My Dog Doesn't Like Me (3 page)

Chapter Six

When I was little, I liked the fairy stories Mum would read me. It's interesting how the number three often comes into stories like that. There's the two ugly stepsisters and Cinderella – three sisters all up; the three little pigs; the three brothers in
Puss in Boots
; and then it always seems like people are given three wishes for something. So this has given me the idea that I should give Ugly three chances.

Chance number one is that I'm going to call Ugly something different, just in case he hates his name. Maybe he will be nicer to me if I change his name. His new name has to sound like ‘Ugly' because it would
be confusing for someone to call you something
really different. For example, if I didn't want to be Eccle or Eric, maybe someone could call me Rick. Rick is the last sound on my name – Eric. I might do some research. I'll ask my family first … 

This morning I did my research, and now here is my list:

Umberto – Grandad says he used to work at the jam factory with a lovely Italian man called Umberto. He would sing opera while he glued the labels onto jam jars.

Ulysses – Dad came up with this name. Ulysses was a hero in an Ancient Greek legend about the Trojan wars.

Ualtar – Mum is into reading about anything to do with Ireland. She gave me this Irish name, which means ‘strong fighter'.

Utterly – Gretchen said my research was ‘utterly peculiar', so, take it or leave it, ‘Utterly' is my suggestion for you.

Mum's name – ‘Ualtar' – is too difficult to pronounce. It's sort of like Walter, but the ‘U' sound is different to the ‘U' in Ugly. The same goes for Ulysses. It'd be really good to name my dog after such a noble hero, and Ugly might be stoked, too, if I could explain. But there's still the problem that the ‘U' sound in Ulysses is like the
oo
in zoo. No, Ugly needs to be able to recognise his name.

The best names have come from Grandad and Gretchen. Their suggestions have the same starting sound as ‘Ugly'; the ‘U' sounds like someone who's huffing and puffing up a hill with his mouth wide open. I have already tried the names on Ugly. It's hard to know if the experiment is working. You see, as long as I have a treat like a dog biscuit in my hand, Ugly will come to either name.

‘Here, Umberto!'

Up runs Ugly and snatches the biscuit.

‘Here, Utterly!'

Up Ugly runs again and almost takes my finger with the biscuit.

Then I try ‘Ugly!' and he comes just as quickly.

After that, I thought I'd test my experiment. I decided to call Ugly something totally different – 
‘Pamela!' (which is Mum's middle name) – and still he came.

But when I tried calling Ugly any of those names without offering a biscuit, he just settled himself down under the kitchen table and ignored me. I crouched down and came right up to his face. His messy fringe was hanging over his eyes, like one of those high school rebels the teacher tells to, ‘Get a comb and tidy yourself up!'

I said to Ugly, ‘Come
now
!'

Ugly opened one eye and squeezed the other shut.

I've seen TV detectives do that squeezy thing with their eyes when they're suspicious.

‘Come on, boy! Come, Ugly! Umberto! Ualtar! Ulysses! Utterly! Pamela!' I pretended to run for the door.

Ugly gave a sort of bored groan and dropped his head onto his paws.

Ugly has failed the test. He has tossed aside a chance to prove himself to me. He has also shown himself to be selfish and to have bad manners. Dad is always saying we should be grateful for the kindness people show us and we shouldn't use and abuse their friendship.

There's another idiom that our teacher, Miss Jolly, taught us – 
Cupboard love
. It means you show love to someone only because they will feed and look after you. It exactly describes Ugly. He is a cupboard lover and a user. I think that someone who will only be your friend if they get some sort of reward is a weak and nasty person.

Ugly is darn lucky I'm a man who sticks to his word. A weaker person would throw out Ugly's two last chances when he discovered what I have. A few minutes back, I smelled something horrible in my bedroom. I started looking about. Was it a dead mouse? Some cup of cocoa I'd left somewhere that was growing mould? A pair of socks I'd worn for a week and left under a pile of clothes?

No.

Any and all of those things would be better than what I've just found. I was looking in my cupboard, on my desk, behind my chair. Then I just lifted up my bedcover and looked under my bed.

There it was.

A pile of dog poo, still steamy and warm.

Ugly has insulted me.

Chapter Seven

As I've been saying, Ugly should be grateful he's even got two more chances, especially after the mountain of stinky poo he secretly left under my bed.

When I woke up this morning, I didn't have a clue what sort of second chance I'd give Ugly. I got up and decided to eat breakfast first. My brain needed good ideas, and I can't think well on an empty stomach. To get to the kitchen, I had to walk through the family room. Gretchen was lying on the sofa and painting her fingernails a lolly-pink colour with sparkles.

‘So has Ugly been friendlier when you call him Utterly?' she asked.

‘Don't tease. You know he couldn't care less what I call him. He ignores me no matter what.'

‘Maybe even dogs can sense a weirdo when they meet one,' she said, spreading her fingers out to inspect her nails.

‘You're … you're …' I couldn't find anything equally as nasty to say back to my sister.

‘Let me finish your sentence for you, Ec. I think you were going to say to me,
You're right, big sister. I'm weird,'
said Gretchen, blowing on the wet nails of one outstretched hand. ‘Now I'm going to be kind and give you a word of advice. You need to do some proper research about dogs, not just ask around the family.'

During lunchtime at school, I told Hugh and Milly all about my unhappy time with Ugly. Until then, I'd kept pretty quiet about what was going on at home. I'm not sure why; maybe partly because I didn't even understand why having Ugly had turned into such a flop, and maybe partly because Hugh and Milly had worked hard to build Ugly's kennel and make him feel welcome, and I didn't want them to be disappointed.

‘Gretchen says I need to do some proper dog research. I thought I could find out from kids at school how they would handle Ugly,' I finished.

‘Excellent idea!' said Hugh, his dark eyes shining.

Milly flicked her ponytail the way she does when she gets excited. ‘Lucky we did that research project on
Health and Leisure
last term,' she said. ‘We now know how to make a questionnaire.'

Milly fetched a clipboard, paper and a pen from the classroom, and then the three of us sat down in the shade of our favourite pepper tree to brainstorm. In the end, we decided to do roving research, like they do at the big shopping centres where people walk up to you and ask questions and then write down your answers.

Milly said that to get the best ideas we needed to ask at least ten people, and they had to come from a range of different grades. Hugh said we only needed one question, and he told us to ask it like this:

Pretend you have a dog (even if you don't) who doesn't like you, so what would you do to get your dog to like you?

Hugh neatly printed our question at the top of the page. Then we set the rest of the page out with Name, Grade, Age, and Answer sections. We took turns asking and writing. We got all the research done in one lunchtime:

Miles Bucknell. Grade One. 7 years old.

‘I'd chuck the dog a bone. In fact, I'd chuck it lots of bones.'

Emily Wright. Grade One. 7 years old.

‘Let it smell my hand. Be gentle so it'll think I'm nice and friendly.'

Merri Spalding. Grade Two. 8 years old.

‘Get it another puppy to play with.'

Eden Hogg. Grade Five. 11 years old.

‘I'd play with her.'

Liam Smith. Grade Four. 10 years old.

‘I'd pat her and spend more time with her.'

Callum England. Grade Two. 8 years old.

‘I'd buy her some dog toys.'

Angus Fletcher. Grade One. 7 years old.

‘Walk him on a leash.'

Poppy Giles-Kaye. Grade Four. 9 years old.

‘Give it treats.'

Skye Denbigh. Grade One. 7 years old.

‘Throw him a ball and tickle and scratch his tummy.'

Alara Güleçoglu-Park. Grade Six. 12 years old.

‘I'd hypnotise the dog.'

Aiden Starbuck. Grade Three. 8 years old.

‘Make a dog club so he has some friends.'

William Segala. Grade Six. 11 years old.

‘Put on your mother's clothes and put on a wig that looks like your mum's hair and even wear her perfume so your dog thinks it's her.'

Travis Petropoulous. Grade Six. 12 years old.

‘Get a goldfish instead.'

Tilly de Lacy. Grade Five. 11 years old.

‘Dress him up to make him popular.'

Sarah Gloor. Grade Five. 11 years old.

‘The owner should dress up like a juicy dog bone.'

Oliver Barlass. Grade Six. 12 years old.

‘Dogs like milk. Give him milk.'

Cornelius Chang. Grade Six. 11 years old.

‘Never shout or call him bad names, but sing to him.'

The bell rang just as we'd written down Cornelius's answer.

‘We'll meet under our tree tomorrow lunchtime,' said Hugh as we lined up outside class.

‘We need to analyse the data,' I said.

‘Data?' asked Hugh.

‘The data is all the information we've gathered,' explained Milly. ‘And sorting through it and discussing it is analysing.'

‘You're on,' said Hugh.

By the time I climbed into bed, I felt a lot happier. Sharing my problems with Hugh and Milly was a sensible thing to do.

Chapter Eight

I couldn't wait to get to school today. Milly, Hugh and I analysed yesterday's research. Hugh had a clever way of sorting through the kids' answers.

‘First off, we should get rid of ideas that you've tried and that haven't worked,' said Hugh.

‘Yes, it's a good idea to eliminate them,' I said, ‘but I can tell you now, I'm pretty sure I've tried every sensible idea to get a dog to like you that a person can think of. For starters, you can cross off dressing a dog up.'

‘Don't worry about that,' said Milly. ‘There'll still be some leftover ideas you can try out.'

Hugh, Milly and I were back under our pepper tree. Milly pointed to Angus Fletcher's idea about walking the dog.

‘I've tried that, but Ugly just about rips my arm off.'

Milly took a red pen and slashed a line through Angus's dog-walking idea.

‘What about Aiden's idea about a dog club, or Merri's idea about getting another puppy? Maybe Ugly is lonely,' said Hugh.

‘No way. At the moment I couldn't control Ugly if he was in a dog club, and Mum wouldn't stand us having another dog. Anyway, I reckon Ugly might just be friends with the puppy and like me even less.'

Milly slashed two red lines across the page.

‘Well what about bone-chucking?' asked Hugh.

‘Give Miles's idea a tick,' I said. ‘I haven't tried bones yet.'

‘That's pretty much the same idea Poppy means when she talks about treats and Oliver's idea about milk,' said Hugh.

‘Yeah, it is,' I agreed. ‘But a good bone is an enormous, delicious treat – sort of like Christmas dinner.'

‘Then again, this giving treats is a type of bribing,' said Milly, ‘and my dad says people should do the right thing without having to be bribed.'

‘Ugly isn't a person. He's a dog,' I said. ‘If bribes work, I'll be glad.'

Milly gave a big red tick to bone-chucking.

‘Well, next is this idea of Emily's about letting the dog smell your hand and acting gentle around it.'

I knew all about that. Grandad had told me before we went to the Dog Shelter. ‘That's the right thing to do when you meet any dog,' I said, ‘but after that first introduction, you have to live with your dog every day of its life. The same goes for Skye's idea. Ugly likes being tickled and scratched, but you can't keep doing that all day.'

Milly crossed off Emily and Skye's ideas.

‘Dog toys?' asked Hugh.

‘Ugly's a spoilt brat,' I said. ‘He's got masses of toys, but he gets bored with them and sneaks off and chews up things that belong to us, like my Parthenon project.'

‘Dressing yourself up as a dog bone?' asked Milly.

‘You'd have to be crazy,' I said. ‘A dog might eat you! And cross off the idea about dressing in Mum's clothes. No way.'

‘What about singing to a dog?' asked Hugh.

‘He doesn't seem to like singing. He barks viciously when Gretchen plays her heavy metal CDs, and he howls like he's at a funeral when Mum plays her Opera CDs,' I said.

‘Okay,' said Hugh, ‘then we can bundle up some of these other ideas, like throwing a ball and playing and spending time.'

‘Is he like a neglected child?' asked Milly. ‘Just wanting more attention from you?'

I thought about the times I had tried to play ball with Ugly but he had run off with the ball and chewed it to bits. ‘I'm the neglected one,' I said.

‘I'll put a red line through the ideas about playing and spending time,' said Milly, ‘but I really think you could try harder at playing.'

‘Well, the bone-chucking will be a type of playing,' I said. ‘A game with food. You can't go wrong. It's got to be a big hit with Ugly.'