Puppy Love Read online

  First Kisses

  Puppy Love

  Jenny Collins

  This book is for Roger.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  It was Rufus who started all the trouble. Wait. That’s…

  Chapter Two

  My first customers on Monday morning were the Twins. Their…

  Chapter Three

  Luckily for me everyone arrived to pick up their dogs…

  Chapter Four

  The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I…

  Chapter Five

  On Wednesday I got to Perfect Paws a little bit…

  Chapter Six

  The next day I was so busy at work that…

  Chapter Seven

  When I woke up on Saturday morning, I hoped it…

  Chapter Eight

  The rest of the weekend, I felt like I was…

  Chapter Nine

  As I stood in front of the door to Megan’s…

  Chapter Ten

  On Wednesday it was raining when I woke up. I’d…

  Chapter Eleven

  “I hear you had an interesting time in the park…

  Chapter Twelve

  “Things with Hector are going really well,” Shan told me…

  Chapter Thirteen

  The second meeting of the Fourth of July party committee…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ugh, I thought as I looked at myself in the…

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning, I put the dress back in its…

  Chapter Sixteen

  On Monday morning, I arrived at Perfect Paws with the…

  Chapter Seventeen

  I picked up the phone and dialed Shan’s grandparents’ number.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I tried to get out of going. I really did.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The party had already started when we arrived at the…

  Chapter Twenty

  When we got home, the first thing I did was…

  About the Author

  Other Books by First Kisses

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  It was Rufus who started all the trouble. Wait. That’s not fair. Rufus was just chasing the squirrel. So I guess you could say it was the squirrel’s fault. But that’s not really right either. The squirrel was minding its own business until Rufus decided to chase it. And I can’t blame a squirrel for what happened. I mean, it was only doing what squirrels do. But then Rufus was only doing what dogs do, so now we’re back where we started.

  I should back up. My name is Allie. Actually, it’s Allison Elizabeth Morris, but no one calls me that except for my great-grandmother Codwell (my mom’s mom’s mom) and she’s something like eleventy-nine years old and lives in a house filled with way too many doilies and way too many cats. Not that she isn’t great. She is. I love visiting her. Well, except for the doilies. They kind of freak me out. And the cats. I’m not really a cat person. I like dogs.

  I don’t just like dogs; I love dogs. In fact, I think dogs are just about the greatest things ever invented. I know, the rule is supposed to be that girls like cats and guys like dogs. But that’s just dumb. Don’t get me wrong. Cats are okay. I think they’re cute, and I don’t mind when they sit on me or want to be petted. But dogs are something else. Dogs are like people, but better. Not that I’m antisocial or anything. I like people. It’s just that dogs are, I don’t know, more reliable maybe. You always know where you stand with a dog. With people, sometimes it’s hard to tell.

  Anyway, I’m almost fourteen, and I’m going to be in ninth grade when school starts again. I’m pretty excited about that, but I’m not in a rush for summer to be over. I’m having too much fun with the dogs. Well, most of the dogs. There’s one I could do without. Her and her owner. But I’m getting way ahead of myself again.

  I’ll start at the beginning. Not all the way back, like when I was born or anything, but right before what my friend Shan would call the Regrettable Incident with Rufus and the squirrel. See, my mother has this business called Perfect Paws. It’s a dog grooming salon. She started it when I was little, so I grew up around dogs. When I was really small, my mom says I used to think I was a puppy. My first word wasn’t mama or dada, it was woof. I’m serious!

  I’ve been helping out at Perfect Paws since I was about eight or nine, washing the dogs and sweeping up hair—that kind of thing. But this year I wanted to do something more. A few months ago, I heard one of our customers talking about how she was sending her two kids to theater camp during the day so that they had something to do all summer. She joked that it would be nice if her Lhasa apso had somewhere to go too, so that he wasn’t home alone all the time. Well, that got me thinking, and that night at dinner I suggested that we think about offering day care at Perfect Paws. My parents thought it was a pretty good idea, and we decided to try it over the summer and see what happened. Best of all, my mother put me in charge of it.

  I really pushed the doggy day care idea to our customers, and the weekend before opening day we already had six sign-ups. I was kind of nervous because I wanted everything to go perfectly, and I tend to worry a little too much. So I decided to take my dog, Rufus, to the park for a walk. That almost always calms me down.

  It’s hard not to be relaxed around Rufus. He’s the happiest dog I know: a big, brown mutt who thinks everything in the world was made just for him. My father calls him a Labragrizzly because he looks like a Labrador retriever crossed with a grizzly bear. We rescued him from a shelter about five years ago. When we walked by his cage he was sitting all alone in the corner, looking like he didn’t know what he’d done wrong to be abandoned by the people he loved. As soon as I saw him I knew he had to come home with us.

  He’s been my best friend ever since. Well, one of my two best friends. My best human friend is Shan, who I mentioned before. Everyone thinks Shan is short for Shannon, but it’s not. She’s just Shan. Shan Chan. I know, it’s totally unfortunate, right? She says one good reason for her to get married is that she can get a new last name. But then sometimes she says she’s going to keep her own name when she gets married, so who knows. With Shan you can never tell.

  Shan and I have been friends almost as long as Rufus and I have. She was going to help me with the doggy day care, but then her parents decided she was going to spend the summer in San Francisco with her grandparents, and that changed everything. I was really bummed that Shan wouldn’t be here to have fun with me.

  So anyway, Rufus and I went to the park. I love walking with him. He’s curious about everything, and he always acts as if it’s the first time he’s sniffed grass or heard birds or seen people on bicycles, even though he’s almost ten and we go to the park just about every day. There’s no way to be sad when you’re walking Rufus, or any dog for that matter. They’re just so happy to be outside that their happiness rubs off on you. I’m telling you, the way to get yourself feeling good again when you’re sad isn’t to eat a dozen chocolate chip cookies or buy some new shoes, it’s to walk a dog.

  And I was feeling better. Walking Rufus, I knew I’d be able to handle six dogs for a day. Yes, I still wished Shan could be there to do it with me, but I knew I would be okay. Six dogs isn’t that many, and three of them were big. Contrary to popular belief, big dogs are a lot easier to handle than small dogs. Mostly they just like to play a little fetch and take naps. But the little ones stay active all day long. Personally, I think it’s because little dogs have just as much energy as the big ones but it takes longer for them to use it up.

  I was thinking of games I could play with the dogs when the squirrel made its entrance. I didn’t even see it. But Rufus did. And if there
’s one thing Rufus can’t resist, it’s a squirrel. They make him crazy. And being a bear-dog, Rufus is really strong, so when he wants to run after something you have to be prepared for it, which I usually am. But for some reason my mind was somewhere else just then, so when the leash suddenly jerked me forward I ended up falling all over myself. There I was, lying on the grass, watching Rufus’s leash drag along behind him while he ran away, barking his head off.

  I got up as soon as I could and ran after him, calling his name, which I knew wasn’t going to help. When Rufus is chasing a squirrel, he uses his whole brain to focus on catching it. You can yell all you want to, but he won’t hear you. I yelled anyway, mainly so everyone watching me would think I was trying to do something to stop him.

  You’d think the squirrel would go to the first tree it saw and climb it, right? Well, this one didn’t. It just kept running, with Rufus behind it and me behind Rufus. I tried to keep up with them, but let’s face it, four legs are always going to be faster than two.

  They got farther and farther away from me until finally they reached the edge of what we call the Dog Bowl—this part of the park where there’s a dip between some small hills. A lot of people bring their dogs there because it’s a great place to toss balls and let the dogs run around together without them getting in the way of the rollerbladers, joggers, and people pushing strollers through the park.

  Rufus and the squirrel disappeared over the edge of the Dog Bowl. Then I heard Rufus stop barking, which was weird. When he’s after a squirrel he barks until you get him away from it. I don’t know what I thought might have happened to Rufus, but I suddenly got scared. What if he was hurt? Or maybe the squirrel had friends. Lots of friends, like a little squirrel army. It’s stupid, I know. I never said that I’m always rational, okay? I’m a worrier.

  When I reached the edge of the Dog Bowl I looked down, half expecting to see Rufus surrounded by crazy warrior squirrels. Instead, he was sitting beside a guy who was holding the end of his leash and patting Rufus on the head. The guy was probably not much older than me, and my first thought was, great—it would be just my luck that he would end up being in my high school. He was looking around, and I could tell he was trying to figure out what moron let her dog run away. Being the moron in question, I walked down the hill toward him, trying to think of something to say so I wouldn’t look as dumb as I felt.

  When Rufus saw me, he looked up with his big brown eyes and started wagging his tail, which he always does when he knows he’s done something bad. He knows it’s hard to be angry at him when he looks like that. Usually it works. But I was pretty mad at him, so I tried to ignore his adorableness.

  “Not this time, mister,” I told him.

  “Sounds like you’re in trouble, buddy,” the guy said to Rufus. He had a really nice, calming voice. The boy, I mean, not Rufus. He turned and handed me the leash. “I take it this isn’t his first offense?” he said.

  “He was on squirrel patrol,” I answered, taking the leash. For a second, our hands touched.

  The guy nodded. “You’ve got to watch out for those squirrels,” he said, scratching Rufus behind the ears. “I hate to tell you this, but that’s a losing battle.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or Rufus. “Thanks for catching him,” I said.

  “No problem.” He looked at me and smiled, and that’s when I noticed his eyes. They were dark brown, just like Rufus’s. His hair was a dark golden-brown, and it fell in his face a little bit. He’s kind of cute, I thought. Then I realized I was staring at him, and I looked away. I didn’t want him to think I was an incompetent dog walker and all into him.

  “We’ve got to go,” I said, tugging at Rufus so that he got up and followed me. “Thanks again.”

  I walked back up the hill. Part of me wanted to look back and see if the guy was watching me, but I just kept going. For some reason, if he wasn’t watching me, I didn’t want to know. So I kept my eyes on Rufus and walked until I couldn’t see over the edge of the Dog Bowl. Then I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks for making me look stupid,” I told Rufus. “And you had to do it in front of the cutest guy you could find, didn’t you?”

  Rufus looked up at me and wagged his tail. This time I couldn’t resist him. I knelt down, rubbed his ears, and kissed him on the nose. “I know,” I said. “You can’t help it.”

  He licked my face.

  “Dog kisses,” I said, giving him a hug. “The best kind.”

  I slipped my hand through the handle of his leash and wrapped it around my wrist. If any more squirrels crossed our path, I’d be ready for them. “Come on,” I said to Rufus. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Two

  My first customers on Monday morning were the Twins. Their real names are Walter and Wendell, but everyone calls them the Twins because you can’t tell them apart. They’re pugs, and they live with old Mrs. Dibberson down the block. The Twins are super friendly, and having them come in first thing seemed like a good sign for the rest of the day. They were wagging their curly tails and snorting, the way pugs do when they’re happy, and they kept tangling their leashes around Mrs. Dibberson’s feet.

  “Walter!” she said. “Wendell! Stop that at once.” She looked at me and sighed. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said. “They never listen.”

  “I’m sure they’ll behave,” I told her. “Are you going to leave them all day?”

  “Just until two,” Mrs. Dibberson said as she tried to pull one foot out of the knot the Twins had made. “I’m having company over for lunch. Actually, it’s not really company. It’s Mr. Dibberson’s aunt. She’s frightfully dull. Worst of all, she despises dogs. Can you imagine?”

  “No,” I said as I helped her untangle herself. “Especially the Twins. Who couldn’t love you?” I asked Walter and Wendell as they jumped up to lick my nose, grunting like little pigs.

  “I’ll miss them,” Mrs. Dibberson said. “But I’m sure you’ll take good care of them.”

  “I will,” I assured her. “We’re going to have a great day.”

  Mrs. Dibberson left, and I’d just put the Twins in the big backyard behind the store with Rufus, when the first of the big dogs arrived. Pythagoras is a Newfoundland, huge and black and furry. He came in with Mr. Wexman, who’s going to be my math teacher this year. Mr. Wexman teaches summer school, so he’d arranged for Pythagoras to stay with us for a few hours every day. I especially wanted to impress him, since math is one of my favorite subjects and I’m hoping to do well in his class.

  “Hey, Py,” I said, patting the dog’s huge head. “You ready for a day away from your dad?”

  Py answered me by holding out one big paw. I took it and shook. Py responded by slobbering on my hand.

  “Sorry,” Mr. Wexman said.

  “No problem,” I told him, picking up a towel and wiping my slimy hand.

  “I’ll be back around two thirty,” said Mr. Wexman. “Hopefully he won’t drown anyone before then.”

  I introduced Py to Walter and Wendell (he’s met Rufus a bunch of times, so they knew each other already) and watched the two pugs scamper around the big dog’s feet. He didn’t seem to mind, so I left them to get acquainted and went back inside to greet the next arrival. There were three other dogs scheduled for the day, and about five minutes later they all came in at once.

  The last little dog was Princess Emmeline Merriweather Talbot. Emmy’s name makes her sound fancy, but she’s actually a mutt. We don’t really know what she’s a mix of, but she looks like a cross between a German shepherd and a collie, only shrunk down to about half the size of those dogs, so that what she really looks like is a big raccoon. My mother’s friend Carter Talbot, who runs a catering company, found her hanging around his van one day after a wedding, trying to get at the leftover meatballs he’d put in the back. He took her home, and she’s been coming in twice a month ever since for a shampoo and toenail clipping.

  The two big dogs were Figaro and Skunk.
Figaro’s a Lab, like Rufus, only he’s yellow instead of brown. He lives two streets over from us with this young couple, the Berds. Skunk has been coming in ever since he was a puppy. He belongs to Reverend Skelton. He’s a mutt, part husky and part wolf. And he loves skunks. Hence the name. He’s always getting sprayed, and he comes in at least once a month for a vinegar-and-tomato-juice bath to get rid of the latest skunk smell. But his fur is so thick that you can never get it all out, and no matter how many times we bathe him, he always has this faint skunky smell to him.

  “Three weeks without an incident,” Reverend Skelton told me. “I think that’s a record for him. Hopefully he won’t break it today.”

  With Emmy, Figaro, and Skunk added to the backyard, we were ready for our first day of doggy day care. I stood watching everyone, making sure they were all getting along, and was pleased that all the dogs seemed to like one another. Rufus and Figaro were already sharing a stick, each of them chewing on an end. Py had found a shady spot under a tree to sit in, and had managed to produce a long string of drool that had almost reached the ground. Skunk was sniffing around, followed closely by the Twins, whose noses were twitching excitedly as they tried to figure out what their new friend smelled like. And Emmy was chasing a bee that was trying to feed on the nasturtiums that covered one of the fences. So far, so good, I thought happily. I was going to spend the day with dogs I knew and liked. What better way to start my summer?

  “Excuse me,” someone yelled out. “Is anyone working here or what?”

  I went inside to see who could be shouting like that. When I saw who it was, my stomach immediately knotted up.