Mud-Puddle Poodle

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  TEASER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  When my mom said we could (finally) get a dog, I knew exactly what I wanted.

  But you won’t understand it until you know a little about me, so that’s where I’m going to start.

  My name is Rosie Sanchez. I have curly black hair and brown eyes and my favorite color is pink. I’m ten years old. And I have four older brothers.

  Four.

  Four older brothers.

  Try to imagine that. I’ll help: For starters, they are loud. They are dirty. They crash around the house breaking things and making as much noise as a herd of hippos all day long.

  And they never pay any attention to me, because I’m “too little,” even though Danny is only one year older than me and I think it is not fair at all.

  So why would I want a dog like that? Another big, loud, dirty animal in the house — we already have four!

  No sir. I knew what I wanted. I wanted a little girl dog with pink ribbons in her hair like mine. She would be sweet and quiet and pretty and ladylike, just like me.

  Well, OK. I’m not always sweet. Or quiet. Fine, or ladylike! But can you blame me? Just think about what I have to compete with! If I’m going to get anywhere in this house, I have to make a lot of noise, too.

  But once I had my perfect dog, I knew everything would be different. She would be my dog. She’d help balance out all the boy-boy-boy rumpus going on in my house all the time. She would be my little princess, and then we could ignore my brothers together, the way they always ignore me.

  Well, things didn’t turn out quite the way I planned….

  * * *

  Danny was the one who started it. His best friend, Parker, got a dog right before school started, and Danny would not shut up about that dog for, like, two weeks straight. It was “Guess what Merlin did,” and “Merlin’s such a great dog,” and “It’d be so awesome if Merlin had a friend, ahem ahem,” and on and on and on.

  We all finally got to meet this miracle dog on the Thursday before the talent show, when Parker brought him over. I will admit, Merlin was really pretty. His fur was shiny and golden and he had this sweet, smiley face. But after he left, our nice blue couch was covered in golden dog fur. My brothers didn’t care, but I did! I like things to be neat and clean. No big sweaty brothers are allowed in my room, so it’s by far the cleanest room in the house.

  After Parker and Merlin left, Danny gave Mom this begging look. He made his eyes really big and clasped his hands together under his chin.

  “Please, Mom,” he said. “Please please please can we get a dog?”

  He didn’t know I was listening. I was hiding behind the couch (the now extremely furry couch) because I knew, I just knew he was going to try this trick.

  “Well …” Mom said. “He is a really sweet dog, isn’t he?”

  “If we got another golden retriever,” Danny said, “then he could play with Merlin! It would be awesome!”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” I yelled, popping out from behind the couch. Danny jumped a mile, which was totally hilarious. I wagged my finger at him. “You know I don’t want a golden retriever, Danny! I should get to decide what kind of dog we get, because I’m the youngest, so I’ll be home with her after you’re all in college!”

  “Only one year longer than me!” Danny shouted. “And that’s only if we don’t throw you out sooner for being bossy and spying on us all the time!”

  “You were being sneaky!” I hollered.

  “You are being a pain in the butt!” Danny hollered back.

  “I’m going to go lie down,” Mom said.

  “See, look, you ruined it!” Danny yelled at me. “Mom, wait!”

  “All right, listen,” Mom said. “We can get a dog. But you five have to agree on what kind to get. That’s the deal.” Then she went to put her earplugs in, which happens a lot.

  She should have known that “deal” wouldn’t work in our house, though. My brothers and I never agree on anything.

  When we went to New York City on vacation last year, Danny wanted to go to Yankee Stadium, Carlos wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaur bones, Miguel wanted to go to Rockefeller Center and look for celebrities, and Oliver wanted to visit NYU, because that’s where he wants to go to college.

  I wanted to go to American Girl Place and have tea at the Plaza just like Eloise, my favorite book character.

  You see why I have to be really loud to get anything I want?

  In the end Mom took me to the Plaza while Dad took all my brothers to Yankee Stadium, which was fine by me.

  But it wasn’t going to be that easy to solve this argument, unless we got five dogs, which I didn’t think Mom (or our furniture) was entirely ready for.

  The big fight happened a couple of days later, when we were all sitting around the dinner table on Saturday, the night after the talent show. Even Oliver was there, which was amazing. He’s seventeen, so on Saturdays he’s usually out with his girlfriend, Miru. My mom says Miru is “muy bonita” and I say she is way way way too cool for Oliver.

  Anyway, I think he stuck around this Saturday night because we’d all been fighting all day about what kind of dog to get. He probably knew that if he left he would definitely lose.

  It was Dad’s turn to cook, so we were having his famous chili con carne, which I like because it tastes good but I don’t like because it’s messy and if I get any on my clothes it’s impossible to get out. Plus the boys always spill it all over the pretty yellow tablecloth because, if I haven’t mentioned this already, they are slobs.

  “So,” Dad said when we were almost done eating, “I hear we’re talking about dogs.”

  Poor Dad. He’s a big-shot lawyer, so he works all the time, and when he’s really busy he gets totally spaced-out like he can’t think about anything but his cases. And then when he comes back down to earth he’s weeks behind on everything that’s happening. He always notices my haircut about ten days after I get one. He’ll ask Danny questions about baseball in the winter and soccer in the spring, even if he’s just been to one of his games that week. Last year he congratulated Carlos (my third-oldest brother) on winning the seventh-grade science fair — seriously, no kidding — a month after it happened. I think he still hasn’t noticed that Oliver finally has a girlfriend.

  So he had no idea what kind of fireworks he was setting off with that question. Mom did, though. She flinched as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  “Everyone is being unfair!” Danny shouted immediately. “It was my idea to get a dog! I want a golden retriever!”

  “What? I’ve always wanted a dog!” Miguel cried. He’s fifteen and he’s turned into Mr. Cool ever since he got to high school. I swear he uses more hair gel than the entire cast of Mom’s favorite telenovela. “Mom, remember, I asked for a dog years and years ago, before you could even talk, Danny! And I want a Rottweiler!”

  “No way!” Carlos chimed in. “We should get a Border collie! Border collies are sooo smart!”

  Danny rolled his eyes. Of course Carlos wanted a smart dog. He’s worlds smarter than the rest of us. I could just imagine Carlos and a Border collie solving calculus problems together and laugh
ing at the rest of the eighth-graders.

  “We have to get a giant schnauzer,” Oliver announced firmly. He always tries to sound like being oldest means he gets to make the decisions, but it never works.

  “I don’t know what that is,” Danny said, “but it sounds like a cookie, not a dog. Lame! Golden retriever!”

  I banged my fork on the table (checking first to make sure there was no chili on it). “No, no, no!” I yelled. “None of these big dogs! I WANT A TOY POODLE!”

  My brothers all groaned loudly. Danny pretended to thump his head on the table in despair. Of course, he got chili in his hair, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Absolutely not,” Oliver said.

  “A small girly dog!” Miguel whined. “No way!”

  “The guys would laugh at me so much if we got a little fluffy dog,” Danny protested.

  “Mom, tell her no,” Carlos said.

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “I can have an opinion! I WANT A TOY POODLE!”

  “This has been going on for three days,” Mom said to Dad.

  “Oh, dear,” Dad said, rubbing his head.

  I thought about shouting “I want a toy poodle” again, but Dad looked like he was thinking, so I decided not to. My friends think my house is total chaos, but I’ve mostly figured out when it’s the right time to shout and when it’s the right time to be quiet. When Dad has that little frown on his face, I know he’s about to say something clever. And if I am quiet right then, most of the time he’ll think I’m the one being good, and he’ll let me win.

  “We can figure this out,” he said. “Everyone stay here.” He jumped up and went into the basement, which is where he works when he’s home.

  Danny scowled at me across the table. I poked my tongue out at him.

  “Seriously, you guys,” Oliver said in this OK-now-let’s-be-grown-ups voice. “We really have to get a giant schnauzer. It’s one of the only breeds Miru isn’t allergic to.”

  “Poodles are hy-po-all-er-gen-ic, too,” I said. I had spent hours memorizing that word. It means they don’t shed and so most people aren’t allergic to them. It’s one of the best things about poodles. I knew Mom would like that, too, because she’d probably be the one vacuuming up all the dog hair if we got a big shedding dog.

  “Yeah, but poodles are stupid,” Carlos said.

  “Carlos,” Mom said warningly.

  “Actually, they’re the second-smartest of all the dog breeds,” I said. “It’s true. You can look it up on the Internet.” Yeah, I said it snottily. He deserved it. He thought he was so brilliant, but he didn’t really know anything about poodles.

  “Yeah, right,” Danny said. “Like anything with a head that small could possibly have a brain.”

  “They’re smarter than you are!” I flared.

  “Rosie,” Mom said.

  I was pretty close to flinging a spoonful of chili at Danny — I didn’t even care that it would make a mess — but luckily just then Dad came clumping back up the stairs. He was carrying the whiteboard from above his desk, which he had erased completely. It was such a strange sight that we all shut up for about thirty seconds, just staring at him.

  “Please join me in the living room,” Dad said with a grin.

  We all shot out of our chairs and stampeded into the living room like rampaging water buffalo. Listen, I want to be ladylike, but if you don’t move fast in this house, you end up sitting on the floor. I made it to the big green flowery armchair before Danny did, which made him even madder. But he still beat Carlos to the couch, so it was my genius thirteen-year-old brother who ended up sitting on the carpet.

  Dad balanced the whiteboard on a chair from the kitchen and drew a chart on it that looked like this:

  “Did I get that right?” Dad asked. “Are those the breeds you all have decided on?”

  “Toy poodle, toy poodle!” I shouted.

  “Yeah, Dad, that’s right,” Carlos said.

  “Woo! Rottweiler!” Miguel yelled.

  “No — woo, golden retriever!” Danny hollered.

  “Dad, what does the rest of it mean?” Oliver asked. “Round one? Round two?”

  Dad smiled. “We’re going to decide this fairly. We’re going to play a game.”

  I was instantly suspicious. As you can imagine, it’s hard to win games in my house when there are four big older brutes competing against me.

  “There better not be running involved,” I said. “Or baseballs. Or eating.” We discovered last summer that Danny can eat twelve hot dogs in a row without throwing up. Thirteen hot dogs, not so much.

  Dad shook his head. “Don’t worry, Rosie. We’re trying to be fair here. So, since you all are so sure of the breeds you want — we’re going to find out how much you know about them.”

  I seriously nearly punched the air, I was so excited. Nobody knew this, but I’d been thinking about poodles for months. I’d read everything I could find about them on the Internet. My brothers thought I only wanted one because they’re little and princessy-looking, which was kind of true, but there are lots of little princessy-looking dogs and I had studied them all before deciding on a toy poodle. Definitely a toy poodle.

  “Señora, if I could request your assistance,” Dad said gallantly to Mom. He whispered to her and she went into the study and came back with a sheet of blank paper and a pencil for each of us. “We can begin … Round one!”

  I took the pencil from Mom and grabbed a big art book of Aztec monuments from the coffee table to balance the paper on.

  “Lady and gentlemen!” Dad said. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked up and down. I could tell he was pretending to be in court. I saw him present a case to a jury once. He’s really convincing.

  Someday I’d like to win arguments like he does, by knowing stuff and saying it right, but that’s not how they’re won in my house, so for now I have to stick to being as loud as possible.

  “Your first task,” Dad said, “is … to draw the kind of dog you want!”

  “What if you’re a really bad artist?” I asked. “Like Danny?”

  “Shut up!” Danny shouted.

  “You know you stink at Pictionary!” I yelled back.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dad said calmly. “We’re not looking for beauty, we’re looking for an accurate representation on a four-point scale.”

  None of us had any idea what that meant, but we all started drawing anyway. This was easy for me. I had downloaded a ton of pictures of toy poodles and saved them in a secret folder on our family computer. (I called it “Zac Efron” just to be sure my brothers wouldn’t click on it.)

  Mostly what I like to draw is dresses, so I didn’t know much about drawing dogs, but I tried to draw Vikki. She’s this toy poodle who’s won all these awards and has her own website and everything. I love how beautiful she looks. Her teeny tiny paws go pitter-patter when she trots and she is always groomed to perfection. Her soft white fur is practically sculpted, like a sweet little marshmallow around her face, and the pom-poms on her ankles are exactly round. So is the puff on the end of her tail. She is gorgeous.

  We all handed our drawings in to Dad. When Danny took mine to pass it along he said, “That’s not a dog! That’s some kind of dumb hedge sculpture!”

  “Oh, yeah, what’s yours supposed to be?” I shot back. “A mop or a grapefruit?”

  “That’s enough,” Mom said. She and Dad studied the drawings. Mom had brought her laptop in so they could look up all the dogs on the Internet.

  “All right,” Dad said finally. “Each of you could get a total of four points in this round, one for getting each of these correct: ears, tail, body proportion, and nose shape. Son,” he put one hand on Oliver’s shoulder, “I’m afraid you get a zero.” He held up Oliver’s “giant schnauzer” picture.

  The drawing had long, floppy ears, a long tail, short legs, and a squashy nose. It didn’t look anything like a schnauzer, which I know because I looked up miniature schnauzers when I was researching little do
gs. In fact, Oliver’s picture didn’t look like any dog I’d ever seen before. I started laughing.

  “All right, fine,” Oliver admitted. “I don’t know what they look like. I just saw the name on a list of hypoallergenic dog breeds. But come on, you guys! Miru will never come over again if we get something she’s allergic to!”

  “Boo!” Danny yelled. “You’re going to college next year! You shouldn’t even get to vote!”

  Oliver crossed his arms and sulked while Dad read the rest of the results.

  “Miguel, you get two points,” he said. “You lost one point because your ears are sticking straight up; Rottweiler ears are small but they flop over. We also docked you a point for making the nose too pointy.”

  Carlos got three points. He lost one because the tail on his Border collie was too short and straight, which was dumb because we’ve all seen Babe enough times to know that Border collie tails are long and feathery.

  Danny and I both got four points each. Of course, he knew exactly what golden retrievers look like because he’d been hanging out with Merlin 24/7 for two weeks. He was going to be my toughest competition.

  So now the chart looked like this:

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” Oliver said. “I don’t care what kind of dog we get. Miru’s probably going to break up with me anyway.”

  We ignored him. Oliver gets moody and ridiculous sometimes. Mom says it’s “a teenage thing,” but whatever, it’s not going to happen to me.

  “Round two!” Dad said. “Lightning round! One point each! Name a famous dog of your breed — it can be real or fictional. Miguel, go!”

  “Not fair!” Miguel protested. “There aren’t any famous Rottweilers!”

  I knew I’d seen a couple in movies, but I wasn’t about to help him.

  “There are some,” Dad said, checking the Internet. “Sorry, Miguel. Zero points. Carlos, your turn.”

  “Fly and Rex from Babe,” Carlos said promptly. Again, that was hardly fair, since we watch that movie all the time. It’s one of the few we all like, because it’s not “too babyish” for Oliver and Miguel but it’s not too scary for me or too boring for Danny.