by Daphne Maple
I was about to suggest that we take the dogs out back when the front door opened. We all looked to see who it was, and a moment later a big white ball of fluff streaked in.
“Hattie!” I cried as we all ran over to greet her.
The dogs came too, so Hattie, who was running in joyful circles, was immediately surrounded by people petting her and dogs coming up for a good sniff. When she came to me, I bent down and gave her a big hug. She panted happily in my ear, then gave me a lick on the face and moved on to greet Sasha, who was nearly tearful with joy.
Ms. Wong stood in doorway, smiling as Hattie made her rounds. Alice had come out of her office and after she gave Hattie a loving pat, she turned to Ms. Wong.
“How’s Hattie doing these days?” Alice asked, smoothing back a strand of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail.
“She’s great,” Ms. Wong said proudly. “We’ve been working on training her, and she’s very obedient now. She always comes when we call her and she’s getting much better at sitting. And really, she’s such a sweetheart.” She gazed lovingly at Hattie, but then looked back at Alice. “There’s just one problem.”
Kim, Sasha, and I glanced at each other, worried.
“Is it something we can help with?” Alice asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Wong said. “Hattie misses coming here, and we’re hoping you’ll have her back in the Dog Club.”
Kim, Sasha, Tim, Caley, and I all cheered, which made the dogs go bonkers with excitement.
Alice was laughing. “I think you can take that as a yes,” she said.
“Great,” Ms. Wong said with a grin, reaching into her purse and pulling out her house key. “You can pick her up for the next meeting.”
“But you’re not taking her now, are you?” I asked.
Ms. Wong laughed, then gestured to where Hattie was playing fetch with Kim, Boxer, and Lily. “How could I?” she asked.
“I’m so glad you changed your mind,” Alice said as she walked Ms. Wong back toward the door.
“Actually, it was the picture in Your Roxbury Park that did it,” Ms. Wong said. “The one of me and Hattie. I could see we’d made a mistake, that she was happy at the club but she knew we were her people.”
“Yeah, she’s smart like that,” I said, snuggling Hattie, who had come over. I buried my face in her fur, thrilled that my plan to get her back had worked.
“We overreacted,” Ms. Wong said, “being new owners and all. But we’re figuring it out. And we know she’ll be happy here.”
She waved and then headed for the door.
“I’m so glad Hattie’s back,” Sasha said with a happy sigh.
“With Hattie and all the new dogs who want to join the club, we are in great shape,” Caley said.
Alice nodded. “We sure are,” she said. “Thanks to your photos, Taylor, and the hard work all of you do around here.”
Hearing that made me start beaming all over again. All of us were; Alice didn’t give praise unless she really meant it.
“You know what it’s time for,” Tim said, grabbing the laundry basket. “I’m mounting a comeback, and Hattie’s going to be my star forward.”
“You’re on,” I said. Kim and Sasha came over to help me get our team ready, while Caley walked over to Tim.
“We’re winning this one for sure,” Sasha told them tauntingly.
“I don’t think so,” Caley taunted back, laughing. “This one’s ours.”
But as we began our rousing game, everyone laughing and joking as we ran around, I knew that really we were all the winners. Our club was in great shape, Brianna was becoming a friend, Hattie was back, and, most important of all, we had each other.
And there was nothing better than that.
Excerpt from Roxbury Park Dog Club #4: All Paws on Deck
DON’T MISS THE NEXT DOG CLUB ADVENTURE!
Kim may be Roxbury Park’s dog whisperer, but between trouble with schoolwork and a challenging new member of the Dog Club, she has her work cut out for her—and she’ll need a helping hand (or paw) from all of her friends!
1
“I’ve graded your tests,” my English teacher, Mrs. Benson, said crisply. The bell for first period had barely finished ringing but she was already starting class and everyone, even Dennis Cartwright, class troublemaker, was sitting down quietly. Mrs. Benson had that effect on people. It wasn’t like she yelled or made scary threats. She just had this look that made you want to do your very best for her.
Which was why I was biting my lip as she began passing back our papers. I really had done the best I could. But we’d just finished a biography of Marie Curie and even though it was pretty interesting, I’d gotten a little confused during Mrs. Benson’s lectures about it. I’d try to take notes but she talked so fast that I’d still be writing down the first thing she said while she was already onto a whole other subject. And then I’d be so lost I wouldn’t know what to write. My notebook was a mess of scribbles that didn’t even make sense. Plus sometimes the book got a little confusing. Which was why I’d probably done pretty badly on this test. And that was not going to make my parents happy at all.
Mrs. Benson set a paper in front of my best friend Sasha, who looked at it and grinned. It wasn’t so long ago that Sasha was the one having trouble with her homework, but not because she didn’t understand it. She’d just gotten so busy with the Dog Club we’d started, and the dance classes she took after school—plus the new dog she’d adopted from the shelter where we had the club. But Taylor, our other best friend, and I had helped Sasha figure out how to manage her time a little better and judging from the expression on Sasha’s face, it was definitely working.
I saw Taylor give Sasha a small thumbs-up, so she must have noticed too. Then both of them looked at me just as Mrs. Benson put my paper on my desk. She’d set it upside down and just seeing that made my stomach twist. Good grades came face up. I took a breath and turned the paper over slowly. A bright red 68 was scrawled at the top.
My face felt hot and my eyes prickled. My parents had told me how important that test was and I’d promised them I’d study every night. And I had. But I’d still done terribly.
“It’s okay, Kim,” Sasha whispered sympathetically. Only the best of friends would risk a Mrs. Benson look by talking in class.
I tried to smile at Sasha but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. The red 68 made smiling impossible.
“So that concludes our unit on biographies,” Mrs. Benson said. She was back at the front of the room, her hand resting on the pile of books on her desk. “And now we move on to one of my very favorite books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Kwan, Danny, and Taylor, would you please help me pass these out?”
When Taylor set the book on my desk she reached over and squeezed my arm. The beads at the ends of her braids clinked gently as she moved down the aisle, and my skin still felt warm where she’d touched me. The 68 still ate at me but it helped to have Taylor and Sasha.
So I did the only thing I could. I opened my notebook and got ready to write down everything Mrs. Benson had to say about Tom Sawyer.
As soon as the bell rang Taylor and Sasha came over to me.
“Don’t worry, you’ll do better on the next one,” Sasha said, pushing a dark brown curl out of her face. Sasha usually wore her hair back in a ballet bun or ponytail, but curls were always springing free as if they had a life of their own.
“Yeah, it’s just one test,” Taylor added. She was wearing a bright pink T-shirt that made her dark brown skin glow.
“I wish my parents thought that,” I said as we headed into the crowded hallway.
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About the Author
DAPHNE MAPLE grew up in a small town in upstate New York in a big house that was always full of dogs. She and her friends would spend long afternoons playing with their dogs in the backyard, and that, along with her work at an animal sanctuary, gave her the idea for Roxbury Park Dog Club. She lives and writes in Washington, DC, with her do
gs, Sweetie Pie and Trixie, and on sunny afternoons you can usually find them playing Frisbee at the local dog park.
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Books by Daphne Maple
Mission Impawsible
When the Going Gets Ruff
Top Dog
All Paws on Deck
Credits
Cover art © 2016 by Annabelle Metayer
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
Copyright
ROXBURY PARK DOG CLUB #3: TOP DOG. Text by Daphne Maple, copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. Illustrations by Annabelle Metayer, copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maple, Daphne.
Top Dog / Daphne Maple.
Roxbury Park Dog Club ; #3
First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-06-232771-0 (pbk.)
EPub Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780062327727
PZ.1.M3696 All 2016 2015018265
Summary: “As Taylor deals with a bully at school, the Dog Club faces a new problem—competition, in the form of an upscale doggy daycare service that seems determined to put the Dog Club out of business”— Provided by publisher.
1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Clubs—Fiction. 3. Animal shelters—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction. [Fic]
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FIRST EDITION
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