From Woofs to Words

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 I do forget a word, I press the Woof key on my keyboard.

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 it again. This time, I got the word wagon. Nope. Then the word stroller. What? The Woof key isn’t always reliable.

I went back to writing my story and used the word bicycle. That was good enough for now.

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 wants to know how many lives he gets.

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. Then it gave me the word clock. Not even close.

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