My Dog Made Me Write This Book

by Elizabeth Fensham

  After the birthday cake, Grandpa invited us down to the backyard to help him build a dog kennel. The kennel was a real surprise. Grandpa had bought all of the wood and nails. There was even a plan he had torn out of a weekly magazine. Grandpa said we’d build a big kennel so it could fit just about any size of dog. Being good with handwriting, Hugh painted a little sign to go over the doorway—DOGHOUSE. Milly and I held the wood together while Grandpa sawed and nailed. He did a great job, considering he’d had a hip replacement only three months earlier.

  • • •

  Building that kennel was one of the best times I’ve ever spent with my grandfather. He isn’t a talkative man. In fact, he sounds a little grumpy even when he’s being nice. If someone is unlucky enough to call our house and Grandpa answers the phone, he has a strange way of saying a member of our family isn’t home.

  For example, if someone asks to speak to Dad, he’ll more than likely say, “No. He went to Timbuktu and hasn’t been seen since.” There’ll be silence at the other end of the phone.

  But when Grandpa was working with us on the kennel, he asked us questions about school and our teachers, and he even told us about his school days way out in the country, “Where the crows fly backward to keep the dust out of their eyes.” At Grandpa’s country school, all five grades were in one classroom. And even more amazing was how the kids in elementary school all over Australia were given teeny-weeny glass bottles of milk the size of a small jam jar for lunch so that they would grow up with strong bones. The milk was free from the government. By the time it was getting dark, the kennel was half built, which was good progress. Then Dad got home, Mom called us in for spaghetti (my favorite dinner), and Gretchen got off the internet in time to eat with us.

  During dinner, Dad announced we were going to the dog shelter the next day. I was over the moon. I was going to get my doggy birthday present.

  4

  All of the Bright family went to the animal shelter with me, but I was the one who was going to make the final choice. It was one of the best but saddest days of my life—both at once. There was cage after cage of lost, unwanted, or abandoned dogs. I wished I could give them all a home.

  You wouldn’t believe how many different kinds of dogs there were. Mom has a funny book she’s kept since she was a kid where you flip half a page over and create new dogs from the front of one page and the back of another. A lot of the dogs looked like they’d come out of Mom’s book—as if some scientist had played around with them. Some were smooth, some hairy. Spotty, silky, curly, and scruffy. Brown, black, blonde. Some had floppy ears, some had pointy ears. Beady eyes or big owl eyes. Some long noses, some little noses. Some were as small as your hand, and others were as big as a small horse. Some were fully grown, and some were puppies. And the noise! Barking, howling, sniffling, whimpering, yapping, and yowling. It’s like most of the dogs knew that when visitors came, it was their chance to have a home. They were calling for attention.

  • • •

  Each of us had our favorites. Mom fell in love with a cute spaniel with one leg missing. Dad liked a young Kelpie cross, but he said working dog breeds need a lot of room to run around. Gretchen went nuts over a tiny dog with bulging eyes; I swear it was the size of a rat. Grandpa didn’t say much, but he spent a lot of time patting a big old German shepherd who was so skinny you could see her ribs.

  How was I supposed to choose? Luckily, it wasn’t going to be up to me. I got chosen.

  I had stopped to look at three fat puppies with shaggy bangs hanging over their eyes and wiry sandy-brown hair on their bodies. One was curled up by itself in a corner. The other two were play fighting. The bigger one was winning. She was a girl. She was a rough player—always knocking her little brother off his feet and pouncing on him. But he was great at wriggling out from under her. Then he’d jump on his sister, but she’d throw him down in a sort of karate hold. He’d squirm and nip. She’d lose her grip a moment, he’d escape, and then it would begin all over again.

  That sister is just like Gretchen, I thought. And her little brother has the same sort of messy, straw-colored hair as me. He’s also tough, just like I want to be…

  “Never say die,” said Grandpa quietly over my shoulder.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Never, ever give in,” said Grandpa. He patted my shoulder and walked on to join Mom, Dad, and Gretchen at another cage.

  I laughed. I knew what it was like to be the little brother who could never stay on top for long. The shaggy little brother must have heard me. He walked away from his game with his sister and trotted over to me. His bright, intelligent eyes looked at me from under his bangs. And I swear he was smiling with his neat little needle teeth.

  He jumped up against the wire and looked straight into my eyes. His big sister wasn’t going to let him speak to anyone else. She bounded up behind him, jumped on his back, and latched onto the loose skin around his neck. But the little brother shook off his sister—and he kept looking at me.

  “This one!” I called over my shoulder to Mom, Dad, Gretchen, and Grandpa.

  Gretchen was the first to walk across to me. “That?” said Gretchen.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “It’s as ugly as sin!”

  Gretchen’s words helped me make up my mind even more.

  “He’s the one I want,” I said. “And I’ll call him Ugly.”

  5

  Maybe my dog hates being called Ugly. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like me. But I don’t think it’s that. The day I picked him, he said “thank you” by licking me all over the face. Anyway, if he doesn’t like his name, he gets plenty of variations. Sometimes he’s Uggie or Ug or Ug-Dog or Ug-Paws. Like me, Ugly looks like he’s growing into his paws. He’s over a year old and still growing.

  It might seem silly to get this upset about a dog, but for so long I’d had this dream of what owning a dog would be like. I pictured myself walking along with him, my hand resting on his back. He would keep to my side like a loyal companion. He’d be waiting for me at the door when I came home. He’d fetch things and do tricks and come when I called. He’d sleep on the floor at the end of my bed and guard me all night long. He’d be my best friend.

  • • •

  But instead, Ugly is Mom’s best friend.

  It hurts.

  He doesn’t obey me. I’m not even on his list as second-best friend. There’s Grandpa, then Dad, then even Gretchen comes before me—and she’s just as bossy with the dog as she is with me. So nothing adds up. Ugly has been a disappointing birthday present. It’s as if Mom got the present, not me.

  And Ugly does mean things. He pounces on me and bites my ankles. A few weeks ago, he got into my room and pulled my ancient Greece project off my desk. I’d made the famous temple, the Parthenon, out of hundreds of matchsticks. Ugly chewed them all up. The carpet was covered in tiny pieces of wood like straw. On top of that, I’ve had enough of being yelled at for not properly controlling or doing my share of work for Ugly.

  On the day I ran away, the whole family was on my back.

  “Have you fed the dog? You keep forgetting.”

  “Ugly just pulled Mom’s apple cake off the kitchen table.”

  “There’s no water in Ugly’s bowl.”

  “Ugly’s digging a hole under the fence into Grandpa’s veggie garden.”

  “Ugly’s stolen Gretchen’s undies and torn them to pieces.”

  “Ugly’s had an accident on the kitchen floor. Get a bucket of water and a cloth and wipe it up.”

  “Ugly’s chewed on one of Dad’s antique chess pieces and another one’s missing.”

  “Ugly’s dragging Gretchen’s tights around the backyard.”

  “When was the last time you took Ugly for a walk?”

  • • •

  Well, just to answer that question: on that horrible day that I was
sent to my room, the last time I’d taken Ugly for a walk was an hour before I ran away. And what did he do on that walk? He took off after another dog. He pulled me along on his leash until I tripped and gashed my knee on a stone. I lost hold of the leash and nearly killed myself trying to get across the road to grab him. Then I had to pull him away from a fight with a nasty, big, black dog. Ugly thought it was really funny. His tail was wagging hard. When his tail hit my legs, it hurt. I yelled at Ugly.

  The black dog’s owner, a tall man with a dark beard, told me I shouldn’t yell at a dog and that I needed to have more control over him.

  “Whose dog is it?” asked the owner.

  “Mine,” I said.

  “Well, you should know better.”

  But is Ugly mine? I get told off by everyone about him, but he’s really Mom’s dog.

  I tried to explain this to Mom by using a phrase we had learned in class. She went ballistic. She didn’t like what I said, even if I had been taught it by our teacher. Just the other day, Miss Jolly taught us all these famous sayings like crocodile tears, which means pretend tears, and snake in the grass, which means someone who’s sneaky. Miss Jolly calls them idioms. An idiom is understood in your own language, but if you tried to say the same thing in another language (like Japanese or Italian, for example) people would be very confused. Maybe if you spoke to someone in Italian and told them they were a snake in the grass, they’d stare at you and say, “I am not a snake. There’s no grass here. I’m a human standing in my kitchen!”

  There’s one idiom I especially remembered. It’s barking up the wrong tree. It’s when you’re looking in the wrong place…or accusing the wrong person.

  • • •

  When I got home from that last walk, all bloody and scratched from rescuing Ugly, I’d told Mom what had happened and what the black dog’s owner had said.

  “Well, there’s some truth in his words,” said Mom. “You don’t do enough for Ugly. You’ve been pretty lazy.”

  There it was again. Blame me.

  So I said to Mom, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. You stole my dog. He’s your dog now, and you’re both hopeless.”

  Boy, did that start something. Mom looked red in the face like a volcano about to spew lava. She started shouting things like, “In my day, they’d have washed your mouth out with soap and water,” and, “You’re being a lazy lump!”

  So Mom thought I was a lazy lump. Now I knew for sure. Mom didn’t love me.

  “You love that stupid dog more than me!” I yelled back. “You’re a bad mother!”

  “How dare you!” cried Mom. I escaped to my bedroom before she could yell anything else at me, and that was when I started packing my things to run away.

  6

  When I was little, I liked the fairy tales Mom would read me. It’s interesting how the number three often comes into stories like that. There’s the two ugly stepsisters and Cinderella (three sisters in total), the three little pigs, the three brothers in Puss in Boots, and it always seems like people are given three wishes for something. So this gave me the idea that I should give Ugly three chances.

  Chance number one is that I’m going to call Ugly something different, just in case he hates his name. Maybe he will be nicer to me if I change his name. His new name has to sound like “Ugly” because it would be confusing for someone to call you something really different. For example, if I didn’t want to be Eccle or Eric, maybe someone could call me Rick. Rick is the last sound on my name—Eric. I might do some research. I’ll ask my family first.

  • • •

  This morning I did my research, and now here is my list:

  • Umberto—Grandpa says he used to work at the jam factory with a lovely Italian man named Umberto. He would sing opera while he glued the labels onto jam jars.

  • Ulysses—Dad came up with this name. Ulysses was a hero in an ancient Greek legend about the Trojan War.

  • Ualtar—Mom is into reading about anything to do with Ireland. She gave me this Irish name, which means “strong fighter.”

  • Utterly—Gretchen said my research was “utterly peculiar,” so, take it or leave it, “Utterly” is my suggestion for you.

  Mom’s name—Ualtar—is too difficult to pronounce. It’s sort of like Walter, but the “U” sound is different than the “U” in Ugly. The same goes for Ulysses. It’d be really good to name my dog after such a noble hero, and Ugly might be stoked too, if I could explain. But there’s still the problem that the “U” sound in Ulysses is like the “oo” in “zoo.” No, Ugly needs to be able to recognize his name.

  • • •

  The best names have come from Grandpa and Gretchen. Their suggestions have the same starting sound as “Ugly”; the “U” sounds like someone who’s huffing and puffing up a hill with his mouth wide open. I have already tried the names on Ugly. It’s hard to know if the experiment is working. You see, as long as I have a treat like a dog biscuit in my hand, Ugly will come to either name.

  “Here, Umberto!” Up runs Ugly and snatches the biscuit.

  “Here, Utterly!” Up Ugly runs again and almost takes my finger with the biscuit.

  Then I try “Ugly!” and he comes just as quickly.

  After that, I thought I’d test my experiment. I decided to call Ugly something totally different—“Pamela!” (which is Mom’s middle name)—and still he came.

  But when I tried calling Ugly any of those names without offering a biscuit, he just settled himself down under the kitchen table and ignored me. I crouched down and came right up to his face. His messy bangs were hanging over his eyes, like one of those high school rebels the teacher tells to “Get a comb and clean yourself up!”

  I said to Ugly, “Come now!”

  Ugly opened one eye and squeezed the other shut.

  I’ve seen TV detectives do that squeezy thing with their eyes when they’re suspicious.

  “Come on, boy! Come, Ugly! Umberto! Ualtar! Ulysses! Utterly! Pamela!” I pretended to run for the door.

  Ugly gave a sort of bored groan and dropped his head onto his paws.

  Ugly has failed the test. He has tossed aside a chance to prove himself to me. He has also shown himself to be selfish and to have bad manners. Dad is always saying we should be grateful for the kindness people show us and we shouldn’t use and abuse their friendship.

  There’s another idiom that our teacher, Miss Jolly, taught us—cupboard love. It means you show love to someone only because they will feed and look after you. It exactly describes Ugly. He is a cupboard lover and a user. I think that someone who will only be your friend if they get some sort of reward is a weak and nasty person.

  • • •

  Ugly is darn lucky I’m a man who sticks to his word. A weaker person would throw out Ugly’s two last chances when he discovered what I have. A few minutes ago, I smelled something horrible in my bedroom. I started looking around. Was it a dead mouse? Some cup of cocoa I’d left somewhere that was growing mold? A pair of socks I’d worn for a week and left under a pile of clothes?

  No.

  Any and all of those things would be better than what I’ve just found. I was looking in my closet, on my desk, behind my chair. Then I just lifted up my bedcover and looked under my bed.

  There it was.

  A pile of dog poop, still steamy and warm. Ugly has insulted me.

  7

  As I’ve been saying, Ugly should be grateful he’s even got two more chances, especially after the mountain of stinky poop he secretly left under my bed.

  When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have a clue what sort of second chance I’d give Ugly. I got up and decided to eat breakfast first. My brain needed good ideas, and I can’t think well on an empty stomach. To get to the kitchen, I had to walk through the family room. Gretchen was lying on the sofa and painting her fingernails a candy-pink color with
sparkles.

  “So has Ugly been friendlier when you call him Utterly?” she asked.

  “Don’t tease. You know he couldn’t care less what I call him. He ignores me no matter what.”

  “Maybe even dogs can sense a weirdo when they meet one,” she said, spreading her fingers out to inspect her nails.

  “You’re…you’re…” I couldn’t find anything equally nasty to say back to my sister.

  “Let me finish your sentence for you, Ec. I think you were going to say to me, You’re right, big sister. I’m weird,” said Gretchen, blowing on the wet nails of one outstretched hand. “Now I’m going to be kind and give you a word of advice. You need to do some real research about dogs, not just ask around the family.”

  • • •

  During lunchtime at school, I told Hugh and Milly all about my unhappy time with Ugly. Until then, I’d kept pretty quiet about what was going on at home. I’m not sure why; maybe partly because I didn’t even understand why having Ugly had turned into such a flop, and maybe partly because Hugh and Milly had worked hard to build Ugly’s kennel and make him feel welcome, and I didn’t want them to be disappointed.

  “Gretchen says I need to do some real dog research. I thought I could find out from kids at school how they would handle Ugly,” I finished.

  “Excellent idea!” said Hugh, his dark eyes shining. Milly flicked her ponytail the way she does when she gets excited. “Lucky we did that research project on Health and Leisure last semester,” she said. “We now know how to make a questionnaire.”

  Milly got a clipboard, paper, and a pen from the classroom, and then the three of us sat down in the shade of our favorite pepper tree to brainstorm. In the end, we decided to do a public survey, like they do at the big shopping centers where people walk up to you and ask questions and then write down your answers.