Book #2: Loudest Beagle on the Block
Trumpet is a great dog.
Ella spends all her time inside, practicing her music for the school talent show. But with her new beagle, Trumpet, she's starting to make new friends and see a whole world away from the piano bench.
There's just one thing . . .
Every time Ella starts to sing, Trumpet howls. Loudly. If Ella doesn't lose her canine costar, she doesn't stand a chance at the show--but can tone-deaf Trumpet tone it down?
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Read an Excerpt:
“IT’S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!” Isaac yelled at the top of his lungs, like a swamp creature had popped out of the ground or something. And by the way, if you’re wondering, this is not the best thing to yell in a cemetery. I saw people at a funeral halfway up the next hill all turn around to stare at us.
The bag wriggled like crazy in the lawyer’s hands. I jumped back. “It is alive!” I squeaked.
“What on earth is in there?” Mom demanded. Dad leaned down and peeked inside.
“AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” went the bag. It was the loudest howl I’d ever heard. Seriously, the people at the other funeral must have thought the whole place was haunted. I practically wanted to run away myself.
“Oh, wow,” Dad said. “Ella, look.”
At a ghost in a bag? No thanks. But I couldn’t really say no to Dad, so I edged closer and peeked through the mesh.
A pair of enormous brown eyes met mine. Two white paws were pressed up to the screen.
“It’s a dog!” I gasped.
“Awwrrrooo,” the bag said sadly. The dog poked its wet black nose at me and scratched the mesh screen with its claws.
“I didn’t know Aunt Golda had a dog,” my mom said, looking confused. “Why would she leave it to Ella?”
The lawyer pressed his handkerchief to his forehead again. “She didn’t have it very long,” he said. “It’s not much more than a puppy—about a year old, the vet guessed. I have all her paperwork here.” He dumped the bag in my hands and reached into his car.
I don’t know what the dog was doing in there, but the bag flailed and jumped so much that I nearly dropped it on the ground. I had to wrap my arms around it to keep it still.
“All its vaccinations,” the lawyer said, handing my Dad a manila envelope. He was talking faster and faster, like a horse speeding up when it sees the finish line. “It’s up-to-date, spayed, housebroken, healthy, here’s some food, a leash, good luck, nice meeting you—”
“Wait, wait,” Dad said, juggling the things that were being shoved into his hands. “We’ve never had a dog—we’re not exactly equipped—this is so—”
“Well, she left it to you,” the lawyer said. “You can do with it what you like, but I suggest waiting to hear the details of the will before you make any decisions. I’ll see you Thursday at the reading.” He backed away in a hurry, nodding and kind of bowing to us. Before Dad could say anything else, the lawyer leaped back into his car and drove away.
That’s when I noticed how drenched I was. Isaac had totally forgotten about holding up the umbrella. He was jumping around, trying to look inside the dog carrier.
“AWWWWWRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” the dog went again.
“Oh, dear,” my mom said. “Henry, now what do we do?”
“I guess we take it home with us,” Dad said. “Come on, let’s get out of the rain. We’ll take a better look at it in the car.”
We all ran back to our car. I was still holding the dog carrier in my arms. The mesh side was tilted up toward my face and I could see the dog inside scrabbling around and looking up at me.
Maybe I should stop and explain something. I’m OK with dogs. I don’t love them and I don’t hate them. Aunt Miriam has a fat little Pekingese named Desperado, who comes with her whenever we host Thanksgiving or Rosh Hashanah. Desperado might be the mellowest animal on the planet. As soon as he gets to our house, he waddles over to the couch. He’s too short and fat to jump up himself, so he stands there and waits until Aunt Miriam picks him up and puts him on a pillow. And then he falls asleep for the rest of the night. Seriously, I’ve never heard him make a single noise. Once she forgot to put him up on the couch and an hour later he was still just standing there, waiting for her to remember.
So I kind of figured that dogs were nothing to get excited about. Heidi Tyler, who’s in my class at school, talks about dogs practically nonstop. She loves them and she wants one so badly, but her mom and dad always say no because their house is too neat for a dog. It’s true. I went there once for a party a couple of years ago. (I don’t go to a lot of parties because I usually have piano lessons or choir practice or something—I always put my music first. I figure one day I’ll be famous and then I’ll have lots of time to make friends.) I think Heidi’s mom made her invite all the girls in fourth grade. Their house is scary neat. Most of the furniture is white and there are hundreds of small breakable things everywhere. It is too neat for a dog.
Actually, it’s even too neat for Heidi. I’m not sure how she gets from the front door to her room without messing stuff up.
I do have a goldfish. Its name is Bird. That’s the kind of joke I thought was funny when I got it in first grade. It doesn’t sound quite so funny when I tell people nowadays, but I don’t have friends over very often, so it doesn’t come up much. I feed him and clean his bowl once a week and he just kind of floats around looking bored. That’s sort of what I thought all pets were like.
Until I met this dog.
We all jumped into our car and shook ourselves off. I dumped the dog carrier on the seat between me and Isaac. I squeezed my braids and water dripped out of them. Rain splattered on the roof and on the windshield. It sounded like the percussion section of an orchestra practicing outside, especially when the thunder joined in, BOOM BOOOOOOM!
Mom fluffed out her hair and dried off her glasses, and then she turned around to peer into the backseat. “My goodness,” she said. “I guess we should let it out and say hello. Henry, does it have a name?”
My dad opened the manila envelope. He squinted at the pages inside. “This says it’s a she,” he said. “And her name is Trumpet.”
“Trumpet?” I repeated, wrinkling my nose. Trumpets aren’t my favorite instrument. They’re too loud and brassy. I like pretty, quiet instruments, like the harp and the piano and the flute. “That’s a weird name for a dog,” I said. “Especially a girl dog. I’d call her Piccolo or Viola instead.”
“Maybe she’s a Miles Davis fan,” Dad said.
“Who’s that?” Isaac said.
Dad clutched his heart. “What are they teaching our children these days?” he asked my mom in a big tragic voice.
“He’s a jazz guy, a trumpeter,” I said to Isaac, and my little brother lost interest right away. He didn’t get any of the musical genes in the family. Which is only one of the many reasons I think maybe Mom and Dad found him on the doorstep or something. There’s no way we could be related. I could never be as loud and irritating as he is.
“Well, let’s let her out,” Mom said. Dad twisted around. His eyes were kind of twinkly. He actually looked excited.
I took the zipper at the top of the bag and pulled it slowly, unzipping the big U. Before I’d gotten it open very far, a shiny black nose appeared in the opening. The dog poked and wriggled like she thought she could fit her whole body out through that tiny hole if she just tried hard enough. I pulled the zipper the rest of the way and the top of the bag peeled back.
An explosion of fur flew out of the bag. Before I could even blink, something white and brown leaped onto my dress and tried to climb up onto my shoulders. Its paws caught in my hair and pulled one of my ribbons loose. I shrieked as the dog started licking my face with a big, pink, surprisingly scratchy tongue.
“Awww, she likes you!” Dad said, clearly not seeing the difference between “liking me” and “trampling me into the car seat.”
I was too busy trying to protect my face with my arms to answer him. The dog was practically up on my shoulders, poking its nose into every gap, trying everything it could do to get past my hands so it could lick my face again. Its whole body was wriggling so hard that I thought it would knock itself onto the floor of the car.
“See, look how she’s wagging her tail,” Dad said. He reached over the seat to scratch the dog’s head. Trumpet jumped at his hand. Her claws dug into my legs as she pushed herself up. Her ears flapped around and she started to make this funny squeaking sound.
“What is that?” Isaac said. “What’s that noise?”
“It’s just how she says hi,” Dad said. He let the dog sniff his hand all over, which made her be still long enough for us to look at her.
Trumpet was bigger than Aunt Miriam’s Pekingese, but she wasn’t very big. Her legs were long and white with big white paws at the end like fat marshmallows. Her back and head and ears were a soft tan color, like a cello or a new violin, with a patch of black in the middle of her back. Her long straight tail had a white spot right at the tip, and there was a triangle of white running down from a spot on her forehead, between her brown eyes, and over her whole muzzle. Her chest and underbelly were white, too. Her ears were long and droopy and smooth. They looked as silky as my velvet dress.
“She is pretty,” Mom said, as if she was looking for something nice to say.
“Of course she is. She’s a beagle,” Dad said. “Hey there, Trumpet. How’s it going, girl?” He scratched behind her floppy ears and her tail started going like a motor.
Mom looked worried. “Don’t get attached, Henry,” she said. “We have to talk about this.”
“All right,” Dad said with a sigh. He gave Trumpet one last scratch behind her ears and then turned around again. He started the car. “We’ll take her home for now and figure out the next step tomorrow.”
“I like her!” Isaac announced.
“That’s because she hasn’t tried to lick your face off yet,” I said. I glanced down at my dress. It was covered in little white and brown hairs. As the car started to move, before I could stop her, Trumpet curled up on my lap. She rolled onto her back like she was offering her belly to me. Her ears flipped up so I could see their pink and white undersides. She kind of looked like she was smiling.
“She wants you to rub her tummy,” Isaac said. He reached over the bag and patted Trumpet’s stomach.
“Are you sure? That’s weird,” I said.
“Isaac’s right. Dogs like that,” Dad said, peeking at us in the rearview mirror.
I gingerly touched Trumpet’s pink and white stomach. It was much softer than I expected. I ran my fingers through the little whorls of short white fur. She wagged her tail and wriggled closer to me, resting her head on my free arm.
OK, I thought. Maybe she is a little bit cute.
But I knew there had to be a catch. Why had the lawyer been so eager to get rid of her? Why had he rushed away in such a hurry? If she was a good dog, why didn’t he want to keep her even a minute longer?
I had a feeling there was something we didn’t know yet about Trumpet.
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Do you own a super-loud dog?
Some dogs are really quiet. Some dogs only go "yip yip!" a couple of times when they hear the doorbell. But some dogs go absolutely bananas over nothing -- and they can be REALLY LOUD! Beagles are especially famous for their howling, which is why I picked one to write about for this book.
But even my perfect angel Sunshine can be hilariously loud sometimes. Sometimes we'll leave the TV on for a minute while we go into the kitchen, and all of a sudden she'll start barking her head off like the house is on fire. When we come running back in all in a panic to see what the emergency is, it turns out she's seen another dog or a horse or a polar bear on the TV screen. (She feels very strongly about TV polar bears, apparently.)
Or if it's not that, usually the problem is that she thinks there's someone at the front door. This could actually be useful if we didn't hear the doorbell or something...except that half the time, she's totally wrong, and there's nobody there. MOST HELPFUL, Sunshine.
So I have to admit this is a problem I haven't totally solved yet either. But one of the tricks I have heard about is that if you teach your dog to bark on command, you can also then teach her to hush on command. We haven't tried this, but I've seen it work for other dogs. First you teach her to "speak!" and give her a treat when she does it right. (You should be able to find ways to do this in a book or online, or if you take a class.) Then teach her a different sign for "hush!" while she's barking, and give her a treat when she stops barking. I know, it sounds crazy to teach her to bark, right? But it really does work!
We also find that it helps a lot if we can distract Sunshine while she's barking. If there really is someone at the door, this is kind of impossible. But if there's no one there, we can call her into the kitchen, make her do a trick (like "Sit") and have her sit there quietly until she's forgotten what she was barking at. Then she gets a treat and lots of praise. She's learned that if we call her from another part of the house, she'll probably get a treat if she comes right away. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking...Sunshine gets an awful lot of treats! But she's a good dog, so she earns them!)
The most important thing is not to yell at your dog if it's barking too much. Whatever she's barking at, she's trying to tell you about it. If you start yelling, she'll think you must be barking at the same thing. She doesn't know why you're yelling, but in her mind, this means the right thing to do was get really loud! So what you need to do is be calm and gentle and keep your voice low and soothing until she calms down. I know, it can be hard when your dog is annoying the heck out of your eardrums. But it'll work much better than yelling...and hopefully trying to act calm will help calm you down as well!
