The Puppy Plan Read online

  For David, Lucy, Tom

  With love

  Contents

  1 How to Be Persistent

  2 How to Get Parental Consent

  3 How to Be Persuasive

  4 How to Be Prepared

  5 How to Use Your Initiative

  6 How to Welcome Your Puppy

  7 How to Behave at the Vets’

  8 How to Behave at a Puppy Party

  9 How to Be Ahead of the Game

  10 How to Fight Like Cat and Dog

  11 How to Desensitize Your Puppy

  12 How to Desensitize Your Vet

  13 How to Find Your Puppy Love

  1

  How to Be Persistent

  This is the story of how my wish came true. The wish that I, Summer Holly Love, have been holding close to my heart for all of my life – well, for as long as I can remember, anyway.

  It’s also the story of how my older sister, April Lydia Love, nearly wrecked my wish and (almost) made me wish I hadn’t wished it, because of her totally weird and unforgivably embarrassing behaviour. More of that later.

  It began when I started YEARNING for my very to have and to hold for ever and ever, Amen. And believe me, I have prayed that a million thousand times to anyone who I thought might be listening. But for a long time it didn’t seem like anyone was listening

  The funny thing about people not listening to you, I have found, is that they only don’t listen when you’re trying to tell them something important, like how much you are yearning for your very own For example, when I used to ask Mum over and over again she never seemed to be listening at all, but always said, ‘Hmm, maybe. Ask me again when I’m not driving around a roundabout/reversing into a blinking tight car-parking space.’

  But then whenever I had to tell her things I’d rather not, like, ‘I’m sorry I seem to have got extra homework again,’ she was always on a totally different wavelength altogether and heard me

  I have to say though, I am now living proof that it really pays off to be PERSISTENT, as Molly Cook, my best friend, would say. (Molly is great at using long words and then explaining them to you so that you can just NONCHALANTLY drop them into conversations to impress people when they are not expecting it.)

  So, after being persistent about the puppy for the longest time ever, I got the chance to be even more persistenter when a boy in my class called Frank (who’s OK most of the time as long as you don’t sit next to him towards the end of the week because he only changes his socks on a Monday, and, like, do they start to honk by Wednesday afternoon) said that his Labrador (who has the unfortunate name of Meatball) had had

  He brought in photos and everything. And were those puppies CUTE or what?

  Mr Elgin even let Frank stand up in class and tell us about the puppies being born, and how he’d stayed up all night to watch. And then Frank put on this kind of serious voice you hear on the radio when people are advertising things for sale and said:

  Which was a daft thing to say, as we’d only just had Easter. I even still had a stash of mini eggs left in my secret place under my bed behind my Celebrity Club folder, next to my torch.

  At that point Mr Elgin said, ‘Thank you, Frank, that will do. Go back to your place, please.’ So Frank did.

  After that I really couldn’t concentrate on any lessons. I was just watching the clock on the wall, which definitely moves a lot slower than the one at home, and thinking that if I thought hard enough the hands would move faster and it would be break time quicker.

  It didn’t work, but at last someone rang the bell for break and we all made a beeline for the playground. I normally just go straight into the corner with Molly and we do our Celebrity Club, but today I had to have a Very Important Appointment with Frank to discuss the Puppy Situation. So that’s why I made the beeline.

  Frank was kicking a ball around as usual, so when I said, ‘Frank, about those puppies,’ he didn’t hear me. Honestly, sometimes I just think I’m So I made my beeline right in front of him and did a bit of nifty footwork and got the ball off him and passed it skilfully to one of his smelly mates.

  ‘Oi!’ said Frank.

  ‘Summer, actually,’ I said, and I folded my arms like Mum does when you know she means business.

  ‘What?’ said Frank. Boys really are the thickest sandwich in the picnic basket sometimes. I tried again.

  ‘I said, “About those puppies.”’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Frank. ‘You said, “Summer actually.”’

  I raised my eyebrows and sighed in a particularly dramatical manner and said, ‘That’s my name.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ said Frank.

  It was then that I knew I had to use my most Mum-like tone to get his attention. ‘I want to talk to you about your puppies, Frank Gritter.’

  ‘You’ll have to make an appointment,’ he said importantly and tried to get past me, back to his football-playing mates.

  ‘I am making an appointment right now,’ I said. This is how to be truly persistent, I thought.

  Frank sighed and said, ‘Come round after tea – but my mum says anyone interested has to have Parental Consent.’

  I wasn’t sure what Parental Consent was, but I thought that it must be something to do with parents, and that I could probably get anything I wanted now that I was in such a persistent frame of mood.

  ‘OK,’ I said, and stepped to one side so that Frank could kick a ball around again and make his socks even more sweatier. I made a mental reminder not to stand too close to him at his house that night.

  2

  How to Get Parental Consent

  I stared at those clock hands for the rest of the day, which meant I didn’t get much out of the history lesson about the Victorians that we had in the afternoon, but to be totally honest I don’t ever get much out of the history lessons we have about the Victorians. I know that the Victorians had a queen called Queen Victoria, which I always thought was quite clever of them, and I know that they invented penny-farthing bicycles, but frankly what use were they? I don’t know anyone today who has even the slightest use for a penny-farthing bicycle. And even in the Victorian olden times only people with the most UNFEASIBLY long legs must have been able to ride them. So I don’t get much out of the Victorians, personally. Especially when I’m thinking about how to get Parental Consent so that I can at last get my very own .

  Someone in the school did finally decide to ring the bell for the end of the day (one day I will find out who this person is and have a word with them to see if they can ring it earlier, as all this waiting around for the bell to ring is very tiring), so, without waiting for Molly like I normally do, I ran all the way home. And on the way I started practising my very-well-planned conversation that I’d made up in my head during the history lesson. It went something like this:

  ‘Hello, Mum. That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing. Oh, and your hair is beautiful today. Did you know that my friends think you are the most nicest-looking mum of all the mums?’

  At this point Mum would smile and say, ‘How lovely, Summer. And may I say that you are looking most gorgeous today yourself?’

  Then I would say, ‘Mum, can I get you anything? Let me make you a cup of tea. You must have had a hard day.’

  And I would lead her to a chair and sit her down and fetch some of those lemony biscuits which she loves but which she is always trying not to eat as they are ‘so bad for the figure’. And then I’d make her a cup of tea while chatting in a friendly way about my day at school, which she always wants me to do, but which I never do because I’m always in a hurry to watch Seeing Stars on telly.

  I have to say a bit about this show, because it is truly the most inspirationalist of shows I have ever seen on The Box (as Mum likes to call the
telly, in that old-fashioned way of hers). It is a show which is a contest for people to become Celebrities, which is of course what my biggest AMBITION is. And because Molly is my best friend, it is her ambition too.

  To enter this show it doesn’t even matter what your talent is, you just have to have one. So you could be a brilliant singer, or a top dancer or a mega-magician or even just be really good at telling jokes. Then you get up on stage in front of what is called a Panel of Judges (although why it is called this I have no idea, as they are just people sitting behind a desk, and there is no panelling in sight at all) and you PERFORM.

  If the person is very good, the judges are kind and lovely and say wonderful things about how great the performance is. If the person is bad, they say horrible things that I wouldn’t even say to someone like Frank Gritter. They say, ‘That was truly the worst dance I have ever had to sit through. You looked like a sack of potatoes on the back of a lorry driving down a bumpy road, and your dress looks like it’s covered in cat sick,’ or something like that. The person then has to try very hard not to cry because it is embarrassing on telly if you cry. (Unless you are supposed to because you are acting in a dramatical drama of some kind.)

  Anyway, once the judges have said who they like best, which is the bit which Molly says is called ‘Delivering the VERDICT’, we, the audience at home, get to vote Except I never can as Mum says the phone bill would go through the roof if I did. (And how on earth a phone bill is able to rocket through bricks and tiles etc., I do not know. Mum does say weird things.)

  Anyway, because I cannot vote, Molly and I decided to set up our own Celebrity Club instead. And we do it after school whenever we can, usually underneath my bed which is one of those ones on a platform where you have a desk under it. Molly and I are going to be famous with our Celebrity Club and we’ll be on telly with our own show just like the people on Seeing Stars. One day.

  But unfortunately for me, I was not a famous celebrity on the day in question, which was the day I was trying to get Mum to let me have a puppy. So instead of using my powers of celebrity, I had to use my powers of persuasion to get Mum to listen to me.

  To go back to my very-well-planned conversation in my head, after telling Mum what a she was, the next thing I thought I would say in my friendly chatty manner was:

  ‘A very interesting thing happened this morning at school, actually, because my charming friend, Frank Gritter, told us that his Labrador has had and that we are all most welcome to come and see them after tea at his house. As long as we have Parental Consent.’

  And then Mum would answer . . .

  ‘Summer! What on earth have you got down your shirt?’

  Mum had been spying on me running down the road and I had not noticed because my head was full of my very-well-planned conversational ideas. She had come out of the house and stopped me in mid-tracks. I screeched to a halt like people in cartoons do whenever they see a seriously bad Baddie and blurted out:

  ‘Hello, Mum. That’s a lovely skirt/dress/T-shirt you’re wearing—’ Whoops. Forgot to delete as applicable.

  ‘What?’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. She always does this when I say something she considers to be silly. She sighed, gave me a kiss, then turned to go into the house and I followed her down the hall.

  I decided to try out my very-well-planned conversation, so I went into the kitchen and threw my bag and pakamac down by the radiator, which is my usual place for putting my things as I can always find them then.

  Mum sighed noisily and went to pick up my bag but I put my hand on her arm in a gentle and concerned fashion and said, ‘Come and sit down and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. You must have had a hard day.’

  Mum’s eyes did something very strange then. They looked as if they were going to pop out of her head, and I’m sure she actually stopped breathing. But she did go and sit down. Good thing really. If she had actually stopped breathing in true life she might have fainted, and I couldn’t let that happen before I had asked her about the .

  I made a lovely cup of tea and got the lemony biscuits.

  Mum narrowed her eyes at the biscuits. ‘What are you up to, Summer?’ she said in a suspicious manner. ‘Oh, put those biscuits away – they are so bad for the figure.’

  She ate three while I started to tell her in a pleasant and chatty way about my day and how Molly and I had played with Rosie Chubb in first break, but then Rosie Chubb had got in a mood with us because we wouldn’t tell her about our club, so she poked a pencil in Molly’s arm and Molly had to go to the Welfare Room to see whether or not we would have to call an ambulance. I had personally thought an ambulance would definitely be needed, as I had seen on telly that you could get lead poisoning if lead got in your skin or blood or something. Molly had said she was positive she would need a blood test to check her Heemi-Goblins Level. At least, I thought that’s what she said, but she was doing that hiccuping crying she does when she’s really panicky so I hadn’t been able to hear very well what she was saying. (Actually, she can’t have said that, as how can there be goblins in your blood?)

  But the nurse said we were Making a Fuss and that pencils don’t have real lead in any more. So at lunch we decided to break up with Rosie Chubb because she couldn’t be our friend if she was going to stick pencils in us that weren’t even real lead, and anyway by that time a more interesting thing had happened which was, ‘. . . my charming friend Frank telling us about his dog’s puppies—’

  Mum choked a bit on the last crumbs of her third lemony biscuit and said in a rather strangled voice, ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked in my most anxious and worried tone. Maybe the biscuits had started to upset her figure. ‘Should I call a doctor?’

  ‘NO!’ Mum bellowed, coughing and spluttering. ‘I should have known you were up to something.’

  ‘Me?’ I said, pointing at my chest and making my eyes do that wide innocent thing people do on telly when they can’t believe someone is saying that they’ve done something they very much obviously have.

  ‘Yes, YOU, young lady. You’re trying yet again to get me to agree to having a dog. Well, I won’t. Ever.’

  I felt a little tiny-weeny bit cross at this. That’s the last time I make tea and get out the lemony biscuits and chat about my day, I thought. But then I remembered that I was supposed to be being persistent and getting Parental Consent, so instead of sulking and saying, ‘It’s not fair,’ I said in my grown-up-discussion voice, ‘I don’t really understand why you are so unkeen on the idea.’

  ‘Because it would end up being my dog,’ she said.

  I’m sure Mum and I speak a different language most of the time: I was asking for my very own puppy, so in what way would it end up being Mum’s dog? So I asked her, ‘Excuse me, Mum, but in what way would it end up being your dog?’

  ‘In the way that I would be the one clearing up after its mess, I would be the one taking it for walks and I would be the one taking it to the vet,’ Mum said in, I have to say, a quite unpleasant tone of talking.

  ‘But you wouldn’t!’ I protested. ‘I’m totally brilliant at going for walks and clearing up messes.’

  ‘Huh!’ Mum did a half-snort and a grunt. Not very attractive, in my opinion.

  ‘Listen,’ I said trying to sound soothing and sensible. ‘I promise I would take it out for a walk every day before school. And I’d get one of those super-duper pooper-scooper things to clear up any mess it makes,’ I said, smiling like an angel.

  ‘Summer,’ she said in her most DECISIVE and scariest way, ‘I remember you saying similar things about the stick insects, before they mysteriously disappeared. In fact, whatever happened to them . . . ?’

  Here we go yet again, I thought wearily. But I tried not to look wearily and kept the angelical smile on my face. It was beginning to feel a bit stiff. (By the way, I’m sure I never promised to take the stick insects for a walk every day.)

  ‘And what about the cats?’ she was still wittering on. �
��Who feeds them every day and picks up all the dead mice and birds they bring in through the cat flap?’

  ‘You do,’ I admitted, smiling carefully, ‘but I never wanted the cats anyway.’

  I probably shouldn’t have said that last bit, but it was totally true. Mum had always wanted cats. I think she thought that if she got cats then I’d forget all about how much I yearned for a . But the thing is, Cheese and Toast’re not that much fun now they’re not kittens. They just sleep all day and go out all night. (Sometimes I actually wish I was a cat. I would have a nice life, and I certainly wouldn’t have to learn my seven times table.) Besides, they are not very cuddly and the only lap they’ll sit on is Mum’s.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mum, pur-leeese!’ I had given up on the smile by now and was doing that thing when you’ve got your hands between your legs as if you desperately need to go to the loo and my eyes were tight shut and I was doing what I think is called a Grimace, in other words my mouth was stretched in an expression of complete and I was showing all my teeth. I was also whining. I think I looked like what Molly calls an Utter Nutter, I’m embarrassed to say. ‘Please give me Parental Consent and come with me to Frank’s and have a look at them.’

  ‘Oh, anything to stop you pulling those bizarre faces,’ she said grudgingly. And I’m sure she almost smiled.

  I could feel my eyes going shiny and I felt . I jumped up to give her a hug and disastrously knocked her teacup flying. This was not a good move and totally definitely not part of my very-well-planned conversation.

  She threw a cloth at me and cried, ‘Before we go anywhere, you’d better prove how good you are at clearing up messes!’