The Puppy That Came for Christmas Read Online Free Page A

it’ll need to sleep in your room for the first few nights, so you’ll hear it when it wakes up . . .”
    I nodded.
    â€œAnd you’ll need to take it to the toilet straightaway so it doesn’t ever mess in its bed—you’ll need to carry it up and down the stairs. Stairs aren’t good for a little puppy’s joints, especially the Labradors, Golden Retrievers and Labradoodles we use.”
    Â 
    We took our tea out for a tour of the garden, a square lawn fringed with dying bedding plants, a new rockery with perky shoots poking through, an arbor seat nestled into the bushes, a patio, a shed and a couple of trees.
    â€œWhere’s the toilet area going?” Jamie asked. Helper Dogs needed an area covered with play sand or bark chippings, at least a meter square. I’d never toilet trained a dog before, but it couldn’t be that hard, I told myself.
    â€œUnder the lilac tree?” I said. The tree was near the house and the patio.
    Jamie frowned. “No, I don’t think that’ll work. You don’t want to be sitting almost on top of the puppy’s loo, do you? The ideal place, I suppose, would be down there.” He pointed to our recently built rockery. “But it’d mean . . .”
    â€œOh, we’re not bothered about that old thing,” I said.
    We went back inside and I made some more tea.
    â€œI’ll need to meet Ian, of course,” he said. “Bring him along to the center some time.”
    My head was spinning. There was so much to think about and organize. So many things to buy for such a small creature.
    He caught my pensive expression. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be great,” he said. “I’m just a bit concerned because you haven’t had a dog before.”
    I bit my tongue and resisted saying anything about Goro.
    â€œWhen d’you think we’ll get our puppy?”
    â€œNot for a while yet—maybe sometime after Christmas. It depends when they’re available. Could be March.”
    That long? I sighed.
    Â 
    So here I was, three weeks later, filling my waiting time by learning about dogs at the Helper Dog class. Rusty now made me feel very welcome at the center. He recognized me as the lady who brought him nice things, and he hurried over every time I walked through the door. He’d do anything for a treat and spent his life on a diet. I wasn’t so keen on, indeed was a little frightened of, Jamie’s other dog, a German Shepherd called Queenie. Barely used to dogs at all, I certainly wasn’t habituated to gruff Alsatians. How did easygoing Rusty manage to live with her? I never saw the two of them playing together, and although she was often at the Helper Dogs center, the other dogs treated her with deference or gave her a wide berth.
    Each Helper Dogs session began with tea and coffee and the chance for puppy parents to report on how their puppies were progressing. We were early, so next to me and Rusty there were only two young puppies, Dylan and Daisy, and an older puppy called Arnie, who’d been pulled out of advanced training for a while because he kept barking all the time. Julia had Dylan, a Flat-coated Retriever. He had long legs that reminded me of Bambi. Len, a retired insurance salesman, had Daisy, a cute, chocolate-brown Labrador. I loved hearing how the puppies got on each week.
    â€œI thought you might be interested in this,” Julia said to me one week, and she gave me a timesheet of everything she did with Dylan during a typical day. It looked like a full-time job with a strong emphasis on toilet training.
    Â 
    I wasn’t quite so keen on the other class I went to each week—the clicker training class. Or so keen on Frank, the other Helper Dogs official who had moved down from Scotland with Jamie and now shared management of the training center. While Jamie concentrated on the Helper Dogs work, Frank ran the regular obedience classes for