Rascal (3 page)

Lizzie and Charles chased all over the gym after Rascal, trying to keep him from scaring the other puppies. “Rascal!” Lizzie cried. “Be nice!”

“Come on, Rascal,” Charles pleaded. “Can't you be friendly?”

Soon Lizzie was completely out of breath.

“Okay, everybody, let's leash our pups and get started,” Jamie called from the middle of the gym floor.

“Ha,” said Charles. “Like
that's
going to be easy.” He and Lizzie had already learned that it was tricky to catch Rascal if he didn't want to be caught.

“Come here, you!” Lizzie said. She tried to grab Rascal as he flew past her toward the cowardly bulldog. It was so embarrassing. All the other owners were already standing in a big circle with their puppies. They were ready to work.

Finally, Jamie snuck up on Rascal while he was trying to wrestle with the shaggy black puppy. She hung on to his collar until Lizzie could snap his leash on. “Thanks,” Lizzie said, blushing.

“No problem,” Jamie said. “He's just a wild child. That's why he's at puppy kindergarten, right?” She smiled at Lizzie.

But an hour later, she wasn't smiling as much. Rascal barked when Jamie was trying to talk, chased the other puppies during leash-walking practice, and tried three more times to steal the black puppy's squeaky toy. “Rascal,” Jamie finally said, “I think you need a time-out.” She asked Lizzie and Charles to take him outside for a few minutes and let him “cool down.”

Lizzie almost didn't want to go back inside when the time-out was up. But Rascal needed training, and Lizzie needed help! “I'm really sorry,” she said to Jamie when class was finally over. “Maybe we shouldn't come back next time.” Was Rascal going to be a kindergarten dropout?

“Oh, don't worry about it,” Jamie said. “You should definitely keep trying. Believe me, I've seen worse. He'll learn!”

Lizzie was starting to wonder about that.

“Almost there!” Maria bounced up and down on the seat as her dad's blue car rumbled down a long, bumpy dirt driveway. “I can't believe you finally made it to the stable!”

“Me, neither,” Lizzie said, hoping that the nervousness in her voice sounded more like excitement. Her first riding lesson was finally about to happen! Her mom had insisted that Lizzie deserved a break from Rascal, so she couldn't use
that
excuse anymore. Within a half-hour she was going to be on the back of some gigantic horse. If she was lucky! If she was unlucky, she'd be lying in the dust after being bucked off. Lizzie shivered. Just thinking about it made her heart beat harder.

“You are going to
love
it here, I promise,” Maria babbled on. “Everybody's so friendly, and the horses are the best. And Kathy is so, so cool! She knows everything there is to know about riding and caring for horses. Remember how I told you about that one horse, Tony, who hurt his leg? Kathy and Wayne have been taking care of him, and he's almost ready to ride again.”

“Great,” Lizzie said. Maria barely seemed to notice whether she said anything or not. Her friend was so excited that she just kept talking. Lizzie wasn't even sure which of the names Maria mentioned belonged to horses and which were people. Sally, Frankie, Tony, Kathy, Vanessa, Pokey, Sir Galahad . . . The names just blended into one another.

“Hey, gal, slow down,” Maria's father said, patting his daughter on the shoulder. “Give Lizzie a chance to get to know the place in her own way.”

But Maria just kept bouncing in her seat. “Here we are!” she sang out as the car pulled to a stop in
front of a weathered old barn. Next to it was a riding ring, a dusty circle of dirt enclosed by a wooden fence. And next to that was the paddock, the grassy area where the horses grazed.

“Look, there's Tony!” She pointed to a white horse with big black spots. He was yanking grass out of the ground in the paddock, whisking his long black tail as he chewed. “He's a paint. You know, like an Indian pony? Tony!” she called. She made a clucking noise with her tongue as she and Lizzie climbed out of the car, and Tony came trotting over.

Maria's dad waved and drove off. Lizzie watched him go, wishing she were still in the car.

Maria handed Lizzie a big carrot. “Here, give him this and he'll love you forever,” she said.

Lizzie stood frozen in place.

“Go ahead,” Maria said. “He won't hurt you.”

Lizzie laughed nervously. “I know that,” she said. “Here, I'll go first.” Tony's teeth looked awfully big when he took Maria's carrot.

Tony reached his nose through the fence and bumped it against Lizzie's arm. “Hey!” she said.

“He just wants your carrot,” Maria told her.

Carefully, Lizzie held out the carrot the way she had seen Maria do it, on her flat, outstretched hand. Tony took it gently. Lizzie didn't feel a thing except his warm breath on her hand. She could smell his horsey smell now that she was up close to him, and she kind of liked it. His coat was shiny, and his nose looked as soft as velvet.

“You can pat him,” Maria urged.

Slowly, Lizzie reached up a hand and patted Tony's neck. His ears twitched and he blew out some air as he leaned toward her. She pulled away. But she wasn't really scared. Maybe some horses were mean, but Tony was obviously harmless and sweet.

“He likes you!” Maria said.

“Has Tony ever met anyone he
didn't
like — especially if they give him carrots?” A woman in jeans and a blue work shirt had come up next to
them. She was smiling. “You must be Lizzie,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I'm Kathy. Glad to see you here.”

“She can ride today, right?” Maria asked.

Kathy paused for a second and looked Lizzie over. “Sure,” she said. “I think she'd enjoy riding Sally, don't you?”

“Perfect,” agreed Maria. “I'll go tack her up.”

Lizzie pictured a big horse tacked to a bulletin board. “What?” she asked.

“I'm going to put on her saddle and bridle,” Maria explained. “That stuff is called tack.” She pulled Lizzie by the hand. “Come on, I'll show you how to do it. Next time you can get your own horse tacked up.”

Lizzie followed Maria into the dark, shady barn. It smelled musty and sweet, like hay and horses and leather. Lizzie took in a deep breath as she walked down the aisle with Maria. Horses leaned over their stall doors to nicker hello, and Maria
told Lizzie everyone's name, pointing to the hand-carved signs nailed up by each stall.

“That's Willie, and Jasper, and Treasure,” she said. “The black one is Jet. She's a little skittish.”

“I like this one,” Lizzie said, looking at a golden horse with a pale gold mane.

“That's Minx. She's a Palomino. Isn't she gorgeous?”

Sally turned out to be a sweet gray horse, not too big, and very friendly. Maria took Lizzie into the tack room to grab a saddle and bridle, and back into the stable to walk Sally out of her stall. The mare waited patiently while Maria gave Lizzie a lesson in putting on a saddle, showing her how to check if the girth was tight enough. Then Sally let Lizzie walk her out toward the riding ring.

Kathy met them at the barn door. “Up you go,” she said, pointing to a large step. “You can stand on that block to make it easier.”

Lizzie hesitated.

“Go ahead,” said Kathy. “Just put your left foot into the stirrup and throw your right leg over her back. She'll stand there all day until you're ready, but the sooner you get on, the sooner you can be riding.”

Before she knew it, Lizzie was sitting high up on Sally, riding her around the ring at an easy, slow walk while Kathy guided the horse with a long rope called a lead line. Kathy said encouraging things like, “Great! Keep your heels down and your head up. Elbows out! Excellent!”

“You look great on her!” Maria said. She was grinning from ear to ear.

So was Lizzie. Riding had definitely taken her mind off Rascal. To her surprise, she was having the best time ever!

“Rascal, no!” Lizzie could not believe how many times she had said those words in the last ten minutes.

She and Rascal and Charles were at puppy kindergarten again. They were trying their best to follow Jamie's directions.

Well, Lizzie and Charles were trying to follow directions. Rascal? He was just trying to cause as much trouble as possible, or at least that's the way it seemed.

“How could you be so smart and so cute, but also be such a pest?” Lizzie asked the puppy. They were supposed to be practicing walking on a leash. All the owners and puppies were going in a big circle around the gym.

Rascal had already barked at the bulldog puppy, chased the dachshund, and pounced on the Lab puppy and both poodles. And not during playtime, either. He had done all that during the lesson on “sitting.”

Now they were trying to walk, but he kept grabbing the leash in his teeth and shaking it, growling his little puppy growls.

Grrr, grrr. Rascal was teaching that leash a lesson. Silly thing. Would these people ever understand that he needed to run, run, run?

He did stop for a second when Lizzie said “no.” He gazed up at her with his head cocked to one side. He looked like he was asking “Who, me?” His black eyes were shiny. His right ear stood straight up, and his left ear flopped over. His whiskers were twitching. Rascal looked as if he could really understand what she was saying, even if he couldn't answer.

Lizzie felt her heart melt. This sweet, smart, wild puppy really deserved to find a wonderful, loving home. But if he couldn't learn to behave, who would ever take him?

“Okay, good job, everybody,” Jamie was saying.

Lizzie and Charles exchanged a look. They knew she didn't mean Rascal when she said “everybody.”

The other puppies weren't perfect, either. For example, Bullwinkle the bulldog absolutely hated to walk on a leash. His owner would tug on the leash, but Bullwinkle would not budge, not even an inch. The bulldog's wrinkly, flat face made him look so stubborn that Lizzie had to laugh.

Trixie the corgi had a habit of sneaking up on other puppies and stealing their toys. No matter how many of her own toys her owners brought along — fluffy ones, squeaky ones, balls, tug toys — Trixie always liked the other puppies' toys better.

But Rascal was the worst. By far. It was as if he always had to be the center of attention. He
couldn't stand it when Jamie talked for too long, or when one of the other puppies was being praised. He would bark and jump and scurry around. Lizzie had to pick him up so he would calm down.

“How is he doing at home?” Jamie asked. She had come up to Lizzie and Charles during a short break. She reached down to scratch Rascal under the chin, which made him wag his tail as hard as he could.

Lizzie sighed. “Well, he's not chewing as many things,” she said. “But that's only because he's kind of locked up in the kitchen most of the time.”

“He's learning to come when we call his name,” Charles reported. “Remember, Lizzie? He did it yesterday, five times in a row.”

“That's true,” Lizzie agreed. “He really is very smart. He just has so much energy!”

Jamie nodded thoughtfully. “He may just need lots and lots of exercise and room to run,” she said. She looked around the gym and saw that
the other owners were back from break. “All right,” she said, walking back to the middle of the circle. “Let's ask our dogs to stay.”

Lizzie groaned. Not loudly enough for Jamie to hear, just a little tiny groan. So far, Rascal was not doing too well with the “stay” thing.

“Remember, we want to help the dogs do well. So we're going to start by asking them to stay only for about two seconds,” Jamie said. “If they manage that, we'll give them a treat and lots of praise. Then next time, we'll ask for three seconds!”

She had the owners face their puppies, holding the leash. A few of the puppies looked up at the owners, waiting to see what they wanted. But Rascal — like most of the puppies — looked off in another direction, distracted by every noise and smell.