The Fling is the 38th book in the Hank the Cowdog book series.
Plot
While Hank and Drover are asleep at the gas tanks, the cowboys at the ranch decide to move a group of cattle down to the corrals to be shaken to town and sold. Thus, Hank and Drover wake up to find themselves surrounded by steers. They escape to the machine shed. While Hank fumes over the cowboys starting a roundup without consulting him, a cattle truck pulls up to the ranch to take the steers into town. The dogs at first plan to put the truck under "total lockdown", but later Hank decided to help load the cattle into the truck. In the process, he gets trapped on the truck himself. Hank is finally able to get off the truck once it reaches town, where he discovers a trash can full of French Fries. He knocks over the can and begins eating the French Fries but unfortunately this attracts the attention of the Dogcatcher, who locks Hank into the back of his truck and drives off towards the pound. In the truck Hank meets a basset hound named Ralph, an old friend of Hank's and the Dogcatcher's pet. When the Dogcatcher stops the truck for a coffee break, Ralph knocks open the door, explaining that when business is slow the Dogcatcher lets Ralph escape to liven up the day. The two dogs escape from the truck and head off on what Ralph calls a "Fling", which apparently involves stopping traffic, hiding from the Dogcatcher and sneaking into people's yards to steal steaks. On the last count the dogs run into some trouble; not only do they find weenies on the grill instead of steaks but the yard is guarded by a huge black dog named Attila. Hank steals the weenies but is surprised by the owner of the house. Ralph escapes with the weenies while Hank confronts Attila. To his surprise he discovers that Attila is a coward who only fights to keep up his reputation. The two dogs stage a pretend fight that works until Hank insults Attila's mother; this infuriates Attila and he hurls Hank into a rosebush. Hank then leaves and finds Ralph, who tearfully tells him that the weenies were stolen by town dogs. Hank believes him. Just then the Dogcatcher pulls up, and Ralph hops back into the truck. After the truck leaves, Hank heads back towards the ranch on an all-night hike. In the middle of the night he suddenly finds himself surrounded by coyotes, and to escape them he scrambles up into a large tree. To his surprise he finds that the tree is the localbuzzard roost, and among the buzzards roosting there are Wallace and Junior. The coyotes demand that the buzzards send Hank down to them. Instead, to get them to go away, Wallace throws up on the coyotes, which sends them fleeing in terror; a buzzard's typical menu does not bear close inspection. Next morning Hank returns home, but on the way back he suddenly realizes that Ralph ate the weenies himself, and that there were no town dogs. This leads him to a valuable piece of advice: Never trust your lunch to a jailbird. On this note the story ends.
