The Puppy Present (Red Storybook) (3 page)

Christmas was over, but Ginger’s people still loved him. Well, Maisie still loved him. She took him into the garden after every meal and said, “Good boy, Ginge! Be a good boy!” And if he was a good boy she praised him and patted him, and Ginger’s tail flew in circles. He almost burst with pride when Maisie was pleased with him.

Sometimes he wasn’t such a good boy and then Maisie looked grave and said, “
Bad
boy, Ginger!
Dirty
boy!” and Ginger drooped and tucked his tail
between his legs and was shut out all by himself in the garden. But never for very long. Maisie couldn’t bear to be cross with him! It always ended up with a kiss and a cuddle and a whispered ‘Sorry’ from Maisie because she’d called him a dirty boy.

Life was good for Ginger. He was too small to go for walks, but Maisie threw a ball for him in the back garden and taught him ‘Fetch’ and ‘Sit’. At night he slept in Maisie’s room on a special dog blanket, and Maisie’s mum fed him dishes of delicious food and thought it really funny when he started tugging at the fringes on the rug or burying doggie biscuits under the back-door mat.

Only Maisie’s dad had any doubts. He wasn’t unkind to Ginger but he didn’t ever pet him or cuddle him like Maisie and her mum did.

“It’s all very well for now,” said Maisie’s dad, “but what’s going to happen when the novelty wears off?”

Maisie thought her dad was a real old grump. What did he mean, ‘when the novelty wore off’? The novelty wasn’t going to wear off!

She swept Ginger into her arms.

“He’s my very own puppy and I shall love him for ever!”

But then there came a day when everything changed for Ginger. His little life began to fall apart. Maisie went back to school, her mum and dad went back to work, and suddenly Ginger was on his own, shut away in the kitchen with a bowl of water and a dish of dog biscuits and told to ‘Be a good boy’.

Ginger couldn’t understand it. ‘Be a good boy’ meant going into the garden with Maisie, being praised and patted. Not shut away all by himself in the kitchen!

Never in his life had Ginger been on his own. Not completely on his own. There had always been someone. His mum, his brother and sisters, the man in the pet shop. Even when his sisters had gone and the pet shop had been
shut up for the night there had been the squawking creature and the furry things. Now there wasn’t anyone.

The first time it happened he was really frightened. Why had they left him? Had he done something wrong? Was he being punished? Were they ever going to come back?

In a frenzy, Ginger began biting and scratching at the bottom of the door. He had to get out, he had to get out! If he could only get out, he might be able to find them.

But the door was firmly shut, and wouldn’t open. And in his panic Ginger had overturned his water bowl and all the water had gone streaming across the floor.

Ginger pointed his nose at the ceiling and began to howl. He howled and he howled, as if his heart were breaking. His people had gone and he would never see them again!

After a while, he sank down with his nose pressed to the door crack, his ears alert for any sound that might just mean they were
coming back.

But they didn’t.

Outside it grew dark, and Ginger was still on his own. He whimpered and scraped again at the door. He was thirsty, but there wasn’t any water left. The dog biscuits were still there, but he felt too anxious to eat.

Before they had gone, Maisie’s mum had spread newspaper on the floor. He didn’t know why she had done that. He leapt on it and tore it fiercely into shreds. Bits of newspaper flew everywhere.

For a moment he felt better. He sat back, his tongue lolling. The newspaper had obviously been put there for him to do something with. Well, he
had
done something with it! He had torn it up. They would praise him and say what a good dog he had been.

If they came back.

And then at last, when he had almost given up hope, he heard the sound of a key being turned. He heard footsteps along the passage and the voices of Maisie and her mum. Joyfully, Ginger sprang to his feet. The kitchen door opened and Maisie appeared, looking very smart in her school uniform. Ginger hurled himself at her, barking, his tail flying in circles.

“Careful!” screamed Maisie. “Watch my tights! Oh, Ginger,
stop
it! You’ll make holes in them!”

Maisie’s mum came into the kitchen. She saw the shredded newspaper and the overturned water bowl. Then she saw the bottom of the door, where Ginger had bitten and scraped in his desperate attempts to get out.

“Oh, you naughty dog! she cried. “You bad, naughty,
wicked
dog!”

And she gave him three sharp whacks across the nose.

Ginger cowered. What had he done? What had he done that was wrong?

“Don’t you ever,
ever
— ” Maisie’s mum
grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him across to the door. “Ever,
ever
do such a thing again!”

Maisie tried her best to speak up for him.

“He couldn’t help it, Mum! He didn’t know it was wrong.”

“Well,” said her mum, “he’d better learn, that’s all I can say.” She tightened her lips into a thin straight line. “I’m not having a dog that wrecks the place. He either learns or he goes.”

Ginger wasn’t the only one who was in trouble. James Colin was, too.

“James Colin,” said his mum, “you have been a very naughty boy! What is the meaning of this?”

She pointed sternly at a big round hole that had appeared in the carpet in James’s bedroom. James shuffled his feet.

“You deliberately cut a hole!” said his mum.

James did not deny it.

“Why? What on earth did you do it for?”

James hunched a shoulder. “Felt like it.”

“What are you talking about? You
felt
like it?”

“Felt like cutting a hole.”

There was a moment of silence. James could tell that his mum was really cross. He could tell that she would really have liked to slap him, only that was something she never did.

He wouldn’t have minded. She could slap him if she wanted. At least if she was slapping
him it meant that she was paying attention to James rather than the baby.

That was why he had cut the hole. Because he had known that it would make her mad and that she would come and ask him questions about it. She would want to know what he had done it for. She would have to spend
time
with him.

“I don’t know.” His mum shook her head. “I just don’t know what to do with you. You used to be such a good, sensible boy. I really used to feel that I could depend on you. Now— ”

Now? James waited, eagerly. Now what? What was she going to say about him?

Nothing!

From the other room, the baby started crying.

“There’s the baby,” said Mum. “I’ll speak to you later, young man!”

Mum turned and left the room. The baby had only to open his mouth for Mum to go running. James could cut a huge great hole in
the middle of his carpet and she couldn’t even spare him five minutes.

What did he have to do to get her attention?

Poor Ginger! His life was going from bad to worse. He had been a Christmas puppy; and now that it was no longer Christmas it seemed that no one loved him any more.

Every day he was left on his own, shut in the kitchen for hour after hour. Every day when his people came back it seemed that he had done something wrong. Either he had chewed something or spilt something or made a puddle where he shouldn’t.

He didn’t jump up, now, when the people came in. He had learnt that they didn’t like that. They pushed him away, quite roughly, and screamed at him to ‘Get down!’

He didn’t even sleep in Maisie’s room any more. One night he had had a little accident on
the carpet and Maisie’s mum had said, “We can’t have this! The kitchen is the place for dogs.”

So now he not only spent all day in the kitchen but all night, as well.

He was old enough to go for walks, but nobody bothered to take him. Maisie’s mum said that Maisie ought to do it – “He’s your dog! You were the one who wanted him” – but Maisie never seemed to have the time. In the morning she was always in a rush for school, and in the evening it was too dark, or she had homework, or there was something she wanted to watch on television.

“He’s got the garden,” she said.

But even in the garden Ginger did things wrong. He dug holes where he shouldn’t have dug holes and pulled things up that he shouldn’t have pulled up. And then he got hit or shouted at and told he was a ‘Stupid dog’ until in the end he was almost too scared to do anything at all.

“I told you the novelty would wear off,” said Maisie’s dad. “We ought to find a new home for him.”

But Maisie didn’t want that. Ginger was her dog and she loved him – when she remembered. Sometimes even now she would throw a ball for him or pick him up and kiss him. Ginger’s heart almost burst with happiness when she did that. Unfortunately, she didn’t do it very often. In fact she did it less and less. Ginger’s tail hardly ever wagged, these days.

And then half term arrived at Maisie’s school, and Maisie and her mum and dad went off to visit Maisie’s nan and grandad.

“What shall we do with the dog?” said Dad. “We can’t take it with us.”

Nan and Grandad didn’t care for dogs.

“It’s all right, said Mum. “We can leave it in the garden. It’s not going to starve in that short time. It’s only three days, we’ll be back Sunday night.”

“But suppose it rains?” said Maisie.

“He can go in the shed,” said Mum.

So Ginger was left in the garden, with a bowl of water and a dish of dry dog food. He was tied with a length of rope so that he couldn’t reach the flower beds and dig holes, or tear up the flowers. Maisie was going to go and kiss him goodbye but at the last moment she forgot.

“Oh!” she said, as Dad started the car. “I didn’t say goodbye to Ginger!”

“You’re not going back now,” said Dad.

“But, Dad, he’ll wonder where we’ve gone!”

“Maisie,” said Mum, “it’s only a
dog
.”

Ginger may have been only a dog, but he could still feel sad, and lonely, and confused. He could also feel bored.

He ate up all his food in the first few minutes. What to do next? Every time he tried to go anywhere, the length of rope yanked him back. Right! He would have to get rid of the rope.

Ginger lay down and started chewing.

He chewed and he chewed, and by the middle of the morning he had chewed the rope in two.

By the middle of the afternoon, he had dug an enormous hole in one of the flower beds. He knew they would beat him for it, and yell at him, but it was just such fun! Ginger, after all, was still only a puppy. He couldn’t always control himself. And he had lots and lots of energy! If he wasn’t taken for walks, he had to find some other way of using it up.

The hole that he dug went right underneath
the fence and out the other side. Ginger didn’t know what lived on the other side, but the more he thought about it the more he was tempted to find out.

He made up his mind: he would go exploring!

He didn’t rush things. He had never been out in the world before; he wasn’t sure what to expect. His small whiskery face, covered in ginger fur, peered out cautiously from under the fence. He saw pavement, and grass, and trees. It looked inviting! Ginger wriggled his way through.

Once outside he stood for a moment, sniffing the air, then turned and went trotting up the road. Every now and again he would stop to investigate an interesting smell, and once or twice he passed other dogs, on leads.
The other dogs had people with them. The people seemed a bit concerned that Ginger was out on his own. One of them tried speaking to him. He said, “Good boy! Come on, then!” and clicked his fingers, but Ginger wasn’t sure of people any more. It seemed safer to keep away from them. You never knew when they were going to cuff you or give you a kick. Ginger took to his heels, and ran.

Ginger discovered that there were good things in the outside world, and bad things, too. These were some of the good things:

An overturned dustbin, spilling out scraps of food. Ginger nosed about for a long time by the dustbin. Dustbins were definitely good.

A cat sitting on a wall, sunning itself. Ginger still had faint memories of a cat from some time in his past. A big furry one that had purred and let Ginger curl up with him. Cats were good! He liked cats.

A big red ball, lying in the gutter. Ginger pounced on it, with glee. A toy! He knew about
toys. He had had some, once, before Maisie’s mum had thrown them away. (She said they were dirty, which was because Ginger had tried burying them in the garden.)

The red ball was also quite dirty, but it made a lovely loud squeaky noise when Ginger bit into it. He played with the ball for some time, until in the end it rolled away from him, into the road, where a car squashed it flat.

Cars were one of the bad things. Ginger was scared of cars. He’d never seen any before and it frightened him the way they roared and belched and rushed along at such a pace. It frightened him even more now that he knew they could squash things flat.

Another bad thing was a big fierce dog that he met in a doorway. The dog took one look at Ginger and hurled itself at him, snarling and frothing, its lips pulled back over long yellow teeth. It was twice the size of Ginger. It could have snapped him in two with just one bite.

Ginger screamed with terror and rolled over
onto his back. From somewhere a man’s voice yelled, “Sable!
Leave
!”

Sable backed off, but not before he had taken a quick snap. Ginger knew what the snap meant: “This is my territory! You keep away!”

When Ginger wobbled to his feet he discovered that he had made a little puddle on the pavement. He looked round, nervously. Was someone going to hit him and tell him he was a bad boy? Maisie had never hit him, but her mum was always lashing out.

Ginger was scared of Maisie’s mum. It hadn’t been so bad when Maisie was there to protect him, but Maisie didn’t seem to care about Ginger any more. She didn’t care if her mum shook him or kicked him or hurled him into the garden. He had just become a nuisance.

Ginger put his tail between his legs and crept away. Away from the puddle and the big fierce
dog. He hadn’t known there were dogs that attacked other dogs. It made him feel very small and insecure. He couldn’t trust people, he couldn’t trust dogs. Even the cat on the wall had spat at him when he had jumped up to say hello. Not like the lovely furry one that he remembered from the days when he had lived in a basket.

Ginger was discovering that the big wide world could be a very frightening place.

He kept on the move until in the end it grew dark and started to rain, and he thought that perhaps he had better go home. But where was home? Ginger no longer knew. He was lost!

Some boys were coming towards him, shouting and laughing and kicking tin cans. One of them saw Ginger and called out to him.

“Doggie, doggie! Come here, doggie!”

Ginger cowered and slunk away. The boy held out a hand.

“Here, doggie! Nice doggie! Want some food, doggie?”

Ginger hesitated. The boy was offering him something. Something that smelt good. It smelt like… chocolate! Ginger remembered chocolate. Maisie had given him a tiny square at Christmas, as a ‘special treat’. He licked his lips. It seemed a long time since he had found the overturned dustbin and nosed out some food.

Ginger crept forward, low to the ground, his ears flattened and his tail wagging hopefully. The boy held out the chocolate. As Ginger went to take it, a hail of tin cans came smashing into him. Bish! Bosh! Bash!

The boys guffawed. They thought it really funny.

“Har har har!” went the boys.

One of them swooped on a bottle and booted it, very hard, straight at Ginger. The one that had held out the chocolate aimed a kick at Ginger’s head. The others set up a chant.

“Get the dog, get the dog, get the dog!”