Part 1

I've heard humans say that hindsight is twenty-twenty. I don't know much about that. What I do know is, if I hadn't taken my human on a run through the woods, a zombie formally known as Hubert Pines would still be buried and my favorite person would have a pulse.

"Meat Head! Meat Head!" Einstein Angleton shouted and stomped his foot. "MEEEEEEEEEEAT HEAAAAAD!"

I plopped down on a pile of leaves across from my favorite person. He was other side of the gully shading his eyes as he searched for me among the trees. We were in Hinckley Park, located in Hinckley, Ohio, in case you didn't already know. I'm Meat Head. Nice to meet you. I'm mostly Great Dane with a little of this and a lot of that thrown in for good measure. I have a nose like a bloodhound and a of pair ears that go on for miles. I'm the best dog in the world.

My problems started that Sunday in Hinckley Park and ended on Wednesday a mile from where I sat down to wait for Einstein. Despite his name, my human is an idiot. I guess his parents thought he would be smarter if they gave him a smart name. Well, he's seven. That's forty-nine if you count in people years. He lives with his mother and works at a camera shop.

Humans are practically blind and as you probably already guessed, this fact was extra true for Einstein who had yet to locate me.

"I'm right here, you idiot."

"Meat Head, get your butt over here. I'm not climbing up and down mountains after your sorry hide."

I sniffed the air. Sweat has different smells depending on how mad your human is at you. My human always gets angry when I exercise him. I try to tell him, "It's good for you," and that sounds like "woof." Going forward, anything I say always sounds like "woof". Unless you're a dog. Then it sounds like an intelligent conversation.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Einstein smelled darn mad, so I didn't want him to catch me until he felt too tired to torture me. Dogs will know that torture means being tied outside or stuffed into one of those pet carriers. The horror.

I barked again and pranced in a circle. He slapped his leg and whistled. I wagged my tail. He hurled a few bad words in my direction which sounded like, "blah, blah, blah". I loped out of sight, but stopped at the nearest moss-covered log and raised my leg to water it. I knew that Einstein had started after me because the forest rang with the tale-tell crashing of a person tumbling down the gully. He sounded like an elephant. Several birds cursed me and all my relatives as they fled the nearby trees. A deer stuck his tongue out at me before bounding off. How rude! But not as rude as the squirrel who bit my tail.