Dream Dogs

6

Poppy
Aimee Harper

Special thanks toThe Happy Dog Grooming Parlour, Farnham

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Introducing…

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introducing…

Name: Poppy

Breed: Yorkshire terrier

Age: 4

Colour: Caramel brown and soft grey

Likes: Dressing up

Dislikes: Plugholes

Most likely to be mistaken for: A fairy

Least likely to be mistaken for: A thief

One
Down the Plughole

It was Saturday morning. As usual, Dream Dogs was busy. Bella sat in the window, cuddling her dog, Pepper, and watching as her mum waved goodbye to Miss Waldicott and her little West Highland terrier, Angus.

“Same time next week, Suzi?” said Miss Waldicott. “Come along, Angus. Walkies!”

The freshly washed little Westie barked and jumped up at the treat Miss Waldicott was holding out. The salon door clanged shut.

Suzi wiped her hands on her pink Dream Dogs overall. “My back is killing me,” she sighed. “Angus is really too small for me to wash in our bath.”

Bella gazed at the salon’s bath. It had been built on a special platform, so that her mum didn’t have to bend down too much when she was washing the dogs. But when the dogs were small like Angus, it was a bit of a problem.

“You should wash him in the sink, maybe?” Bella suggested.

They used the salon sink sometimes, for the really little dogs.

Suzi shook her head. “He’s too big for that,” she said. “Typical, isn’t it? Most of my clients seem to be small dogs. And a special small dog-bath costs a fortune.”

“Three thousand pounds,” Bella said, remembering her mum complaining about the cost of a small dog-bath when they had first come to Sandmouth to set up Dream Dogs. That seemed ages ago. They loved Sandmouth now, with its long sandy beach and Cliffside Primary and all of Bella and her little brother Louie’s friends nearby. It was weird to think that they had once lived in London.

“Luckily they’ve come down in price a bit since I last looked,” said Suzi. She rang up the till and put in the twenty-pound note that Miss Waldicott had given her. “But they are still nearly a thousand pounds each. I can’t possibly afford that.”

Bella checked out of the window. The pink Dream Dogs van and mobile dog-wash trailer was parked outside. She looked at the dark pink lettering underneath the Dream Dogs logo on the side of the trailer.

Paws ’n’ Purrs. The Pet Shop for All Your Pet’s Needs.

“Maybe you could ask the pet shop to sponsor you again,” Bella suggested. “Like they did with the trailer.”

Suzi shook her head gloomily. “They wouldn’t sponsor me for a bath as well,” she said. “No, Bella. It looks like I’ll just have to put up with what we’ve got.”

The salon door tinkled. Bella brightened. It was her favourite clients, Mimi Taylor and her little Pomeranian, Crystal.

“Morning, Mimi,” said Suzi, smiling.

Mimi put Crystal down on the salon floor. The little Pomeranian perked up her fluffy brown ears. She sniffed at Pepper in a friendly way, before scampering up and down sniffing at all the corners.

“You’re letting Crystal run about more, I see,” said Suzi.

“She hates it if I hold her for too long,” Mimi said fondly. “I must have been crazy, the way I used to carry her everywhere. She runs us all ragged these days!”

Crystal gave a high-pitched bark and kicked out her back legs. For such a little dog, she was a feisty thing.

“Come along, Crystal,” said Suzi. “Bath time. You are one dog that fits in my sink, at any rate!”

Mimi settled on the window seat. Suzi put Crystal in the sink and started running the water while Bella fetched down a bottle of shampoo from the shelf.

“We’ve had a week of it,” Mimi sighed. “The newspapers have been all over Idaho since he twisted his knee. Would he still play for Sandmouth in the new season? Is his career over? Honestly, it’s only a little sprain.”

Mimi’s husband, Idaho Taylor, was a well-known footballer. When Mimi and Idaho had first come to Sandmouth, the papers had gone mad. They still regularly ran stories about them on the front page. Louie played with their son, Pan, sometimes, as they were in the same class at school.

“I expect it stops him from doing the housework though, hmm?” Suzi joked.

“How did you guess?” Mimi laughed.

Bella stroked Crystal’s foxy little head as Suzi carefully soaped her body. Her creamy butterscotch fur looked totally different when it was wet. Usually, it was thick and fluffy but now it was all long and straggly, dripping with water. Pepper huffed crossly from his basket. He got very jealous when Bella fussed over the dogs that came to the salon.

“Where’s Louie?” Mimi asked. “Pan’s been asking if he can come over to play during the holidays.”

“He’s with his friend Jamie this morning,” said Suzi, looking round over her shoulder at Mimi. “Honestly, those two are as thick as thieves.”

While the two mums chatted about the boys, Bella reached across the sink to get the washcloth her mum always used to wipe the soap off the dogs before rinsing them. Her elbow jogged the plug chain. Water started draining away. Crystal yelped and sat down very suddenly.

“Oops,” Bella said. She grabbed the plug to put it back in again.

Crystal was struggling to stand up. She sat in the water as it swirled around her, lifting her paws and whining. Bella suddenly saw the problem. The suck of the plug had pulled some of Crystal’s fur down the plughole. And now it was all tangled up!

“Is everything all right?” Mimi asked from the window seat.

“Bella?” said Suzi, turning back. “What happened?”

Bella tried tugging at Crystal’s fur without hurting the little dog. “Nothing,” she said nervously. She shielded the sink from her mum and Mimi, trying to get Crystal’s fur out of the plughole as quickly as she could. Crystal wriggled and whined. “Everything’s fine. The plug just slipped out. I’ll have it back in a minute…”

The water stopped gurgling. Now it was a bit easier to reach down into the plughole and untangle Crystal’s fur. It took a couple of goes, but she did it at last. Feeling relieved, she ran some fresh water into the sink so her mum could rinse Crystal properly.

Phew!

Her mum was right. They really did need a little-dog bath. But how were they going to afford one, if it cost a thousand pounds?

Two
Picture Perfect

“Thank goodness you untangled Crystal’s fur!” gasped Suzi as Mimi and the freshly washed and dried Crystal left the salon with the usual tinkle of the doorbell. “Mimi would have had a fit if we’d had to cut it!”

Bella blushed. She thought her mum hadn’t seen. “It was an accident,” she said.

Suzi sighed. “I know,” she said. “I’ve done it myself once or twice.”

Bella started giggling. It had been pretty funny, when you thought about it. Suzi joined in, laughing and shaking her head at the same time.

“Oh, Bella,” she said. “Why is a proper small dog-bath so expensive? We’ll have to think of a way to make more money for the salon if we’re ever going to buy one.”

The phone rang. Bella answered it.

“Mum?” she said, covering the receiver. “It’s Jamie’s dad. He wants to know if we can pick Louie up at the Dolphins in town in half an hour?”

Suzi checked her watch. “That’s fine,” she said. “My next appointment isn’t until two o’clock. Come on. We can get a bite to eat down there. It’s lunchtime, and I’m starving.” Pepper barked in excitement as Bella took down his lead. Suzi shut up the salon. They walked together along the seafront, towards the town and the Dolphins shopping centre.

Bella liked the Dolphins. It had only been built two years ago, and was full of brightly lit shops and colourful window displays. There were cafés, a bookshop, a shoeshop, several homeware shops and the town’s pet shop, Paws ’n’ Purrs. It was spread out over two floors, with a big glass ceiling that let in lots of light.

Louie was at the burger bar on the first floor with Jamie and Jamie’s dad. They were all still eating their lunch, so Suzi went up and ordered some food as well. Bella sat down with Pepper at her feet and waited. Her tummy was rumbling. She eyed her little brother’s chips.

“Can I have one of your chips?” she said hopefully.

“No!” Louie said. It came out as “Moof!”

“Sorry, Louie, can’t hear you,” Bella said, and pinched a chip.

Suzi put a burger, chips and a bag of carrot sticks down in front of Bella. “It’s quiet in here today,” she said, looking around.

“There’s something going on down at the far end of the shopping centre,” Jamie’s dad explained. He had a blob of ketchup on his chin. Bella looked away, trying not to giggle. “Photographs or something.”

Bella craned her neck, wondering if maybe they were filming something interesting. But she couldn’t see round the corner.

“Hey,” she said indignantly as she looked back at her plate. “My chips!”

“Sorry, Bella,” Louie giggled, munching madly. “I can’t hear you!”

After lunch they said goodbye to Jamie and his dad. As there was still a bit of time left before Suzi had to get back to Dream Dogs, Bella persuaded her mum to take them down to the far end of the Dolphins, to see what was going on.

A group of people were standing around, watching a photographer snapping pictures of a girl in a long yellow satin dress.

“Lovely! Smile a bit more, Princess!” called the photographer. “That’s great – just great…”

Bella stared. The girl was standing in front of a backcloth painted with a castle. On her redgold hair was a tall pointed hat with a floaty veil down the back. Above her head hung a sign that said: Princess for a Day.

“It’s Amber!” Bella gasped, recognising her best friend. “Hey, Amber! What are you doing?”

Amber looked round. Her face lit up. “Hi, Bella!” she giggled. “I’m Princess Amber today. Mum’s giving me a photo. Isn’t it great?”

“You can be a princess with your friend if you want, love,” said the photographer, smelling a sale. “There’s a pink dress, a blue one – all sorts to choose from. You can pop them on in the booth, if your mum says you can. Only four pounds ninety-nine!”

Bella stared at the rack of princess clothes. “Can I, Mum?” she said eagerly.

“Go on then,” Suzi sighed, breaking off her conversation with Amber’s mum, Claire.

Louie looked horrified and muttered something about girly dressing-up. Bella could tell that he wished he was still playing with Jamie. Ignoring him, she snatched up the pink dress and rushed into the booth. She put it on. It felt wonderfully silky and heavy. She stared at the selection of hats and crowns in the booth before choosing a tall crown studded with fake diamonds.

“Gorgeous!” said the photographer, snapping away as Bella came out shyly to stand beside Amber. Louie pretended to be sick in a nearby planter. “It’ll look lovely in a gold frame. Frames are an extra five pounds, madam,” he said sideways to Suzi. “That’s it, Princesses! All done!”

Bella and Amber reluctantly went back into the booth to take off the lovely princess dresses.

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