Rascal's Festive Fun (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Fun at the Fair

“Are you all ready?” Jo smiled at the little group of dogs and owners standing in the entrance to the village hall, and Ellie glanced round proudly. Everyone had made such an effort!

Jack’s mum had sewn Hugo a beautiful red coat with a gold braid trim, which looked amazing against his smooth golden-brown fur. Christy had brought Bouncer in his antlers, which had jingly bells on them.
Bouncer was sitting perfectly next to her, with a special collecting tin gripped in his teeth. Ellie had made it out of a seaside bucket. She’d covered it with red paper, and got Rascal to make paint pawprints on it. She’d hoped Rascal might carry it, but it was a bit big for him, and he’d probably have chewed through the handle anyway.

Rascal was sitting next to Bouncer, eyeing it enviously, with his hat hanging down over one eye as usual. It was looking a bit raggedy now, as he had taken to dragging the hat around with him. Even Amelia had put Goldie in a sparkly red coat.

“Let’s start with ‘Away in a Manger’, since we all know it really well.” Ellie looked
at the door nervously. She could see through the glass panels that people were lining up outside. They began to sing as Jo went to open the hall doors. People started trickling in, stopping to admire the dogs and drop some change into Bouncer’s bucket.

“What next?” Ellie asked, as they finished, and Amelia leaped in.

“I want to do my solo for ‘Once in Royal David’s City’,” she demanded.

Ellie sighed. “OK…”

Amelia closed her eyes, and her face took on a saintly expression. She began to sing, and a couple of people stopped to listen, smiling admiringly. She had just got to the difficult high bit, when someone else
joined in, and her eyes snapped open in horror.

“Ahhhrrrroooo!” Hugo howled, in a deep bass voice.

“Hugo, ssshh!” Jack hissed, trying not to laugh. But Hugo went on howling, and then Rascal started up too, in a much squeakier little howl. “Owwwoooooo!”

Amelia was bright scarlet – the colour of her hat – but she carried on singing grimly to the end of the verse. Then everyone else joined in, as well as they could, giggling every so often.

Funnily enough, Hugo and Rascal stopped as soon as everyone was singing. “It’s only Amelia’s voice they don’t like!” Christy whispered to Ellie.

Quite a few people had gathered to listen, and they clapped at the end of the carol.

“Your Great Dane’s a star!” one lady told Jack. Lots of people put money in the tin, and patted Rascal and Hugo, and told them how good the dogs’ “singing” was.

“You did that on purpose!” Amelia hissed at Jack and Ellie, as their audience went on into the hall.

Jack stared at her. “You think I’ve trained Hugo to howl when you sing?” he asked.

Amelia was about to argue back when a man with a large camera hanging round his neck came in. “I’m from the local paper,” he explained. “Are you carol singing? Can I take a couple of pictures?”

Amelia immediately snapped a smile back on her face, and patted Goldie’s ears into the best position.

“Let’s sing ‘Jingle Bells’,” Ellie suggested, knowing that everyone smiled in that one.

The man took lots of photos, and then went on into the hall. Ellie and the others had just sung all the way through their list of carols twice when Jo came out to see them, with a lady in a rescue centre fleece. “You were fab!” she told them. “This is Carol, she runs Paws for Thought.”

“I just wanted to say thank you!” Carol said, as she patted all the dogs. “The carol singing was such a good idea.”

“Why don’t you all come and look round the stalls,” Jo suggested. “You haven’t had a chance to see the rest of the fair, and I think most people are here now.”

Ellie nodded. “I’m just going to find Mum and Dad,” she told Christy and Lucy. Her family had arrived a few minutes before, and she wanted to go round with them. She was hoping to get something for Max to replace the fudge.

“Hello, Ellie! You sounded lovely,” Mum told her. “Aren’t these stalls wonderful?”

Ellie nodded, admiring the hats laid out in front of them. They had really cool designs, and she could see Lila fingering one with knitted flowers sewn on to it. She’d already got Lila some nail polish though… Then Ellie spotted the perfect hat for Max – knitted with ears like a dog’s, with big eyes and fierce teeth, too. She was sure he’d love it. She quickly fumbled for her purse, and tucked the hat away in her coat pocket before Max could spot it.

Half an hour later, Ellie had a scarf for Grandad from the same stall, with paw prints knitted on it, and a lot of things for Rascal.

She hadn’t meant to buy him anything else, but she just couldn’t resist. She gave him his new rubber bone straight away, as a reward for his singing, but she was saving the other things for Christmas. Rascal was looking tired, so she scooped him up and carried him around the stalls as he chewed on his bone happily. Ellie was just walking past the Lucky Dip, wondering if Mum or Dad might buy her a cake from the refreshments stall in the corner, as she’d spent all her money, when Rascal spotted Hugo again, and dropped his bone in excitement.

The bone went straight into the big box of shredded paper, just as a little girl was about to reach in for her prize. She looked up in surprise as the bone went past her,
and then gasped as a small
brown-and-white
dog hurtled past too.

“Rascal!” Ellie cried. She’d been thinking about cake and not holding him very tightly, so he’d simply leaped out of her arms and straight into the Lucky Dip!

“Now
that
is a good picture!” someone said, and the newspaper photographer snapped Rascal, his bone held triumphantly between his teeth.

Chapter Eight

Snow!

“It says the Christmas Fair raised over five hundred pounds,” Ellie said proudly, reading the local midweek newspaper that had just come through the door.

“I can’t believe Rascal’s on the front page,” Mum said, chuckling to herself. It was funny. Rascal was looking right at the camera, bright-eyed and half-covered in shredded paper. The Lucky Dip sign was hanging over his head, and it looked like
he’d just dipped and won his bone.
Or maybe he was the prize,
Ellie thought lovingly, stroking the real version, who was lurking by her feet, hoping there might be some food to munch on soon.

“Amelia’s going to be so cross,” Ellie said smugly. “She was following that photographer around, trying to get him to take pictures of her and Goldie. Actually…” She laughed, and glanced up to show her mum something she’d just noticed at the very back of the photo. “I can see Amelia there in the corner…” Then she squeaked excitedly, and jumped up from the table. “Mum, look!”

“What is it?” Her mum turned round to see. “Oh, goodness…”

“It’s snowing, it’s snowing! Look at it, it’s falling so fast!”

There was a thundering on the stairs, and Max hurtled into the kitchen. “Have you seen? It’s snowing! Where’s the sledge? Where’s my snowboots? Come on, Ellie!” He raced out again, leaving Ellie and Mum open-mouthed, and Rascal staring after him doubtfully.

“He can’t possibly go sledging in half a centimetre of snow…” Mum muttered, as Dad came in and peered out of the window.

“It’s falling very fast,” he said. “I don’t think it’ll be long before there’s plenty of snow for sledging…”

“Rascal’s never seen snow before.” Ellie picked up Rascal to show him the view out of the kitchen window. Rascal whined, looking at the strange white stuff all over the garden.

Dad was right. It only took about half an hour for there to be a thick layer of snow covering the pavement in front of the house. Max had been standing on the doorstep, clutching the sledge while he watched it settle, and now he popped his head back in to yell for Ellie. “Are you coming to the park, Ellie? Do you want to bring Rascal?”

Ellie flung on her coat and boots, and looked thoughtfully at Rascal, who was jumping around in the hope of a walk. Would he like the snow? It was probably almost up to his tummy by now, in the deep bits. She wrinkled her nose. He was going to have to like it. Who knew how long the snow would last? They couldn’t possibly keep him inside the whole time. Rascal got
even rascallier than usual if he didn’t have two good walks a day.

She clipped on his lead and opened the front door. Rascal went to race out as usual, but then stopped dead and looked up at Ellie in confusion.

Ellie put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing at him. Rascal looked completely shocked. But then, everything had changed since they’d popped out for an early-morning walk before breakfast, she realized.

“It’s OK, Rascal,” she whispered. “It’s only snow. It’s fun, look.” She picked up a handful, and flung it across the garden.

“Does he like it?” Max called.

“I don’t think he’s sure yet,” Ellie told him. “Come on, Rascal.” She stepped out on to the path, and led him over to the gate where Max was waiting.

With tiny, dainty steps, Rascal tiptoed into the snow. Ellie had been right. It was almost up to the top of his little legs already.

Max watched Rascal padding along, and sighed. “This is going to take hours. Look, you sit on the sledge with him, and I’ll pull you there. That’ll give him some time to get used to it.”

“Cool!” Ellie sat down on the sledge, and hugged Rascal tight. He was as good as a hot-water bottle in this cold. Rascal squeaked excitedly as Max set off, and the sledge ran smoothly along, bouncing here and there over dips in the snow.

By the time they got to the park, Rascal was less confused by the cold white stuff. He chased after the sledge as Max and Ellie went down the big slope, barking excitedly and half-swimming through the snow as he hit the deep bits.

“OK. I’m exhausted,” Max said, a while later. “We must have gone down a hundred times.
And
back up again.”

Ellie nodded. “Let’s go home and ask Mum for some hot chocolate. I’m frozen. And then we could make a snowman in the garden, maybe. We don’t know how long the snow’s going to last.”

Max nodded, and they set off home, Rascal jumping and wading through the snow beside them.

Mum had been making mince pies, so after a couple of those each, and hot chocolate, they felt recovered enough to go out again.

Lila had been asleep until now, but she got up and came outside just as Max and Ellie were about to start on their snowman.

“Snowmen are boring,” she said firmly, in a very big-sister way. “Let’s make an igloo.”

Ellie looked at the snow doubtfully. There was lots of it, but it was very squishy. She wasn’t sure it was good building snow. But Lila was determined, and she soon had Max and Ellie working on a production line, squashing the snow into hard, glittery blocks, so she could arrange them into the shape of an igloo.

“Um, Lila…” Ellie said, after the first few rows. “It’s a very small igloo…”

Lila stood back and looked at it. Then she giggled. “It’s going to have to be a dogloo…”

“Uurgh, don’t tell Rascal that!” Max snorted with laughter.

“You know what I meant!” Lila flung a snowball at him. “Stop being stupid, let’s get it finished. We just need to get the roof filled in.”

Rascal pottered out of the house – he’d been recovering from the trip to the park with a snooze on his cushion – and admired the igloo, sniffing all round it. Ellie thought he was about to lift his leg against it, and glared at him, but luckily he decided not to.
Lila might have thrown a wobbly if he had.

“Last block!” Lila carefully wedged the final block of snow in place.

Rascal wandered round from the back of the igloo and peered into the little doorway. He looked up at Ellie, as though he wasn’t sure he was allowed in.

“Go on, Rascal!” she told him, and he poked his nose in thoughtfully and then went all the way inside, turning round and lying down as though he approved.

Lila took a photo of him on her phone, laughing.

“I’m going to make a snow-dog now,” Ellie said, wandering further down the garden to find some fresh snow.

But snow-dogs were difficult, it turned out. The paws kept falling off. And it was getting
colder and colder. Lila and Max had already gone inside, and finally she decided it must be close to lunchtime. She looked round for Rascal, but he must have gone in with Lila and Max.

“Oh, I was just going to call you, Ellie!” Mum told her, as she opened the door. Then she frowned. “Where’s Rascal?”

“He came in with the others…” Ellie said.

Mum shook her head. “No, he’s definitely not here.”

Ellie looked back out across the garden worriedly. Had Rascal got out somehow? What if the snow had drifted, and he was stuck, buried in the snow?

Then she smiled. “Wait a minute,” she told Mum, and ran to check the dogloo.

Sure enough, there he was. His white bits were blending into the snow, so only his little brown ears stood out in the dim, snowy light inside. Rascal was fast asleep in his own little snow-house.