I’m not one of those dogs who only knows the words I’m supposed to know. Like sit, stay, no, and bath. If that was it, my stories might sound like this:

Sit, no, stay, no, bath, stay, no, no.

Pretty silly.

But I know a lot of people words. My mother taught them to me. So, when I’m writing and forget a word, I press the Woof key on my keyboard.

It’s not like my keyboard’s Story button. The Woof key gives me words, not story ideas.

Something with wheels

For example, one day I couldn’t remember the word ‘roller skates’. I needed it for one of my neighborhood stories.

So, I wrote this: ‘The boy next door raced down the street in his something with wheels.’

I pressed the Woof key. It came up with the word ‘car’. Possibly, but not what I had in mind. So I pressed the key again. This time, I got the word ‘wagon’. Nope. Then the word ‘stroller’.

What? Racing in a stroller? The Woof key isn’t always reliable.

I went back to writing my story and used the word ‘bicycle’. It sounded like this:

‘The boy next door raced down the street in his bicycle.’

Just right.

Something with numbers

Another time I couldn’t remember the word ‘calculator’. It’s not like it comes up every day. But I was writing another neighborhood story. This one was about the stupid cat next door. He wanted to know how many lives he had.

My story started out like this: ‘The cat next door doesn’t know how to count, so he uses something with numbers.’

I pressed the Woof key. It came up with the word ‘ruler’. No, that wouldn’t work. Then the word ‘math’. Maybe. Finally, the word ‘clock’. But that wasn’t right either.

I was about to give up and start a different story. But then I thought, who knows, maybe cats do use clocks to count.