The Puppy Plan

by Anna Wilson

‘That’ll be useful,’ said Mum.

  ‘Don’t we have a vet already for the cats?’ I asked. I admit that I would not necessarily have known this, as I’ve never really got involved with Cheese or Toast’s medical requirements.

  ‘What would you know? You’ve never got involved with Cheese or Toast’s medical requirements,’ said Mum.

  Cheese and Toast were both sitting at my feet and chose this moment to start purring loudly, as if they agreed with Mum. I tried to imagine what Honey would have to say . . .

  In the end I couldn’t think of an Appropriate Response to Mum’s cutting and sarcastic remarks and instead I concentrated on getting the crispy edge of the lasagne before April could dive in and hack off her usual unfairly huge share.

  ‘If you really are interested, Summer,’ Mum continued, ‘the cats have not been to the vet that much.’ (Well, no wonder I didn’t know about their medical requirements then!) ‘They’ve only been for their booster jabs once a year, but since they last went, the old surgery has closed down. I’ve been meaning to register them with the new one, but I’m just too busy. And I’m about to get busier with Honey arriving –’

  The cats purred even louder. I wondered if they knew who Honey was.

  I cut in quickly in a tactful manner to stop Mum starting up on an Anti-Puppy Rant. The closer we got to Honey’s arrival, the more Mum was getting more stressed and anxious, and I didn’t want her to suddenly change her mind about getting Honey.

  ‘If you have the phone number, April, I’ll call the vet and make an appointment to register her as soon as possible,’ I offered in a very Responsible Dog-Owner way.

  April blushed, which I thought at the time was a weird and strange thing to do when discussing registering a puppy with the vet. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’ve already done that.’

  Mum dropped her knife and fork on to her plate very dramatically and let her jaw drop, which was a bit disgusting as she still had bits of lasagne in her mouth which I could see in detail as I was sitting opposite her. She should listen to her own advice which she always gives to me on a regular basis about keeping my mouth shut while eating.

  ‘I think I’m going to faint!’ she said, being even more over-dramatical. ‘Could it be? Yes – I think both daughters are actually using their initiative and being helpful for the first time in living memory. Actually, I must be dreaming.’ And she pinched herself to check whether or not she was really awake.

  And she thinks April and I are behaving strangely?

  6

  How to Welcome Your Puppy

  At last it was the half-term holiday and time to get Honey and bring her home to live with ME! Of course I did not sleep an entire wink the whole of the night before the . When I could at last see light peeping through the curtains in my room I got dressed as quietly as a very small mouse and thought I would start the day off with an exceptionally good deed, i.e. Make Breakfast. So I crept downstairs and started to make toast and get the mugs and plates out. I also moved the dog crate which we had finally bought for Honey. I thought it would be more cosier and comfier nearer the window and out of the way of draughts from the back door. I probably didn’t do this particular thing as quietly as a very small mouse, because very small mice can’t move large dog crates.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Summer?’ It was Mum, looking, if I may say, quite unglamorous and disorganized, considering what an important day it was for us all.

  ‘I’m making a special breakfast and tidying up the kitchen!’ I announced proudly.

  ‘It’s half past six, Summer, on a Saturday morning!’ Mum wailed in a WOEBEGONE fashion. (I like the word ‘woebegone’. Molly told me it means ‘suffering or unhappy’, which is exactly how Mum looked at this moment in time.)

  ‘Well, Frank said we could come early, and I know Molly will be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – or maybe I’m getting her confused with Honey, ho ho!’ I tried Joking to De-Fuse the Tension again. I don’t think I’m all that good at it.

  Mum groaned loudly and stomped back upstairs to bed.

  Oh well, more toast for me, I thought, and went to watch a recording of an episode of Seeing Stars (which I had missed due to having to do homework or something else equally dull and unimportant) while Mum had a bit of a lie-in. I didn’t seem to have woken April, but then, as Mum says, ‘April wouldn’t get up early on a Saturday morning even if a famous celeb was waiting outside to take her on a date,’ which is obviously a ridiculous thing to say, as a famous celeb is hardly likely to take any interest whatsoever in my grumpy sister when he has got a whole range of Hollywood babes to choose from to go on a date with. And anyway, if a celeb was waiting outside, April would be out of bed and downstairs faster than it takes to blink very quickly, so Mum is just altogether wrong.

  We finally got to Frank’s to find Molly waiting for us. Mum looked a bit better now. She’d made an effort to put on some make-up, which I think made her look a little less tired-looking, but I noticed her socks were odd colours. One was blue and one was red. I tried not to look at them again in case I drew anyone else’s attention to them. It would have been far too embarrassing. At least she wasn’t wearing her fluffy slippers, thank goodness. She did once forget to take them off when she drove me to school one morning when we were late, and all my friends saw her and I nearly died right there on the spot. Luckily I think everyone was too excitable about the puppies this morning to notice odd socks.

  We’d brought the car round to get Honey, even though Frank’s house is only a few streets away. We didn’t want to carry her all the way home in case she was wriggly and I dropped her.

  On the way home I held her on my lap and she made loads of whiny noises that made me feel sad.

  Frank had warned me about this.

  ‘She will probably cry a bit, tonight especially,’ he had said, ‘but you must be firm with her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. When Mum is firm with me I don’t get any pocket money for a week, and I certainly am not allowed to watch Seeing Stars.

  ‘I mean,’ said Frank, in a voice which he probably thought was patient, but which was actually quite rude, ‘that you mustn’t go and see her in the night if she cries. You must leave her and then she’ll learn to be OK on her own. That’s what we did with Meatball.’

  (I would cry all night if I’d been christened ‘Meatball’.)

  Mum looked more than a little bit concerned at this point. ‘How loudly will she cry?’ she asked, crumpling her forehead in a worried way.

  Mrs Gritter smiled and said, ‘All I can say is, buy yourselves some earplugs just in case.’

  I thought that it would be a good idea to leave at this point, in case Frank or Mrs Gritter said anything else completely insensitively that might put Mum off letting me take Honey home. Luckily Honey was still looking very cute and cuddly and so Mum’s face went all soft and gooey again when she looked at her.

  When we got to my house Molly got out of the car first, and I passed Honey to her as I didn’t want to drop her while I climbed out.

  Frank had also given us some tiny brown dog-biscuity food that we had to feed to Honey three times a day. I went and put it on a shelf in the kitchen.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Mum asked.

  April was hopping from foot to foot in a quite impatient and strange way. I thought maybe she needed to go for a pee. That reminded me of the very important thing I had learned from the Love Me, Love My Dog book about what to do when the puppy first comes home.

  ‘We have to show Honey where she’s allowed to go to the loo,’ I said, feeling very important and responsible. ‘I shall take her down to the bottom of the garden.’

  I carried the warm, snuffly bundle, which was , down the garden to our apple tree and said, feeling very proud and bubbly and almost like I might cry all at the same time, ‘Empty!’ This is the command that Monica Sitstill says you must use to tell your dog when to go to the loo.

  Honey just sat there looking extremely small and tin
y, like a little golden bear. She put her head on one side like she was really trying to understand me, but it was quite obvious that no one had told her what the word ‘Empty’ meant.

  I sighed and picked her up again and carried her into the kitchen. I put her down on the floor while I made sure that her dog crate was nice and cosily comfy. I was just gently and lovingly arranging her toys and blanket when Mum screamed.

  It seemed Honey had finally worked out what ‘Empty’ meant.

  ‘Argh! Summer, I thought you’d just taken her outside to do a pee!’ Mum shrieked as a puddle spread over the kitchen floor.

  How most irritating, I thought, as I stood and watched the wetness run down the line in between the kitchen tiles.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ Mum bellowed. ‘Get a cloth, get a mop, get some paper towels!’

  What an over-the-top PALAVER, as Molly says when everything is a mess and a bother.

  I first of all took Honey and put her out in the garden again. Everyone knows (especially if you have read the excellent and informative book Love Me, Love My Dog) that you don’t scream at a small new puppy who has just done a pee. In the book Monica Sitstill says, ‘Praise the good behaviour and ignore the bad.’ I think this is a glorious and marvellous way of bringing up animals and children to be Model Citizens and I only wish that Mum would make that her personal MOTTO when it comes to me too. If she ignored me when I got a bad report, I’m sure I wouldn’t get one again, and especially I wouldn’t if she praised me when I didn’t get a bad report!

  When I had cleared up the mess in the kitchen in a very efficient and effective manner I went back to the garden to get Honey and take her to her crate. She had fallen asleep on the patio. My heart grew at least three sizes in my chest (as they say in books) as I looked on .

  I scooped her up into my arms and put her gently into her new bed.

  ‘Welcome to your new home, Honey Love!’ I whispered.

  7

  How to Behave at the Vets’

  By now Honey had spent a whole entire week at our house and had managed to stop crying at night and stop peeing on the floor every hour of every day. And I had spent the whole entire week (because it was half-term, so I didn’t have to go to school – thank the high heavens for that) staring at Honey while she was sleeping, playing with Honey while she was awake, and staring at Honey while she was feeding. I was and in love, which generally meant I felt quite most of the time.

  One thing I was certainly not feeling giddy about though was that we had to take Honey to the vet for her injections. In fact, I was Exceedingly Worried and Stressed about the injections, as I cannot say I particularly like the sight of a needle when it is going to be used for an injection, even if it is not going to be used to inject me. But April was being so kind and helpful and said she would come with me and hold my hand and Honey’s paw if necessary. All very strange and UNCHARACTERISTIC.

  ‘Haven’t you got lots of exceedingly important work in your office?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh well, that can wait,’ said my sister in an airy, careless sort of way. She kept and turning her head to one side and the other and patting her long blonde hair. I have always wished so much that I had my sister’s long blonde hair. Not actually her own hair, obviously, because then that would make my sister bald, and I’m not such a meany as all that. But it would be nice to wake up one day and have magically changed into a girl with long blonde hair instead of being me with short, curly auburn hair.

  ‘Why are you checking your hair so much?’ I asked. ‘We are only going to the vet.’

  April frowned at me and then tutted as if to say, ‘Honestly, you don’t know anything about what it is to be a girl with long blonde hair.’ But she didn’t actually say anything, just grabbed Honey from me and put her in the boot of Mum’s car and told me to get in too. (Not in the boot, of course.)

  When we got to the vet we were actually quite early. I thought this was strange, as April never manages to be early for anything. In fact, Mum says, ‘April Lydia Love, you’ll be late for your own funeral,’ which I think is a daft thing to say, as how can you be late when you are already dead?

  The new vets’ surgery was a very smart building and had one entrance for people with dogs and one for people with small pets like cats and hamsters and stick insects and things. Actually, I wonder if people really do take stick insects to the vet ever? I never did take mine. But they escaped from their jar after only two weeks of owning them, so I didn’t really get the chance. Mum doesn’t know they escaped. She would obviously FREAK if she knew, in case they might be living under her bed or something, which of course they might be . . .

  The dog side of the building was a crazy and noisy place to be. The waiting room was full of dogs, barking and whining and trying to play with each other.

  Luckily for us, Honey was small enough to sit on our laps and be held and she was actually quite sleepy, as she always was when we first had her. I was thinking about the old saying that people look like their dogs – or is it that dogs look like their owners? – and playing a game of looking around and trying to see if it was true. And the people DID look like their dogs. There was a scary kind of droopy-mouthed dog which I think is what you call a bulldog. He was snarling a lot and had gloops of sticky stuff hanging from his jaws.

  It was quite the most disgustingest kind of beast, and I was ever so thoroughly glad that Honey did not look like that.

  Then I looked up and saw that the man who was holding on to the scary beast’s lead was also very scary-looking! And he had a droopy kind of face with dribbly, gloopy bits coming out of his mouth too. I had to look away and pretend to examine my chewed-off nails to hide my laughter. I didn’t want the scary man and dog to jump on me or dribble on me or anything.

  And then I looked up and saw a very skinny dog with very short, grey silvery hair and long dangly ears. I think it must have been a she-dog because it was wearing a very glistening and glimmering collar with what I’m sure were real diamonds on it. The famous people in the magazines Molly brings to our Celebrity Club meetings all have dogs with very real diamond collars on. I wondered how much an actual real diamond collar would cost and whether I could maybe try to get on Seeing Stars and become famous and get loads of money and buy one for Honey.

  Then I looked up and saw that dog’s owner and started feeling like I was going to laugh all over again, because that owner was another person who looked exactly spot-on like her dog! The woman had long grey hair that looked like her dog’s ears and she was even wearing an actual real diamond necklace, which is called a choker because it looks like it’s so tight round your neck it will actually really choke you. This time my laughter was really getting far too difficult and frankly uncomfortable to control and I burst out with a laugh just as the vet came out and called:

  ‘Puppy Love – please come through!’

  This sounded quite bizarre of course to everyone in the room, and they all laughed because there is an expression ‘puppy love’, which means that two very young people have fallen in love (I read it in one of Molly’s magazines). Even though I was a bit embarrassed, I was relieved that I could let my own laughter out quite loudly now that everyone else was laughing. I thought this was quite clever of me. April obviously did not think this and grabbed me tightly by the hand, hissing, ‘Shut up, Summer.’

  Why on earth should I have shut up when everyone else was laughing? I can’t have made April embarrassed if everyone else was laughing too. And anyway, she was using very strange and peculiar behaviour, patting her hair, snatching Honey from me and grinning at the vet in a weird daydreamy-ish way.

  We went into the vet’s room and April stroked Honey and put her on the table.

  ‘Now, what can we do for your lovely new puppy, Ms Love?’ asked the vet, looking straight at my sister when he was talking.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said most politely. I wanted to correct his obvious mistake about the important fact that Honey was indeed MY lovely new puppy.
r />   ‘Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she?’ said my sister.

  I thought it was very rude of her to butt in and ignore me. But I didn’t say anything because I was distracted by the tone of her voice, which was all sugary and yucky-sounding and so I found myself staring at her instead. She flicked her blonde hair over her shoulders and I started dreaming again about having nice hair and thinking, ‘I wish I could do that,’ so I missed what the vet said back to her.

  Then I looked hard at the vet and wondered how old he was. Maybe about the same age as April, sort of twenties-ish. He had nice sparkly blue eyes and a very friendly smile and a little short beard. I wish men didn’t have beards. It makes it so difficult to work out how old they are, and of course it is very bad manners indeed to ask them how old they are, so you just have to guess. Then I thought, ‘How do you eat when you have a beard? Does food get stuck in it? I wouldn’t like to kiss a man with a beard. It would be so prickly, I am sure of that. But then, maybe beard-hair is soft like a puppy’s? Urgh! I don’t know why I thought that. I don’t like kissing, beard or no beard!’

  I suddenly realized that Honey was not happy at all. She was pulling away from the vet and whimpering.

  I snapped myself out of my dreaming and tried to calm Honey down. (It was actually a relief to be able to stop thinking about kissing men with beards.) April was holding Honey down on to the table tightly with one hand and trying to ignore how much she was wriggling and whining, while she flicked her blonde hair around with her other hand and chatted away in that yucky voice.

  ‘Yes, I work for Quincey and Close on the High Street,’ she was saying.