How three dachshunds became one Doberman

Another says he is too old for that. So their dad suggests they take their little sister, and he offers to drive them to a good spot and pick them up in a little bit. Even then, not everyone is sure. "This is more of a human thing," one says, "so I don't know how many houses will give out dog cookies."

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The first costumes are a giraffe, Spider-Man and whatever Oakley has on. He says it is chocolate ice cream. One of the others says it definitely looks like a pile of doo-doo, and Oakley decides that's what he gets for not reading the description. At the first door, a man is sorry, but he only has human candy.

The night looks like a bust until one of the dogs stops two girls with a very polite question. "Excuse me, small humans. Have you observed any homes giving out treats of the canine kind?" They point the dogs to a house where the woman is thrilled to see three little doggies. She brings out dog cookies while her own dog keeps count, one each and no more.

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An hour to get into costume, and all for one cookie. So the dogs make a plan to keep changing costumes and keep going back to the same house. Round two is an ambulance, a police car and a fire truck, and when two of the vehicles bump into each other, the horns start honking. "Hmm, quite the coincidence," the woman says, and hands over the cookies anyway.

Her dog was giving them a look, so round three has to be scary, and one of them announces, "I am Jason." Oakley shows up as a fish. Some people have a severe fear of fish, he argues, so his costume could trigger a scare, and someone jokes that makes him a trigger fish. "For your information," Oakley says, "I'm a clownfish."

"I know it's you three again," the woman says, but she gives them one more and sends them off with "Happy Halloweeny." She will spot three small dogs in any costume, so the next visitor will be one tall dog. Oakley takes the bottom, since the heaviest goes at the bottom and "it's just physics." Daphne takes the middle, and Crusoe takes the top because it was his idea.

A jacket goes over the tower just as the woman comes to the door. "You're a big one and all by yourself," she says. The tall stranger tells her he is Inspector Gadget, and his breed is Doberman. He even talks her into two extra cookies for siblings who couldn't come, one in the jacket and one down the back of his pants, before she spots another dog in there and says, "I'm not a factory here."

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One of them is ready to call Dad for a ride home. Daphne is not. Her plan is trick-or-stealing, with Crusoe and a squirrel toy at the window to get the neighbor's dog barking, Oakley on watch and Daphne going in the back. She belly-crawls across the floor like a tiny ninja, and the cookies make it out.

The woman calls their dad. "Get in, guys," he says when he pulls up. "You have some explaining to do." Every stolen cookie is going back, he tells them, and one of them suggests that perhaps an apology would suffice. It turns out Oakley has eaten them all.