right as always. She picked up the remote control and turned off the rectangle. But that didn’t stop King from barking. He still felt pretty amped up from his trip to the park, and he could tell his friends did too. The dogs of Good Dogs doggy day care had spent a lovely morning chasing Nuts the squirrel and his kids around from tree to tree. King still had a lot of energy and wanted to keep playing.

  “Hey, everyone, watch this!” King shouted as he dove under the coffee table and did a double rollover. “Pretty cool, right?!”

  “Not as cool at this,” Waffles shouted back as she leapt from the comfy couch to the comfy chair and then back to the comfy couch. “The floor is lava!”

  “What’s lava?” Lulu asked as she and Hugo trotted in from the kitchen, where they had been playing with a puzzle toy. Lulu was wearing a shiny sequined tank top and tiny little mesh shorts.

  “I have no idea,” Waffles answered, “but sometimes when I’m playing with Zoe, she says the floor is lava, and we have to jump around on the furniture.”

  “Calm down, everyone,” Erin said softly. She had one hand on her hip and one hand on her big round belly. “Quit jumping on all the furniture.”

  Erin’s belly didn’t used to be so big and so round. But King knew it was this big because there was a human baby inside it! King wasn’t sure
why human babies took nine months to be born while puppies only took two months. It must be really fun in there for the babies to want to stay so long. King’s big sister, Cleo, a very smart and mature German shepherd mix, kept saying that the baby could come “any day now,” and King was nervously excited. Some nights he stayed awake and stared at Erin’s stomach, waiting to see if a baby might pop out. But right now, he was too busy zooming all around the living room to worry about that.

  Chair! Table! Couch! Rug! Chair! Table! Chair! Chair!

  As King raced around the room, Petunia followed.

  “King, Petunia! What’s gotten into you? Waffles, no, don’t chew that,” Erin said, a bit out of breath. “That’s cardboard, Waffles!”

  Sure enough, Waffles was chowing down on what looked like a paper towel roll. King knew that cardboard wasn’t food, but he couldn’t help but think that, like most objects in the world, it looked delicious when another dog tried to eat it. As Erin bent over to take the cardboard away from Waffles, she took a deep breath and put both hands on her belly.

  “Ahhhh,” Erin grunted.

  Then the office door swung open and out walked Jin, right on cue. “Babe, are you okay?” he asked from the hall. “Why don’t you go rest and I’ll watch the dogs for a bit?”

  “Don’t you have work?” Erin asked.

  “I can take a break,” Jin replied. King watched as Jin went to the kitchen and poured Erin a tall glass of water. Then he pulled out a chair for her.

  Jin used to leave the house every morning to go to work. But for the last couple of months he had been working from home so that he could help out with Good Dogs and help Erin with her big tummy that sometimes made her tired. “Here, sit down.”

  “Thank you,” Erin said, smiling. “I just need to get off my feet for a minute.”

  “Okay, Good Dogs!” Jin said. King, Hugo, Lulu, Waffles, Patches, Napoleon, Petunia, and Cleo all perked up and listened closely. They were Good Dogs, after all. “Let’s hang out in the living room and give Erin some space.”

  “King! King!” Petunia yelped as she hopped back onto the couch. “I have an idea for a game!”

  King wagged his tail. He loved games. He never said no to playing one with Petunia. Except for that one time when he was sick and was having diarrhea every few hours in all of the potted plants in the house. But then that sort of turned into a game in its own way, didn’t it?

  “It’s called Grab the Remote Control and Keep It Away from Jin!” Petunia announced.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Napoleon asked, trying to be the sensible one. King had seen his French bulldog friend do all sorts of wild and naughty stuff back in the day. But now that he was a therapy dog, Napoleon was very thoughtful and considerate. “I’m not sure if this is the time.”

  “I agree with Napoleon,” Cleo said cautiously.

  But Petunia didn’t listen. She grabbed the remote control in her mouth and jumped off the couch. King followed her.

  “Petunia . . . ,” Jin said calmly. “Drop it.”

  Aha! King thought. Jin saying “drop it” is always part of the game. Nice, Jin!

  King knew the next move. He used his teeth to wrestle the remote from Petunia’s grip and carried it to the corner of the room. Then he dropped it so that Waffles could hold it for a bit. Jin followed them to the corner and tried to grab the remote, but they just ran under his legs and into the front hallway.

  This game is pretty fun, King thought as he took the remote back. I wonder who’s going to win. Maybe we’re all winners!

  “Please drop the remote,” Jin said again, his voice getting lower this time, the way it did when he was losing his patience.

  “Seriously, drop it!” Cleo barked. She walked into the hallway and looked down at King. “We love Jin, and he’s doing his best to help out.”

  King suddenly realized that Jin wasn’t playing a game. He really was upset.

  Oops.

  King put his tail between his legs. He loved Jin and didn’t want to make his second-favorite human in the world angry! So he dropped the remote gently on the floor where he was, right by the entrance to the laundry room.

  “Thank you, King,” Jin said. King relaxed and raised his tail, relieved. No hard feelings, thank goodness! When Jin walked over to pick up the remote, he stopped. “Hey, why is there a puddle here?” he muttered. Then he opened the door to the laundry room.

  WHOOSH! Water rushed over King’s paws.

  “What on earth?!”

  King looked up and saw Jin’s jaw hanging open. His small smile was gone, and in its place was a look of pure shock. Water pooled all over the floor, soaking Jin’s shoes and the bottom of his pants.

  King went into the laundry room to see what Jin was seeing. Water was spurting out of the wall and spraying everywhere! The laundry room floor was flooded, and it felt like walking through a puddle or stepping in his own pee.

  “What’s wrong?” Erin called from the kitchen.

  “A pipe burst in here!” Jin shouted back. “It’s pretty bad!”

  “Uh-oh,” Cleo yelped with alarm. She was standing next to King now, watching the water shoot out of the wall. Cleo was rarely worried, so if she thought this looked bad, then King knew it must be really bad.

  “What’s going on in here?” Hugo asked as he ran in.

  “What’s going on in here?” Lulu asked as she followed right behind him.

  “Ooooh! Water!” Waffles cried as she slid into the room, and then she slipped and fell on the wet floor. The whole room was extremely slippery, and water was leaking farther into the hallway and living room. Petunia tried to run over, but everything was so slippery that she collided with Napoleon, and they both fell on top of Patches.

  “This reminds me of the Great Basement Flood of 2018,” Patches said solemnly. “We lost a lot of great toys that day. It all began when someone flushed a little too much in the guest bathroom, and . . .”

  King stopped listening to Patches and looked down at the floor. The water was halfway up his legs now!

  Water! Water! Water water water wet wet water!

  King had lots of happy memories of water. The dog beach was one of his favorite places! But a beach inside his house?! It felt wrong, wrong, wrong. He shook himself off, getting Hugo, Lulu, and Cleo even wetter.

  “Oh no!” Lulu whined. “My roller disco queen outfit is dry-clean only!”

  “You’re okay, buds,” Jin called out over the panicked doggy shrieks as he stepped through the water. “I’ll try to fix the— Eww, Petunia, don’t drink that . . .”

  “Help! Help!” Waffles cried from the middle of the laundry room. She was flailing around. “I don’t know how to swim!”

  “Don’t worry,” Hugo called. “I’ll save you!” And with that, he pounced toward her, splashing water everywhere, and pulled her back out toward the hallway.

  Wow, King thought. Just like Surf Dog!

  Jin was on the move, too, racing down into the basement. After a few seconds, suddenly, the water stopped spurting! Hooray! A miracle!

  Jin came up the stairs. “I got it,” he said, wiping his forehead. “I think I got it to stop . . . for now.”

  “Phew!” Cleo breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one.”

  Erin walked in and looked at the damage. Her eyes went wide, and she shook her head. “The plumbing in this house is so old,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been putting off fixing it. With the baby coming and everything, I didn’t want to tear the house up.”

  “That’s okay,” Jin comforted her. “It’s not that bad . . . right?”

  Jin and Erin looked around the laundry room. And into the hallway. And into the living room. King followed their eyes as they noticed wet patches all over the place, a massive hole in the wall, and a lot of stained spots on the floor.

  King wasn’t
a plumbing expert. He was a border collie mix. But even he knew this was pretty bad.

  “At least we have insurance . . . ,” Jin trailed off.

  “What are we going to do?” Erin asked. Her voice cracked, and she sniffled. “There’s so much damage, and no water. We can’t stay in the house. How can we keep Good Dogs going?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Jin said. “If we have to close the doggy day care for a little bit while we fix this, that’s not the end of the world.”

  Erin nodded, and Jin took out his phone. “Jasmine? Hi, it’s Jin. So . . . our house sort of, kind of flooded a little. . . . Yeah. . . . No, it’s okay. Just a little bit of an emergency we need to deal with. You know. So if you could pick up Lulu early? . . . Thank you so much!”

  “Owww,” Erin muttered under her breath. She crouched and held on to her belly while she walked over to the couch.

  “What’s wrong?” Jin asked with a concerned tone. He put his phone down for a moment.

  “A sudden pain,” Erin replied. “It’s probably nothing. I’m fine.”

  But King knew all of Erin’s facial expressions. She looked upset, and a little worried. He thought he might have noticed a similar look on Jin’s face.

  What’s going on? King wondered. Are Erin and the baby going to be okay? Her tummy hurts! Did Erin accidentally swallow a piece of cardboard? Maybe she needs to do what I do when I eat a piece of a toy . . . chew on some grass and throw up on the rug. That’ll make her feel better.

  King turned to Cleo. “Do you think Erin is okay?”

  But Cleo just shrugged. She looked concerned too, and she hopped up on the couch, nuzzling her head into Erin’s lap.

  King curled up next to Cleo. This can’t be good . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  Lulu wagged her tail excitedly as Jasmine bent down to slip on her bedazzled harness. She was leaving Good Dogs a bit earlier than planned, but she didn’t mind. More time with Jasmine was a good thing!

  “Thanks, Jin,” Jasmine was saying. “I hope everything’s okay. Are you sure you don’t need anything?”