Beethoven meets the Santa Buddies

Chapter 5

Later that day, the Buddies, Tchaikovsky and his siblings met up back at the park. 

"Dudes, where's Buddha?" Mudbud asked, noticing the spiritual Buddy was now missing. 

"Buddha's always on time" Budderball said. 

"Where as you're only on time at dinner-time" Wonder smirked to her big brother. 

"We sent Puppy Paws over to Buddha's" Tchaikovsky explained. 

"We thought he might be the only one with the patience to handle him" Dolly added. 

Soon the gang spotted the spiritual pup and Santa pup coming over.

"Here they come" Chubby said.  

"That being one with the universe stuff, so powerful" Puppy Paws said to Buddha as they approached the others. "And being present, not just giving presents, is so Zen"

"So, how'd it go?" Mo asked them. 

"I lost it" Buddha replied calmly. 

"What's the "it," Zen Master?" Puppy Paws asked the buddhism pup. 

"My temper! That's the "it" I lost, okay?!" Buddha nearly yelled, shocking Tchaik and his siblings. They had never seen Buddha angry before. 

Rosebud then had an idea to lighten everyone's mood. "Hey, I know something that ordinary puppies always do. Play Hide-and-Go-Seek"

"That's a great idea, sis" Wonder said. 

"Hide-and-Go-Seek?" Puppy Paws tilted his head. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's a really fun game" Chubby told him. 

"We play it all the time" Tchaikovsky added. 

"You close your eyes and count down from 12 while we hide" Dolly explained. 

"When you finish counting, you yell really loud, "Ready or not, here I come", and you start looking for us. Got it?" Mo said. 

"Yo, BFFing dudes!" Puppy Paws beamed, attempting to talk slang. "That sounds like mad, gnarly fun for shizzle! Namaste"

"Oh, brother" Dolly sighed. 

Puppy Paws closed his eyes and began counting down to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas. 

"Everyone go in separate directions and meet behind the stump" Rosebud whispered. 

The puppies did just that while Puppy Paws continued counting down. Little did he know was that a certian dog catcher had been patrolling around the area in his car when he spotted the white puppy. 

Puppy Paws soon finished counting and went looking for the Buddies and St. Bernards. Meanwhile, the pups had all gathered behind the stump. 

"All right Rosebud, so what are we doing here?" Tchaik asked.

"I called you all to this stump meeting to discuss Puppy Paws and what we are going to do with him" Rosebud replied. 

"Huh?" Tchaik, Dolly, Chubby and Mo all tilted their heads. 

"What for exactly?" Mo asked the golden pups. 

B-Dawg started first on the matter at hand, rolling his eyes. "Puppy Paws actually thinks that I'm buying that his pop is Santa Paws. I'm not even shopping, yo"

"That dude got me in some serious doo-doo" Mudbud explained. "I had the humiliation of wearing a clean coat for the entire day"

"Not to mention he totally messed up my tennis winning steak" Wonder said. 

"If he's Santa Paws' son, why'd he get me in more trouble, rather than helping me get off the so-called naughty list?" Budderball added in a bit of anger. 

"And you should have seen what he did to me. It was a fashion disaster" Rosebud told her siblings and friends. 

"But I was just trying to be like them..." Puppy Paws frowned, as the pups didn't notice him hiding behind the stump and had heard everything they just said. 

The Santa pup hung his head sadly and started to leave. What he didn't know was that Cruge was hiding behind the bush, waiting for him. He threw a net over Puppy Paws, capturing him and took him away. 

"Now hold on a minute, guys" Tchaikovsky told his friends. "Sure, Puppy Paws did cause a lot of trouble for you all, but it's not like he did it on purpose"

"Yeah," Chubby added, defending the Santa Pup. "He was just trying to be like us"

"They're right. We all have our own karma" Buddha realized, reminding his siblings. "Puppy Paws is not responsible for me losing my center. To find faults in him, we're really just finding faults in ourselves" 

"The Zen dude is correctamundo" Mudbud agreed. "He was only trying to fit in"

The St. Bernard siblings smiled to their friends, having learned a valuable lesson. 

"I was only jealous because the dawg schooled me in the hip-hop battle" B-Dawg said. 

"I suppose you can't be perfect at everything. Even tennis matches" Wonder admitted before turning to face Tchaikovsky who was looking at her as she smiled. "And that's okay"

"Ain't that right, sister!" Dolly smirked to Wonder. 

"I guess I ate myself onto the naughty list. It's my responsibility to get myself off, not Puppy Paws'" Budderball said. 

Rosebud felt bad now, hanging her head as she said to her siblings. "We should be ashamed of ourselves" 

Tchaikovsky soon smiled to his friends, reminding them. "Well, luckily, there's always time to make things right"

"Tchaikovsky's right" Buddha told his siblings. "Let's embrace Puppy Paws with compassion"

The puppies all ran back out to meet Puppy Paws. But when they came back to the spot he was nowhere in sight.

"Where did he go?" Mo asked. 

The pups started sniffing around, looking for any sign up Puppy Paws but unfortunately couldn't pick up his scent anymore. 

"I got a bad feeling about this" Tchaikovsky frowned gravely. 

Meanwhile up at the North Pole~

Santa Claus and Santa Paws went to check on the icicle. The two legendary figures soon stopped in front of the icicle, seeing that it appeared very short now and was still dripping. 

"The Christmas icicle is almost gone" Santa Paws said. 

Santa Claus frowned to his dog. "I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes"

"When Puppy Paws left, the icicle started melting even faster" Santa Paws told his owner. "If we don't find Puppy Paws, Christmas as we know it will be lost forever"

Santa didn't want to admit it, but he soon slowly nodded in agreement.