Fred our ex – rescue pooch has 12.5 followers on X he and his predecessors, Gizmo and Basil have been doing a considerable amount of woofing over the last 10 years, about dog books, my artwork and of course the plight of abandoned dogs.

But now is time for a change, X (Twitter) maybe coming to an end I don’t want to lose all of Fred’s wonderful dog followers. So I will be writing more blog posts, not too many, probably one every two weeks. I certainly won’t be bombarding your inbox with emails!

The posts will have stuff about art, books, dogs, animals and excerpts from my books ( two co-written with my husband Richard Attree) 

Here’s an excerpt from Somebody’s Doodle – 

Chapter 9 

The Dreadlocks Detective

Annie’s big break came when she was asked to investigate an unsolved crime at the world’s most prestigious dog show, Crofts. One of the contestants, a Yorkshire Terrier with the stage name: ‘Big-Ben Prince Great-Balls-of-Fire, The Elder’ (or just Snooty for short), had died in suspicious circumstances, just after he’d won Best-in-Group. An autopsy later revealed traces of poison in his body. 

Snooty’s owner, Mrs Ashley-Turner, was convinced he’d been murdered by a rival breeder, but the police hadn’t been able to find any evidence. The CCTV footage showed that the only person who’d fed the dog was Mrs Ashley-Turner herself. They concluded that Snooty had been poisoned, or had accidentally eaten something that had killed him, after the show. In any case, they weren’t prepared to commit any more time, or manpower, to the investigation. 

Crofts were relieved. They were horrified by the negative publicity and had been doing their best to limit the damage. Mrs Ashley-Turner was convinced they’d pressured the police to close the case and hush things up. So she contacted Annie, hoping the private detective could find the killer. 

Coincidentally, she and Jack had visited the show the day Snooty 

died. They’d seen the victim paraded in the ring and they might even have been there when the crime was committed. When Annie saw the story on the news, she remembered how tense the atmosphere was when the dogs were being judged. The human contestants were obsessed with winning and perhaps some of them would do anything to win. Crofts was their Olympics. She could imagine the despair, bitterness, and envy if their star pooch lost. 

The story soon faded when the police failed to solve the case, but Annie hadn’t forgotten about it. She asked her brother why they weren’t doing more to find the culprit. He shrugged, said they had more important criminals to catch, and joked that she might be better qualified to investigate a dead dog herself. 

Then Mrs Ashley-Turner commissioned her. When Annie told Robert about the generous fee and the four-figure reward, he was rather less sarcastic. “Blimey, I had no idea a dog was worth that much,” he gasped. “Maybe I should forget about chasing bank robbers and go into business with my little sister.” 

“Actually Rob, perhaps you can help me catch Snooty’s killer. I’ll need access to the CCTV tapes, the interviews, and the statements. Is there any way you could get your hands on them?” 

He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t his team—they were busy pursuing a gang of international drug smugglers and it wasn’t a good time. They were expecting a shipment at any moment … 

“What about the hamsters?” she countered, reminding him he owed her a favour and might need a hamster-sitter again. 

He sighed. “You’re as dogged as a dog with a bone, sis. I’ll see what I can do.” ……..

A few days later she had the tapes. She went through everything, painstakingly, but there were no new clues or leads (it’s crucial for a pet detective to have plenty of leads). She was on the point of admiting defeat, when she noticed something strange about the final CCTV tape—something the police hadn’t spotted. 

She re-checked the penultimate days’s footage, fast-forwarding to 

the end of the afternoon. Then the final day’s tape again. There it was: three minutes were identical. Not just similar (hours of footage were extremely repetitious), but identical in every detail. The only explanation was that someone had copied three minutes from one tape and edited it into the other. 

It was hardly surprising no-one had noticed the anomaly. The hundred-and-twenty hours of video were mind-numbingly boring: dogs sleeping, peeing, licking themselves … Intermittently, a human appeared—to groom, or feed a pooch. These moments had, of course, been carefully scrutinised and the police had concluded that no-one had interfered with Snooty’s food. But someone had tampered with the CCTV footage and there could only be one reason for doing it. 

Now she had the modus operandi and she just needed means, motive, and opportunity. She showed the incriminating tapes to the officer in charge of the investigation and persuaded him to interview the only people who had the means and opportunity to tamper with them: the security guards. One of them also had a motive. His wife, Rita, was a competitor in the Terrier group. The police interviewed her and she confessed to having a longtime grudge against Mrs Ashley-Cooper…….

To read more of ´Somebody’s Doodle´our novel is available from Amazon as a paperback or e-book

And do check out my dog and animal designs on Redbubble.

Thank you for reading this post and if you would like to subscribe that would be wooftastic!

PS: You can follow Fred on Bluesky or X (Twitter) and I´m on Facebook