Chewy and Chica (7 page)

“Think of it this way,” said Maria. “You should be happy, because all those ‘mistakes’ that Chica had were fake. That means that your Twenty-Minute Plan
works
.” She opened the oven and slipped a tray of biscuits in to bake.

Lizzie had to smile. Maria was absolutely right. “Yeah!” She held up a hand for a high five.

Downtown, Charles and Sammy worked hard all day at collecting signatures. They stopped every single person who walked by and told them about puppy mills and why they should be banned and why PetLove shouldn’t sell puppies that came from puppy mills. Some people took the time to listen and talk about the problem; some just signed the petition and went on their way; a few people shook their heads and tsk-tsked
but didn’t seem to want to get involved. Almost everybody petted Chewy and Rufus and Goldie and said what good dogs they were. Charles kept a very, very close eye on Chewy. Fortunately, he did not bite anybody, though he did mouth one lady’s hand.

“Sorry,” Charles said. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

The lady laughed. “It’s fine. I’m used to puppies, even though my dog, Foxie, is all grown up now. I must say, this is one of the cutest puppies I’ve ever seen. He’s tiny, but he has so much personality.”

“He’s looking for a forever home,” Charles said. “He’s from a puppy mill near here, but he got rescued. He’s really smart and really sweet.”

“Ooh.” The lady bent over Chewy and cooed to him. “Would you like to come live with me and Foxie? Foxie loves little dogs.” She smiled at Charles. “I’ll be sure to come to your demonstration tomorrow and bring Foxie. If
they get along, this cutie-pie might just have a new home.”

Charles grinned at Sammy behind the lady’s back.

“Yes!” Sammy crowed when the lady had signed the petition and walked away. “Wait till Lizzie hears. You found Chewy a home. You won the bet!”

But Charles shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell her until I’m sure.” He had seen more than one puppy adoption fall through.

After a few more hours of work, Charles and Sammy had collected almost a hundred signatures. He couldn’t wait to show the petition to Lizzie. Would it be enough to make up for the trick he’d played on her?

By the time Charles got home, Lizzie and Maria had baked seven dozen biscuits. “That’s enough for eighty-four dogs.” Lizzie showed them off to her brother.

“We might need even more than that,” said Charles. Proudly, he showed Lizzie the petition.

“Not bad.” Lizzie hated to admit it, but Charles had done well. That was a lot of signatures. How could Mr. Sneed ignore that?

Maria shot her a glance. “Why don’t you let him collect more signatures at the demonstration?” she whispered.

Lizzie threw up her hands. Wasn’t Maria taking this “good influence” thing a little too far? “Okay, okay.”

“Yay!” yelled Charles. “I think there will be a ton of people and dogs there. We told everybody about the demonstration, and a lot of them said they’d be there.”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Lizzie. She still wasn’t quite ready to forgive Charles for the trick he’d played on her. “I hope they all show up.”

“Yikes! I can’t believe they all showed up.” Lizzie stared at the crowd gathered in front of PetLove the next morning. Dozens of people and dogs milled around, and more arrived every minute. Lizzie spotted a man peering out the PetLove window. He was wearing a suit jacket over a button-down version of the red PetLove staff T-shirt. “That must be Mr. Sneed!” she said. She smiled at him. He did not smile back.

“We don’t have nearly enough signs for everyone to carry,” Charles said, beginning to unload a pile of signs from the back of Dad’s truck. He and Sammy and Lizzie and Maria had worked together for hours the night before, painting signs with slogans like?
NO MORE PUPPY
MILLS!
and
LOVE YOUR PETS? DON’T SHOP AT PETLOVE!
Charles had figured that a lot of the people he had talked to the day before would be there. But the crowd this morning was even bigger than he had expected — probably because Mom had mentioned the demonstration in her article, which had come out in that morning’s paper.

Charles had not been able to look at the pictures with the article or even read too much of what Mom had written about what she’d seen at the puppy mill. It made him sick to think about all those dogs and puppies locked up in cages. It made him mad, too. And it must have made a lot of other people angry, because here they were, to protest puppy mills. All
kinds
of people, from toddling babies to grandparents with canes. And they’d all brought their dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, fluffy dogs, tough-guy dogs. The people chatted while their dogs sniffed one another. Charles spotted the lady who wanted to adopt Chewy and
waved to her. She waved back and pointed to the dog at the end of her leash, a beautiful reddish-gold dog with a fluffy coat. That must be Foxie. The lady smiled at Charles. Yay! Maybe he really would win the bet. As soon as he got the chance, he’d bring Chewy over to meet Foxie.

Ms. Dobbins had arrived early, with Mr. Beauregard. They had brought all the puppy mill puppies from the shelter, piled in Mr. Beauregard’s car along with Andrew and Julie. Now Lizzie saw Ms. Dobbins look at the crowd. The shelter director laughed, then turned to give a funny little salute to the man staring out the PetLove window — the same man Lizzie had smiled at earlier. “Too bad for you, Mr. Sneed!” Ms. Dobbins turned back to Charles and Lizzie. “I warned him. I asked him one more time not to sell puppies from the puppy mill. I told him that our Caring Club was planning a demonstration. I don’t think he took me very seriously.”

Charles and Sammy handed out signs while Mom helped Lizzie and Maria set up the dog-wash station in front of Rispoli’s Hardware. Dad and the Bean walked Buddy through the crowd, handing out free homemade dog biscuits. Lizzie and Maria had packaged them in sandwich bags with a recipe card attached.
WHY BUY TREATS AT PET LOVE WHEN YOU CAN MAKE THEM YOURSELF
? said the heading on the card.

Ms. Dobbins and Mr. Beauregard walked around greeting all the people and their dogs. Charles noticed that Mr. Beauregard had a pat, a kiss, and a few nice words for every dog he met. He paid attention to the dogs while Ms. Dobbins welcomed the owners and thanked them for coming.

“Yow, Chewy!” Charles said. “
I
mean, yip-yip-yip.” He had Chewy in one arm and a load of signs in the other. This was
not
a good time for Chewy to chomp his fingers.

Oops! Sorry! I forgot for a second!

Chewy stopped biting. Instead, he began to struggle in Charles’s arms, trying to get down so he could run after the bigger dogs. “Yap-yap-yap!” he barked at the two German shepherds who had arrived with Meg, one of the firefighters who worked with Dad. “Yip-yip-yip!” he howled at Cinnamon and Cocoa, the mixed-breed dogs that the Petersons’ author friend Mary Thompson had adopted. “Grr-yip!” Chewy barked at Zeke, a goofy chocolate Lab who belonged to Charles’s friend Harry, and Murphy, another chocolate Lab who was a ser vice dog for Harry’s friend Dee.

Dee laughed as she rolled her wheelchair along, carrying a sign Charles had given her. “That’s one tough little pooch you’ve got there, Charles.”

Chewy even barked at the other puppies from the puppy mill as Andrew and Julie strolled by, carrying signs they’d made themselves.
CARING
PAWS: THE BEST PLACE TO FIND A PUPPY TO LOVE!
said Andrew’s. Julie’s read
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTER.
They each struggled to manage three puppies on constantly tangling leashes.

At the dog-wash station, Lizzie and Maria had an assembly-line system going: to the beat of the music that blasted out of speakers they’d set up, Maria wet the dogs down, applied baby shampoo, and lathered them up. Then Lizzie took their leashes and led them through a plastic kiddie pool they’d filled up with water. That was the first rinse. A long blast from the hose finished the job.

People stuffed money into a collection jar Ms. Dobbins had put on the table next to Charles’s petition. Most people paid more than two dollars for their dogs to be washed. Lizzie had seen Mr. Beauregard — who didn’t even
have
a dog — slip a twenty-dollar bill into the jar. “Check it out,”
said Lizzie to Maria. “We’ll raise a lot of money for the shelter today.”

“Caring Club rules!” Maria gave Lizzie a high five, then danced away to hose down the next dog.

“Lizzie!” Mom said. She had come over to bring each of the girls a bottle of juice. “You’re a total mess.”

Lizzie looked down at herself and laughed. She was covered with suds and soaking wet, not only from the hose but also from all the wet dogs shaking off next to her. Her hair hung down in strings in front of her face, and her sneakers went
squish, squish, squish
with every step she took. She smiled at her mother. “Isn’t it great?”

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” said Mom. “But I did want you to meet someone very important, and I’m not sure what he’ll think of your new look.” She waved at a man in a gray suit who walked toward the dog-wash station,
inching his way through the long line of dogs. He stopped every few steps to chat with a dog owner or shake a hand. “Over here, Senator!”

Lizzie gasped. Senator Bisbee was here. Perfect. Who cared what she looked like? What mattered was that the senator had come to the demonstration. Now he would see what an important issue this was. He would understand why the state should ban puppy mills forever. She ran to the table to grab the petition and a handful of brochures.

“Senator Bisbee, this is my daughter, Lizzie,” Mom said when the senator had picked his way through the mess of dogs and water and suds.

“Well, it’s a plea sure to meet you, Lizzie,” said the senator.

Lizzie shook his outstretched hand. So
that
was what people meant by a “firm handshake.” Ouch!

“So you’re the feisty little girl who organized all this?” The senator waved a hand at the crowd.

Little girl?
Lizzie bit her lip. “I hardly did anything,” she admitted. “It was Mom’s article. Plus, my brother Charles told lots of people. He got all these signatures on a petition, too.” She handed the petition, which was sort of soggy now, to the senator.

He leafed through the pages, glancing at the names. “Very impressive,” he said. Then he caught sight of Chica, who had wriggled her way out of Lizzie’s apron pocket and jumped down onto the ground. Chica put both paws up on the senator’s leg.

“Chica!” said Mom.

But the senator didn’t seem to mind. “My, what a cute puppy. Is it yours, little girl?”

“That’s Chica. She came from a puppy mill. She happens to be looking for a forever home.”

“Is that so?” The senator squatted down to pet Chica. “Well, aren’t you a pretty gal?”

Chica squirmed and wagged and tilted her head in the cutest possible way.

That’s right! That’s right! You bet I am!

“Aww,” said the senator. “I might just have to take you home.”

Lizzie and Maria grinned at each other. Yes!

The senator stood up and dusted off the knees of his pants. “Of course, that depends on what my wife says. She’ll be here soon.”

Lizzie shoved some brochures into his hand. “I’m sure she’ll love Chica. And maybe once you adopt her, you’ll understand even more why you should support a bill banning puppy mills.”

Senator Bisbee chuckled. “You are quite the little spitfire, aren’t you?”

Quit calling me little!
Lizzie felt like screaming. But for the puppies’ sake, she held her tongue. “I just care about animals; that’s all.” Lizzie swept Chica up and nestled her into her apron pocket.

But the senator had stopped listening. He gazed out over the crowd, waving at one person,
winking at another. Lizzie could tell he was getting ready to go shake some more hands. But it didn’t matter. She had a feeling he would support their cause. Plus, she had found Chica a terrific forever family. “Can you believe it?” she asked Mom and Maria as Senator Bisbee melted back into the crowd. “He’s going to adopt Chica. I won the bet! I
am
the world’s best dog trainer.” Lizzie held up her fists like a winning athlete.

But Mom shook her head. “I don’t know, Lizzie. Sometimes politicians just say the things they think people want to hear.”

Lizzie didn’t care what Mom thought. She was too happy. She turned up the music and sang along as she danced her way over to the next soapy dog. This was the best demonstration ever.

Charles and Sammy were having a great time, too. They held up their signs and chanted along with a group of marchers who walked around in a big circle right in front of PetLove’s entrance.
“No more puppy mills! No more puppy mills!” hollered Charles. Not one customer had gone inside all morning. Mr. Sneed stood by the front window, arms crossed in front of his chest and a big frown on his face. Charles waved and smiled but Mr. Sneed just kept frowning.

A moment later, the well-organized demonstration turned into a total disaster. It all began when Chica started to bark from across the parking lot. Then Chewy joined in.

Where are you? Where are you?

I’m over here! Come find me!

Lots of other dogs began to bark, too. Then Chewy pulled so hard on his leash that it slipped out of Charles’s hand. Lizzie must have let go of Chica, too, because two seconds later, Charles saw how two tiny dogs could create big trouble. The Chihuahuas ran through the crowd with
leashes dragging. They chased and nipped and barked at every bigger dog they saw — which was just about every dog at the demonstration. The bigger dogs barked back or charged away, dragging their people behind them. Then the Chihuahuas got hold of the hose. They ran with it, spraying the crowd with floods of water.

Charles groaned.

Lizzie and Charles chased after Chica and Chewy, but the little dogs wove and dodged through the crowd. People yelled and screamed as the hose whipped around, soaking everyone and every thing. Chewy’s ears flapped as he ran, and Chica’s eyes were bright with excitement.