Book #3: Mud-Puddle Poodle
Buttons is a great dog.
When she finally gets a dog of her own, Rosie knows it’s going to be perfect—unlike everything else in her chaotic house with four crazy brothers.
There’s just one thing …
Buttons hates her fancy dog pillow, but she loves a good, dirty pile of leaves! Rosie’s new pet is her complete opposite. Can she ever learn to live with this mess of a dog?
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Read an Excerpt:
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.”
“Senorita 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!
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Do you own a mud-puddle puppy?
Tips coming soon!
