Mud-Puddle Poodle

by Tui T. Sutherland

“Danny?” Dad said.

  “Merlin!” Danny yelled.

  “That doesn’t count!” I shouted. “Merlin’s not famous!”

  “He’s famous at our school!” Danny pointed out. That was true. Merlin showed up on the playground on the first day of school, and a couple of days later he ran through the cafeteria during lunch and totally started a food fight (I hadn’t quite figured out how that happened, but my guess was that Danny was involved). It was a mess and we all had to clean it up, which was gross. Anyway, I figured all that was a sign that Merlin was totally out of control. Did we want a dog like that? I thought not.

  “Can you think of a slightly more famous golden retriever?” Dad asked Danny.

  “All right, what about that one that plays basketball in those movies?” Danny said. “And there’s one on that TV show Mom watches, too.”

  “He should have to know their names!” I said.

  “The judges rule that that’s good enough,” Mom said. “Point for Danny.”

  “Miss Rosie, how about you?” Dad asked.

  “Vikki,” I said, glaring at Danny.

  “She’s making that up,” Danny said.

  “I am not!” I said. “She’s won lots of dog shows! She nearly won Westminster a few years ago! Mom, look it up.”

  “She’s right,” Mom said, tapping on the keyboard.

  “Isn’t she the cutest thing?” I asked. Mom smiled at me. I had a feeling I was winning her over.

  “Famous in the world of toy poodles is not the same thing as famous,” Danny said.

  “At least she has her own website,” I retorted. “You can’t say that about Merlin!”

  “ROUND THREE!” Dad interjected before we started yelling again. “You have two minutes to write down all the reasons you can think of why we should get the kind of dog you want. Feel free to use bullet points and incomplete sentences. As many reasons as you can think of. Go!”

  I grabbed the pencil and started writing furiously. On the couch, Carlos and Danny were doing the same. Miguel wrote something down and then stared into the silver pen he was holding as if he was checking out the reflection of his hair.

  “Time!” Dad said finally. He took our essays from us.

  “Miguel,” Mom said, sounding exasperated. “‘To meet girls’ is not a good reason to get a Rottweiler.”

  “Sure it is,” Miguel said, doing that sideways grin-and-nod that he’d been practicing in the mirror all summer. He doesn’t know we’ve noticed him doing it, but Danny and I make fun of it all the time. He thinks it makes him look like a movie star. We think it makes him look like he can’t hold his head up straight.

  “I want a tough, manly dog,” Miguel said. “Chicks dig that kind of thing.”

  “Please never say ‘chicks dig that’ again,” Oliver said.

  “They do!” Miguel said. “Caitlin and Emma and Sarah will think I’m so cool if they see me walking a big tough dog like a Rottweiler.”

  “Miru wouldn’t be impressed,” Oliver said in this superior way, like his girlfriend is cooler than every other girl on the planet. (OK, she kind of is. She has a nose piercing and she draws comic books and wears tall boots and goes to rock concerts all the time. I have no idea why she’s dating him.)

  “Hmm,” Dad said. “All right, he can have one point for that, as debatable as his theory is.” Mom raised one eyebrow, but she wrote it on the chart.

  “Carlos,” Dad said. “You list four reasons here, but they all sound like much the same reason to me.”

  “What?” Carlos said, looking offended.

  “Let’s see: You say Border collies are smart, it’ll be easy to teach them tricks, they learn fast, and we can enter them in competitions.”

  “Ha!” I said. “You could have just written ‘They’re smart, they’re smart, they’re smart, they’re smart’!”

  “Well, they are!” Carlos cried.

  “I’ll give you two points for that,” Dad said. “Smart and competitions.”

  Now Carlos looked grumpy, too.

  “Danny and Rosie,” Dad said. He paused dramatically. It’s like how he gets all theatrical when he’s doing closing arguments to the jury.

  “Danny, you write: ‘Could be a friend to Merlin.’ One point.” He paused again. “Rosie, you write: ‘Poodles don’t shed, so she won’t make the house messier.’ One point.”

  I wriggled in my seat. This was stressful!

  “Danny: ‘Goldens are friendly and easygoing.’ One point. Rosie: ‘Poodles are hypoallergenic, so our allergic friends can visit.’ And you even spelled it right, very impressive. One point.”

  “Thank you, Rosie,” Oliver said huffily. Danny and Carlos glared at him, and he added quickly, “But I still don’t want a poodle.”

  “Danny: ‘A golden retriever will run around the park and chase tennis balls with me.’ Rosie: ‘A toy poodle will cuddle on the couch with me and I can dress her up.’ Hmmm. I’m not sure either of those should get a point, but we’ll give one to each of you and call it even.”

  I held my breath. Danny and I were tied with eight points. Did he have anything else written down?

  “And finally,” Dad said, looking each of us in the eye. I think that’s a jury trick, too. “Finally, Rosie writes: ‘We should get a little girl toy poodle so that there is someone else like me in the house.’”

  “What?” Danny yelled. “That doesn’t count!”

  “It does, too!” I hollered. “You’ve got Carlos and Miguel and Oliver! I don’t have anybody!”

  “That’s so lame!” Danny cried. “She’s saying she should win because she’s the only girl!”

  “Yeah, Rosie always gets what she wants!” Carlos complained.

  “THAT IS SO NOT TRUE!” I bellowed. “Do you know how much sports TV we watch around here? Or how many boys are always everywhere when I want to have a slumber party? Or how I always have to sit in the middle in the way back of the minivan?”

  “Boys, Rosie,” my dad said. “Enough! Listen!”

  I folded my arms and glared at my brothers. They glared back.

  “This contest had many parts,” Dad said, “and Rosie has kept up fair and square. This is the tiebreaker, but remember it’s not the only point she’s scored. And — we’re giving it to her. The judges find in favor of Rosie.”

  “WOO-HOO!” I yelped, leaping out of my chair. I couldn’t believe it! I really won!

  We were getting a poodle!

  “Nooooo!” Danny howled.

  “My love life is totally doomed,” Miguel said, burying his head in his hands.

  “Well, I’m not walking it,” Carlos grumbled.

  “Poodle poodle poodle,” I sang, dancing around the room. “Poodle poodle poodle!”

  While the boys were complaining, I looked over and my mom winked at me. She knew what it was like. She had older brothers, too (only two, not four, but still!). And I figured she agreed with me about the shedding. It was nice to have a judge who could tell when I was right.

  “OK, enough moaning and groaning, boys,” Dad said, wiping off the whiteboard. “You all could have won if you’d done your research and thought about it as much as Miss Rosie here.” I beamed and fluffed my hair.

  “I’ll go online tonight,” Mom said, “and as soon as we find the right match, we’ll get our new dog.”

  Our new dog!

  I didn’t care that my brothers were all mad at me. I didn’t even care if they never liked my dog. She was going to be my dog. And she was going to be perfect. I’d done my research. I’d looked at all the photos of pretty, fluffy poodles online. I already knew what color pink I wanted to paint her nails.

  What could go wrong?

  We were lucky. (Well, I was lucky. My brothers didn’t think it was so great.) My mom found a notice in the local newspaper from a woman whose pet poodle had had puppies three months before. She called, and there was still one puppy left. Better yet, she was a girl puppy, which was what I wanted. We were able to go meet her the very n
ext afternoon.

  Oliver decided not to come. He was acting all above us, like he didn’t really want a dog anyway. He went for a bike ride with Miru instead.

  Carlos stayed home, too. He said he had to study for an exam. This was probably a lie, since there aren’t a lot of big tests in the third week of school, but whatever. Since it was just me and Danny and Miguel, I didn’t have to sit in the way back of the minivan.

  The woman who answered the door said her name was Belinda. She had really short red hair and she was dressed like she’d just been jogging. She seemed really pleased to see us and she told my mom and dad about fifty times that poodles are great pets for a family with kids.

  We followed her into the living room, where a little plastic fence was set up in the corner. Inside the fence were a couple of stuffed toys, a water bowl, and a fluffy dog cushion. On top of the cushion was a bundle of white fur.

  At first it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at. I had a very clear image in my head of the pretty toy poodle nose and leg puffs and perfect tail. She would be a pure snowy white. But this pile of fur had streaks of honey and tan colors in it, too. And it was all fluffiness.

  Then it moved, and I realized that there were two dogs inside the fluff: the mother and the puppy. The mother looked up at us and I realized she didn’t have a proper poodle haircut at all. All her fur was the same length, fluffing out around her head and body.

  And the puppy was exactly the same in miniature. She let out this tiny yip when she saw us. I could see her little pink tongue as she yawned. She tumbled off the pillow and came stumbling over to our feet. Belinda moved the fence and we all sat down on the carpet.

  The puppy blinked big black eyes at us. She kind of swayed in place like she wasn’t sure what to do first. Then she shook her head, crouched, and charged at Danny. Only she was too little or too sleepy to run straight, so she wobbled off course and ended up tripping over his sneaker.

  “YIP!” she protested, flopping over sideways. She spotted Danny’s shoelace and pounced on it like it was responsible for tripping her. She got the shoelace between her tiny teeth and dragged it backward, grrr-ing and snrrrf-ing and batting at it with her tiny paws.

  “Hey,” Danny said, trying to get it away from her. She promptly jumped on his hand. The funniest thing was that she was so tiny — she was only about the size of Danny’s hand, but she went ahead and bravely attacked it anyway. But she didn’t try to bite it; she had her mouth open and kept going “Arrrr arrrr” while she wrestled with his fingers.

  I caught Danny hiding a smile.

  “She’s really small,” Miguel said disapprovingly. “Will she get bigger?”

  “She’ll probably be about the size of Muffin here when she’s fully grown,” Belinda said, pointing to the mother. Muffin was lying on the red cushion with her eyes fixed on the puppy. She looked small enough for me to carry easily — a little smaller than my friend Pippa’s cat, Mr. Pudge. So at least one thing was perfect. But I didn’t understand why they looked so shaggy. Would it be rude to ask? What if some poodles just grew that way? I couldn’t remember reading about different kinds of poodle fur.

  Finally I said, “But — why doesn’t she look like a poodle?”

  “Ah,” Belinda said, “you’re thinking about the poodles you’ve seen on TV.” I nodded. “That’s a particular kind of cut, which is normal for poodles in competition. For Muffin, who’s our pet, we just let her coat grow naturally and trim it every few months. And of course, this one’s just a puppy. If you want to give her a competition cut when she’s older, you can do that. Let me give you her pedigree papers while I’m thinking of it,” she said to Mom and Dad. They went into the kitchen and left us with the dogs.

  The puppy still hadn’t come over to say hi to me. I thought she’d sit in my lap as soon as she saw me. I thought maybe she would lick my fingers delicately a few times and then curl up and fall asleep. Instead she started running in giddy staggering circles around Danny. She kept tripping over her paws and doing little somersaults on the rug. Then she’d bounce up, blinking and looking around like she was trying to catch whoever was doing that to her.

  “Come here, Princess,” I said, holding out my arms to her.

  “Oh, no,” Danny said. “Princess? Are you serious?”

  I ignored him. “Come on, puppy. Come on, little Princess.”

  She took a few steps toward me, looking up at me with those enormous eyes. Then she pounced on one of my hands. Her claws were sharper than I expected. “Ow!” I yelped, pulling my hand back. Delighted, she chased after it and pounced again. I held my hands up over my head where she couldn’t reach them. So then she tried to climb up my knees. She made it onto my lap, braced her front paws on my favorite pink T-shirt, and leaned up toward my face. Her fluffy tail was swinging back and forth ecstatically. Her little pink tongue snuck out and licked my chin.

  “Awww,” I said, putting my arms around her and hugging her.

  “YIP!” she squealed, scrambling out of my arms and onto my shoulder. Before I knew what she was doing, she buried her nose in my hair, snuffling through my black curls. Suddenly she dug her tiny paws into my shoulder and hurled herself at my pink hair ribbon.

  “Eeeeeek!” I yelped as the puppy went tumbling down my back, yanking on my hair as she fell. She had my ribbon clutched between her two front paws and now she rolled away from me, picked it up in her teeth, and galloped back to Danny.

  Danny was actually laughing now. Even Miguel looked somewhat amused.

  “Princess!” I said. “Give that back!”

  The puppy was thoroughly delighted with herself. She pranced around Danny, bouncing out of reach when he tried to catch her. Her fluffy honey-and-white fur made her look like a little polar bear or a baby seal flopping around.

  “Does it have to be Princess?” Danny pleaded. “You got to pick the dog; shouldn’t we get to pick her name?”

  “No way!” I said. I know my brothers.

  “Fuzz,” suggested Miguel.

  “Twinkletoes,” suggested Danny.

  “Marshmallow Fluff.”

  “Foo-Foo the Snoo.”

  “Señorita Fancypants!”

  “Lady Snooty McSnooterfluff of the Waterford McSnooterfluffs!”

  “Paperweight!”

  “Kickball!”

  “Danny!” I yelled.

  “No, she doesn’t look like a Danny,” my brother said, pretending to look at the dog thoughtfully.

  “Stop it!” I said. “Her name is Princess!”

  “Her eyes look like little black buttons,” Miguel said.

  “Buttons!” Danny cried. The puppy leaped to her paws and scrambled onto Danny’s lap. “See, she likes it,” he said. She tried to climb his arm to get up to his face. He picked her up with both hands around her little chest and let her lick his nose. Her tail was going bananas again.

  Oh, no. Maybe she did like the name Buttons. At least it was better than Lady McSnooterfluff or Kickball. But what about my perfect little Princess?

  Mom and Belinda came back into the room. Mom saw Danny holding the puppy and gave me a thumbs-up behind his back. But that wasn’t the point at all — Princess was supposed to like me best!

  And her name was supposed to be Princess!

  Belinda gave us a dog towel that smelled of Muffin to wrap around the puppy, so she’d have something familiar in her new home. The puppy wriggled a lot as Belinda wrapped her up, but finally she lay still and Belinda put her gently in my arms. A tiny ball of fluff blinked up at me. She was so wrapped up, all you could see was her little fluffy face.

  Her eyes and nose did kind of look like buttons — little shiny black buttons buried in a pile of white feathers. She looked like she was smiling at me. She scooted a little forward, motoring her paws inside the towel, and licked my arm where she could reach it. Maybe it wasn’t so important to call her Princess.

  I thought about it on the way out to the car. I sat in the far back with the puppy
while Danny and Miguel took the middle seat. They were trying not to act too interested, but they kept twisting around to look at her.

  “You might want to put her on the floor,” Mom said to me. “This is her first car ride.”

  “No!” I said. “I want her on my lap!”

  Mom shrugged. “OK, fingers crossed. At least it isn’t far.”

  The puppy rolled around inside the towel as I put my seat belt on. She was making these cute yippy noises and trying to flail the towel off of her, but she just got herself more tangled. I slid her and the towel onto my lap. She managed to wriggle her front paws out and batted at my wrist as the car pulled out of the driveway.

  “Shhh,” I said, smoothing down the fluff on top of her head. She gazed up at me with her tongue hanging out. Her tiny chest went up and down as she panted.

  “Sir Licks-a-lot,” Danny suggested, hanging over the back of his seat.

  “She’s a girl,” I reminded him.

  “Sarah Jessica Paw-rker,” Miguel offered.

  “Superfluff,” said Danny.

  “Paw-ris Hilton,” said Miguel.

  “That’s just dumb,” I said to him. Danny opened his mouth. “OK, OK!” I yelled, cutting him off. “We can call her Buttons.”

  “Yeah! Buttons!” Danny said. He and Miguel high-fived. Then they seemed to remember what they were fighting about.

  “It’s still lame to have a small dog,” Danny said.

  “Yeah,” Miguel said. “I hope the girls at my school don’t see it.”

  “Buttons is not an it, she’s a her,” I said. “And please, as if any of the girls you like would date you anyway.”

  “Kids, settle down,” my dad said, peering at us in the rearview mirror.

  Miguel was about to make a smart-aleck remark back at me, when suddenly he stopped and gave Buttons a horrified look. “What’s — uh, what’s she doing?”

  Buttons had her front paws braced against my thigh. She was making a sound in her throat like hrrrrrrk … hrrrrrrrrk….

  “Buttons, no!” I shrieked. I grabbed her to move her onto the floor, but before I could, Buttons threw up all over me, the car seat, and my favorite pink T-shirt.