Contents 1: The Big Day 5 2: New Gang 11 3: The Vet 17 4: Preparing For Adventure 21 5: A Taste of Adventure 26 6: The Adventure Begins 35 7: Ferry to Where? 39 8: Hola Spain 42 9: Surf s Up! 46 10: Amigo the Bull 50 11: Flip Flop Rescue 57 12: Last Day in Spain 64! 3
1: The Big Day Today is a Saturday unlike any other. TODAY is the day I'm getting collected by my human! Mum says he's going to take me on lots of fantastic adventures all over the world and suggested I keep a diary, so that when I have pups one day they can hear what I got up to. I'm RUFIO and this is the very beginning of my super special doggy adventure. My mum is a Springer Spaniel and dad is a Cocker Spaniel, so I guess that makes me a SPROCKER SPANIEL! Us Spaniels have superpowers that even humans don't have. Our most mega superpower is that we can track down anything using only our nose. It can be great when we're trying to sniff out hidden treasure snacks, lost toys and ancient buried bones. Of course, I can't just turn my nose powers off, so sometimes it s not so great. I'll cross my paws and hope that my human doesn't have stinky feet! 5!
Last night mum sat down with me and gave me the talk. We all have to move away from the pack some day and live with our own human, she said. It might seem scary right now but just be yourself and you'll soon see how great your new life will be. That's all well and good, but what if your human doesn't like to play and wants you to just be boring and obedient all the time?! Then life would be dull as old dishwater. 6!
There are three things I've always tried to teach you and I want you to make sure you never forget them. she said. Firstly, you must always be BRAVE. Even when they love you and you've done nothing wrong, humans sometimes like to try and scare you with something they call 'the vacuum'. It's a frightening beast that hides away most of the time, but every few days it comes out to spread fear and terror throughout the house! This must be a bad joke. I can't believe this is the first time Mum has told me about this fearsome beast! Until now, I've been excited about meeting my human and seeing my new home but this makes me shudder to the bone with fear. I've been imagining my new home to be exiting and fun, with new friends and lots of toys, not a death defying battlefield where I have to sleep with one eye open! Mum continued, It growls at you with the ferocity of a fire breathing dragon, sniffs around your carpets like a demented dog possessed, steals any snacks you've tried to hide under the rugs, and then goes back under the 7!
stairs for days, where it sits in silence, plotting its next attack. Trust me though, as long as you stay brave, bark back and never let it smell your fear, it won't be able to hurt you.! 8
Oh great! This sounds like a dog eating disaster waiting to happen. How the heck am I meant to avoid 'smelling of fear' the first time this crazy creature launches an attack? The first thing I'll do when I get to my new home is find out where it hides and make sure I keep my cunning wits about me whenever I'm within ten paws of it. Mum carried on, As dogs, we must always be the most LOYAL of all the animals, no matter what our humans do. She told me a story about how when she was young, even though she did everything her human wanted, she came home one day and there was a crafty cat in the house. The foxy little furball wouldn't get involved in any of Mum s games and whenever she tried to play chase with it, it would cheat by using its sharp claws to scarper up the curtains. It would cling to the top and tease mum for being too slow. When the humans saw this, they would take the fleabag s side and lock Mum in the garden as if she'd done something wrong. Still, Mum said, We must stay 100% loyal to our humans.! 9
Last, but certainly not least... she barked. You need to always be CAREFUL. We're living in the human world but we're not as big as them, so we can get hurt if we aren't extremely careful. You must stay by your human whenever you can. If you're not with your human and you hear or see any strange things... Yeh, yeh, Mum. 'Bark like the biscuit tin is coming out'. I know, I know. Mum preaches this lesson to our pack nearly every day. One day, when the humans left the door wide open, Dad went on an adventure across the road. He never came back! Mum has always feared the worse, but I think Dad's still out there. He could be fighting crime, sniffing out bad guys, or maybe finding a way for us to beat the dreaded vacuum!! 10