Pup Idol

by Anna Wilson

  ‘April! Honey’s run off! I’m going after her!’ I shouted and, not waiting for an answer, I hared over to the woody-type area.

  It was as I had feared. Honey was in doggy heaven – that is, she was rolling in poo.

  ‘Phew! What a stench!’ I cried.

  I tried to get hold of Honey’s collar to pull her away, but she was not in a frame of mood to let me.

  Plus, I was desperately trying not to touch any place on her fur which had come into contact with the poos. I sort of danced around her, looking for a poo-free patch of fur, and then pounced.

  ‘Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeei!’ I yelled, as Honey leaped up and licked me all over. Needless to say, this did not help with my Poo-Avoidance Plan.

  ‘Summer! Are you all right?’ Nick had managed to DETACH himself from my sister’s face long enough to notice that I was not walking in front of them any more. But it seemed he was not intelligent enough to notice that I was anything BUT ‘all right’. (Honestly, I thought you had to be clever and PERCEPTIVE to be a vet. )

  ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ I howled. ‘I am not ALL RIGHT! I am covered in poos that are stenching their way to the high heavens!’

  I’m embarrassed to have to admit that I was actually blubbing at this point. It was not a clever reaction to the state of affairs, as it meant the tears were mixing in with all the muck I had on me. Not the sort of attractive look that would get me through the finals of the TV talent show Seeing Stars, I shouldn’t think.

  Nick grabbed Honey by the collar and said, ‘No!’ firmly.

  Then he grabbed me by the hand and said, ‘Let’s get you home,’ but not so firmly. April crossed her arms, flicked her hair and curled her lip. I knew that could only mean one thing.

  Trouble.

  When we got home Nick offered to hose Honey down for me, but April gave him such a look that he ended up saying goodbye rather hastily and left without even kissing her. April didn’t even object, which I thought at the time was rather un-girlfriend-like, but actually, when you think about it, I don’t think I would want to let someone who has touched the collar of a poo-stained dog and the hand of a poo-stained girl kiss me goodbye anyway. Even if I liked kissing. Which I don’t.

  April flounced off to her room and I cringed. Flouncing is not a Good Sign. It generally means there will be Words later on, most probably when Mum is around to WITNESS them. Anyway, part of me was rather relieved she had flounced instead of starting a shouting match, which is another thing she does when she claims I have done something to upset her.

  As I was on my own, I decided that I would take the Initiative and hose Honey down before Mum got home. Mum had made it quite plain that she was not interested in cleaning up any more of Honey’s messes. In fact, only the other day she had said in a rather careless and frankly uncaring tone:

  ‘You wanted a dog, Summer, so you have to put up with all that goes with being a dog owner.’

  ‘Even the poo?’ I had cried, in an outraged and wounded manner.

  ‘Especially the poo,’ she had replied firmly. And the subject was then well and truly closed.

  She is so unfeeling and not at all sympathetic, which is not what you expect from a mum at all.

  Anyway, after this conversation I looked in my very own copy of my very favourite book, Love Me, Love My Dog (which is based on the fabulous TV show of the same name), and I discovered a truly astounding fact:

  Often ordinary dog shampoos are not powerful enough to combat the pungency of certain odours, notably that of fox’s faeces.

  I had never seen the word ‘faeces’ before. At first I had read it as ‘faces’. I had thought, What on earth is so smelly about a fox’s face? Then I had looked at the word again and realized it had two ‘e’s in it. I often read things wrong. (Mr Elgin, our teacher, says it is because I am ‘Careless and Slapdash’ which is quite unfair, I must say, because I always try my hardest in English, as it is a subject that I like. Unlike history, which does not teach a person anything that can ever be of any use to their practical life whatsoever.) Anyway, I had to look up ‘faeces’ in the dictionary, and I was amazed to see that it is a Imagine the word ‘poo’ having a posh name! What will they think of next, I wonder? So once I knew that Monica Sitstill was talking about fox poo, I had to read on:

  The advice I was given by another dog trainer was to smother the dog in tomato ketchup before hosing him down.

  This woman has some very Interesting and Alternative Ideas, I thought to myself – in other words, she’s stark raving bonkers. But I couldn’t help being impressed as I read on:

  The acid in the tomato ketchup neutralizes the odour.

  Now that Honey and I actually were covered in real-life poo and I actually had a real-life Honk Fest to deal with, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out the Wise and Wonderful Words of Monica Sitstill.

  With her brilliant tips and hints to follow, I couldn’t possibly fail to clean up this little mess, I thought to myself.

  Could I?

  6

  How to Deal with a Honk Fest

  I had put Honey in the garden to keep her overpowering pooiness well and truly out of the way. Before I went out to Destroy the Evidence of the Honk Fest I decided to wash my own hands and face so as to avoid spreading any more muck anywhere.

  Then I opened the fridge and had a good look for some ketchup – there was none. I also checked all the cupboards – no luck. Very odd indeed. We are never a No-Ketchup household. Then I remembered that Mum had said she was going to the supermarket on the way back from work.

  ‘Aha!’ I thought. ‘She will be on a ketchup-restocking mission.’

  But then my face fell. I could not wait until Mum came home before I washed Honey. The poo would by then be completely ENCRUSTED on her fur and would be even tougher than ever to wash off, and she would have to be officially renamed as Miss Honksville, Arizona, 2008.

  ‘Right,’ I said to myself. ‘What would Molly do in a situation like this? She would say that I must think LATERALLY.’ Which would be her way of saying, ‘What else could you use instead of ketchup?’

  I had a sudden of inspirationalism. It was such a bright flash that I almost fell over at my own brilliance.

  ‘What is tomato ketchup made of ?’ I asked myself in a RHETORICAL manner – which means that I was not expecting a reply from anyone as I was on my own. ‘Tomatoes!’ I answered myself. ‘I’m sure Monica Sitsill didn’t mean it had to be actual ketchup – maybe another kind of tomato sauce would do the trick.’

  I started to scan the shelves of the cupboard for other types of tomato sauce. Mum usually has loads of jars because we all love pasta in this family – especially lasagne, but that’s another story . . .

  I shuffled all the bottles and jars around until I spotted a familiar orangey label on a large jar of distinctly tomatoey Italian pasta sauce:

  ‘Aha! Tomaaaatoes! Beeeeuuuuutiful tomaaaaatoes!’ I shouted in an over-the-top Italian accent, because I was so relieved to have found it, and also because I knew no one was listening.

  Pulling on a pair of rubber gloves that Mum uses for housework, I went out into the garden.

  I called Honey to me and held out a treat in my hand to get her to come, which she did very eagerly.

  Then I quickly tipped the whole jar of sauce over her neck which is where most of the poo had been rubbed in. Then, while Honey was still chewing her treat, I leaped over her so that I had one leg on either side to stop her from running off, and I started to rub the sauce into her golden fur.

  ‘This is a very odd thing to do to a dog,’ I said to myself, but I did think I could smell more tomatoey odours than pooey ones, which could only be a Good Thing.

  Honey unfortunately quite liked the smell of the sauce too, and kept trying to twist round and lick it off, but I had already managed to get the Advantage with the Element of Surprise. (Well, I’d be surprised if someone up-ended a jar of sauce over me.)

  Time to wash it off, I thought eventually and w
ent to get the hose.

  Unfortunately, Honey took one look at the hose and decided that she didn’t fancy a wash.

  She then went into a particularly over-the-top harum-scarum kind of mood and ran around the garden in the manner that Molly would describe as Headless Chicken Mode. (Not a great description, I always think, as how on earth can an animal or bird run around when it’s had its head chopped off? I know that if I had my head chopped off, I would drop down dead. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I suppose I wouldn’t be alive to find out. Anyway, I have no INTENTION of letting anyone chop my head off just to see whether I run around in a demented and deranged way, so there’s no point in dwelling on it.)

  By this time, I was quite covered in tomato sauce myself and beginning to wonder if Monica Sitstill had any idea that this would really work in true life, or if in fact it was some kind of horrid joke she had written to see if anyone would actually be daft enough to try it.

  Then I thought I really ought to just get on and finish off the Job In Hand, which was of course to wash the sauce off Honey.

  As is usual with new ideas and things, this was Easier Said Than Done.

  I chased Honey all around the garden squirting her with the hose. In the end I had to stop because I was out of breath. And anyway, I thought I had done a pretty good job of cleaning off the sauce. Honey rolled over and over in the grass to dry herself.

  I wondered if it had worked: was Honey still a stinkified pooch of pooey persuasion, or a heavenly scented hound?

  When I walked into the kitchen to get a towel to finish drying her, I found Mum was back. She was frantically searching through the fridge and the cupboards and muttering to herself.

  ‘Where is that sauce? I wasn’t supposed to buy sauce. I know we had sauce. How am I supposed to make pasta and sauce for tea if there is no sauce?’

  Whoops.

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘Oh, Summer. Do you know where the – what in the name of . . . WHAT have you got all over your T-shirt?’ Mum sort of shrieked the last bit, which made me jump back like I imagine might do if a dog barked at it.

  My mind was ticking over at probably two hundred kilometres a minute. It must have been at least that much, because my head was actually spinning. I was desperately trying to think up a way of explaining about the poo and the tomato sauce and Monica Sitstill’s brilliant tips and hints, in a manner that would stop Mum from exploding.

  ‘Mum, you’ll never believe this—’ I started speaking but was stopped by a furry whirlwind of golden and, er . . . pink that came hurtling through the door and knocked me flying before jumping up to lick Mum’s angry face.

  ‘Summer,’ said Mum, in a dangerously quiet and low tone of voice which usually means you-are-in-so-much-trouble-you-have-no-idea-how-much.

  I froze in horror, which was quite difficult in my crumpled position on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Summer Holly Love,’ Mum continued, ‘would you like to explain to me why you and your mutt are covered in tomato sauce?’

  It was then that I got a good look at Honey – something which had not been possible while she had been careering around the garden, rolling in the flower beds and rubbing her fur on the grass.

  What I saw made me stare.

  My mouth hung open and I think I stopped breathing. I forgot how to speak and I had to pinch myself to make sure that I was in fact seeing with my own eyes and not through the eyes of a dreaming person.

  Honey’s fur had turned pink.

  And it had in it.

  She was a walking advert for the Italian tomato-sauce-making people.

  7

  How to Behave (Dis-)Obediently

  The day of the first obedience class dawned.

  That was supposed to sound poetical, but it doesn’t, because, let’s face it, there is nothing very poetical about the word ‘obedience’, even if you put it near the word ‘dawned’.

  And there was certainly nothing poetical about the day after the tomato sauce INCIDENT either. Mum had been so furiously beside herself with anger that there was NO WAY HO-ZAY that I was going to get out of going to the classes with Frank and Meatball. So that was that. I had to go to the class with a stinky boy that I didn’t want to be with. And I couldn’t even tell my best friend about it, because she wasn’t supposed to know about it. Oh, and Honey’s fur was still as pink as a poodle’s after a session in a (except there were still bits of onion in it too, and I don’t suppose you get them in pooches’ pamper parlours – or any other kind of pamper parlour, come to that).

  I didn’t think things could get any worse . . .

  The minute we arrived at the leisure centre, Honey spotted Meatball through the car window and got very excited indeed. She started jumping up and down and barking and licking the window and spreading her dog snot all over it.

  Mum hates it when Honey smears her dog snot all over the windows. I don’t understand why she has to make such a fuss about it: it’s not as if our car would have won any prizes for Cleanest and Sprucest Car of the Year Award before we got a dog. There have always been crumbs and grains of sand and muddy stains everywhere. (Although the snot is a relatively new addition to the MAYHEM, it is true.)

  ‘Hi, Summer!’ Frank shouted as I got out of the car and let Honey out of the boot. Then he saw her New Look and guffawed: ‘Holy Christmas Crackers, mate! What’s happened to your hound? Has she had a girly makeover or something? Boy, does she look mega weird.’

  Thanks, Frank, I thought. As if it wasn’t humiliating enough to be seen in public with a pink Labrador, I now had to put up with having it BROADCAST in a highly embarrassing way across the whole car park.

  But I decided that as Ignorance is Bliss, I should ignore him and say nothing. So I put all my efforts into concentrating on fixing Honey’s lead so that she didn’t hurtle off and crash straight into Meatball, which was obviously what she was desperate to do.

  ‘Summer,’ Mum said irritably from the driver’s seat, ‘will you please hurry up – Frank’s waiting for you.’

  Which, of course, was precisely why I was not hurrying up. But there was a car behind ours now and the man who was driving it was beeping the horn and waving angrily, so finally I got the lead fixed and said, ‘See you later, Mum. Come on, Honey.’

  Honey immediately leaped on top of Meatball and Meatball rolled over so that Honey could have a good sniff, and I got pulled on top of them both.

  ‘Ha-ha!’ Frank laughed. He was still managing to hold on to Meatball and not be pulled over, which was distinctly annoying. ‘I see what your mum means!’

  As I struggled to get up and pull Honey off Meatball I hissed, ‘What is your point exactly?’

  Frank smirked. ‘Well, you obviously can’t control your dog, or should I say your furry flamingo?’

  I huffed and again ignored his most unhilarious comment. ‘If you had more control over your dog, Frank Gritter, then you would not let her roll over and have her bottom sniffed by my dog.’

  Frank shrugged and said, ‘Whatever. Come on, let’s go in.’

  I was SEETHING with anger. Why on earth did I have to put up with this? According to Mum and Mrs Gritter, Meatball was so well behaved she didn’t need these classes, so why was Frank even here?

  We all walked in through some glass doors and made our way to the main hall, where the classes were being held.

  As if reading my thoughts (which I jolly well hope he can’t in true life) Frank said, ‘You know I’m only here cos Mum said I had to look after you.’

  ‘I do NOT need “looking after”!’ I said, rather too loudly, and lots of people stared at me. And then of course they all saw Honey and probably thought that actually I very much did need looking after.

  Frank just smirked again.

  Honey was pulling on the lead so hard that I had to push my feet into the ground and lean backwards to stop her from running off with me in tow.

  I also was trying desperately not to topple into Frank, who would have made some horrid joke about m
e ‘falling into his arms’ or something, knowing him.

  Eventually we got nearer the top of the queue and I watched carefully while the owners in front of me talked to a lady sitting at a small table which was covered in bits of paper and charts and things. Everyone was telling her their names and handing over the money for the classes and then the lady was explaining that they needed to go and stand in a circle around the edge of the hall.

  Frank and I paid our money and went to join the circle. In the middle was one Scary Mary of a lady.

  ‘Oh my goodness dearie me,’ I said to myself. ‘She is EXCEPTIONALLY bizarre-looking.’

  I knew it was most probably an unkind and quite Uncharitable Thing to think, but this woman looked really quite bag-ladyish. I mean, you would have thought she could at least have put a brush through her grey tangly hair and found a few clothes that matched. It certainly didn’t give me a very good First Impression. (We are always told by adults that First Impressions Count.)

  I, in fact, had made quite a big effort to make sure that my First Impressions did Count, if I do say so myself. I was wearing my most smartest denim miniskirt with pink hearts sewn on and my T-shirt was pink and had a large purple heart on it. So you see I had thought about how to coordinate myself, heart-wise. I had even managed to tie back my hair (which is mostly best described as UNRULY) into a purple scrunchy. (I am trying to grow it, but it’s quite depressing, as curly hair doesn’t seem to grow downwards, only outwards. My real ambition is to have long blonde hair like April has. Although I would never tell her that, as it would make her even more UNBEARABLE if she knew I wanted to look anything like her. I thought that if I grew mine, I could get hold of some of those straightener thingies and maybe persuade Molly to help me bleach it. It does sound a bit desperate, I know, but Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures, as they say. And all the people on Seeing Stars seem to have long blond hair that is straight. Even the men.)