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Scruff, the Shaggy Dog

Do you ever wonder why God made some dogs shaggy, with long hair hanging down at the front, sides and back? Life must be very difficult for shaggy dogs, because even if they know which is their front end and which is their back (which I doubt) nobody else does.

Sometimes, when it’s dinnertime, Auntie has to guess which end to put down the dinner bowl. And if you count up carefully you will notice that she is wrong two times out of four. She really ought to put down a inner bowl at both ends just to be on the safe side.

Shaggy dogs have to be very patient because they can’t ee much. And barking inside a tent of hair only makes heir ears go deaf. If it wasn’t for their noses hey’d never know where to find the dinner bowl, and you know what that would mean: tantrums! (ask mummy what a tantrum is).

Scruff was always having tantrums. Once, when he was whistling a tune, the stream of wind blew aside the hair from in front of his nose and he caught a glimpse of the world outside. Ever since, he had been blowing like mad, trying to see more and getting into a rage because the hair kept falling back.

Then one day Scruff discovered the carpet. By crawling underneath he found that the carpet scraped back the hair from his eyes and he could see, although there wasn’t a lot to see under there, except dust. However, by crawling through to the far side of the carpet there came a moment when his nose and eyes were poking out, and he could see perfectly.

And this is how Scruff spent most of his time, lying under the carpet with his nose poking out, enjoying the view.

You would have thought someone would have noticed what he was trying to do, wouldn’t you? Perhaps helped him by cutting off the hair in front of his eyes? But no. People just said, “What an extraordinary dog! Fancy crawling around under the carpet! He must be crazy.”

And sometimes they walloped him for making humps in the carpet, causing them to trip. Finally, one terrible day, an Important Visitor tripped and fell head over heels into the wastepaper basket, and got stuck.

After that Auntie took her hammer and nailed down the edges of the carpet so that Scruff couldn’t get underneath any more. So he just blew and blew and blew instead, until he felt dizzy. “Nice dog,” said Auntie, rubbing what she thought was the end of his nose. “Whoof,” said Scruff, turning round and barking, so that she would get it right next time.

As you know, all dogs eventually go to Heaven. And at the gate where they let dogs in there’s a barber’s shop for shaggy ones like Scruff. And when he came in, puffing and blowing as usual, the first thing they did was give him a short back and sides, after which he was able to see happily ever after.