Once upon a time, there was a dog that couldn’t bark. It didn’t mind itself, but other animals would say, “What? You can’t bark?”
“Why should I bark?”
“Don’t you know that all dogs bark? You’re such a strange dog!”
The dog didn’t know how to answer, nor did it know how to learn to bark.
“Just follow my example,” said a sympathetic little rooster, stretching its neck and crowing two or three times, “Cock-a-doodle-doo—”
“That seems hard,” said the dog.
“It’s very simple. Just watch my mouth carefully,” the rooster crowed a few more times.
The dog tried to make a sound, but what came out was a rough “cluck,” which scared the hens, making them scatter in all directions.
“Don’t worry,” the rooster comforted, “try again, try again.”
The dog hid in the woods and practiced from morning till night. One morning, it actually crowed, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
A fox heard it and dashed over, bringing along a fork, a knife, and a napkin. For a fox, nothing was more delicious than the meat of a little rooster.
But when it saw that it wasn’t a rooster, but a dog with its neck stretched out, crowing “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” it was very disappointed: “Hey, are you trying to trick me to death?”
“Trick?”
“Yes. You’re trying to make me believe that a rooster got lost in the woods, but actually, you’re ambushing here, ready to catch me by surprise. This is an unfair sneak attack. Dogs usually bark to warn me: hunters are coming.”
“I, I never thought of any sneak attack, I was just practicing barking. Listen, I can bark really well now!”
The dog crowed loudly, “Cock-a-doodle-doo—”
The fox laughed so hard that it rolled on the ground, clutching its belly, biting its whiskers, and chewing its tail. The dog felt utterly ashamed, tears welling up in its eyes, and it quietly slipped away.
Nearby, a dove saw the dog passing by and pitied it: “Why are you so sad?”
“It’s because… I can’t bark, and no one taught me.”
“I’ll teach you. Listen carefully to how I call: Coo, coo—got it?”
“That seems easier.”
“It’s very easy. I learned it when I was very young. Try it: Coo, coo—” The dog practiced for a week and was quite good at it. It was overjoyed and thought, “Now no one can laugh at me.”
At this moment, a hunter heard a cooing sound from the woods and raised his gun.
“Bang!” “Bang!” Bullets whizzed past the dog’s ears. The dog took off running, puzzled, “This hunter must be crazy, shooting at a barking dog.”
The hunter was looking for the dove, thinking it must have been shot dead.
“It must have been carried off by that dog. Who knows where this dog came from,” the hunter muttered. To vent his anger, he fired a shot at a little mouse poking its head out of its nest, but missed.
The dog ran and ran…
