Anna nodded. It made sense. She found it difficult to imagine perfectly behaved Sunny as a puppy at all!
Gran shook her head. “He certainly wasn’t! Don’t you remember my best pink shoes?”
Grandad laughed. “Yes! How could I forget?”
Gran sighed. “Oh, they were lovely, those shoes. I still miss them. He chewed one of them to pieces! The other shoe was still perfect and somehow that made it even worse!” She gave Anna a hug and rubbed Fred’s ears. “Fred will settle down, don’t worry. I don’t think Irish Setters are quite as … obedient as Labradors, but he just needs to grow up a bit.”
Anna nodded gratefully, feeling a bit better. She looked up at Sunny, trying to imagine him with a pink shoe dangling out of his mouth.
Sunny snorted a little and laid his nose on his paws, as though he’d never done anything like that in his life.
Fred gave up on the ducks after that. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed off the lead. Usually when they went out to the woods or the park, he could go racing away. He loved to run, but there wasn’t a lot of running space on the boat. It was only a few paces wide, for a start. And there wasn’t a hallway to race up and down like there was at home. There didn’t seem to be a garden either, only the long pathway at the edge of the water.
Fred was just as unsure about the water as Anna was. He’d never seen so much of it in one place before and he definitely thought it looked cold, too. But when he’d seen the ducks, somehow he forgot to worry about that.
He peered up at Sunny, who was still snoozing on the roof. He didn’t understand how Sunny could sleep through the loud rattling rumble of the engine. Perhaps he was just used to it. If Sunny would only wake up, maybe they could go running together. Fred was pretty sure he would be the fastest. He always was.
Sunny was watching him, Fred realized. This was his boat, Fred could smell that it was. He huffed and turned round on Anna’s feet so that he wasn’t looking at the bigger dog any more.
He was starting to wish they were back home.
Chapter Three
By the end of the day, Fred seemed to settle down to being on the boat. Anna had brought along his big cushion to make him feel more at home. Fred leaped on to it gratefully when Anna put it out next to her bed.
Anna had been a bit confused as to where she would actually sleep when Gran had invited her to stay on the boat, because she could only remember there being one double bedroom. She’d thought she might have to sleep in her sleeping bag on the floor somewhere, but Gran had laughed and promised her a proper bed.
That evening she explained that boats were all about saving space, and showed Anna how the table in the kitchen area folded down and the benches on either side of it slid round to make a comfy little bed. It was very clever. And it meant that Anna and Fred drifted off to sleep that night with Gran and Grandad sitting in their armchairs, watching television, but with the sound turned down so low that it mixed with the soft lapping of the water against the hull. Anna dreamed of floating off across the water in a tiny bed.
On Friday everyone woke up early. Anna did as Gran suggested and took Fred for two lovely long runs, racing the boat. They could run just as fast as the Hummingbird, as the part of the canal they were on had a five-mile-an-hour speed limit, which was a good sort of speed to keep up.
Anna could tell that Fred was feeling better after all that exercise. By the time they stopped at one of the locks late that afternoon, and Anna helped Grandad open the lock gates, he was slumped in the long grass, panting happily. Anna had to coax him up and on to the boat. Then he made straight for his big cushion, flopping down on to it.
Anna laughed. Fred still slept the way he had when he was a puppy, all legs sticking out everywhere. It did mean he took up a lot of room inside the boat. They kept having to step round him. But he was very sweet and he wasn’t being naughty, so no one minded.
Anna did wish that Fred got on better with Sunny, though. Actually, it didn’t really seem to be Fred’s fault. He was always very friendly with other dogs, even smaller ones, and he loved to chase and play and romp up and down the park with them. He even had a couple of “best friends” – a spaniel called Lottie and a tiny Jack Russell called Max, who bossed Fred and Lottie around all the time.
Anna had thought that Fred and Sunny would probably get on in the same sort of way. She’d even imagined that it would be a nice treat for Sunny to have another dog for company.
Unfortunately, Sunny didn’t seem to see it that way. He’d never shared his house or his boat with another dog, and he didn’t see why he had to start now. Especially with a dog like this, who frisked around everywhere the whole time, and kept sniffing at him and creeping up on him and yapping excitedly. Sunny didn’t like it at all and he snapped when Fred nuzzled at him, and let out a furious growl when the pup jumped into his basket. Fred jumped out again quickly, creeping away with his head hanging low and his back rounded in a shamed sort of crouch.
Fred was confused. He wasn’t used to sharing his home either, but the other dogs in the park liked him to play. He was only doing what he always did.
Still, at least he had Anna. He’d dragged his cushion right up to her strange little bed on the first night, so that he could curl up close to her. In fact, that was one thing that was better than home – there he slept in the kitchen. Now he was close enough to hear her breathing, and for her to reach down a hand and stroke him sleepily.
The two long walks meant that Fred fell asleep early that night, curled up on Anna’s feet as they ate dinner. He only really woke up long enough for a last quick trip out on to the towpath before Anna went to bed.
Fred woke up early Saturday morning, feeling full of energy. At home he would have scratched hopefully at the back door until someone let him out into the garden, or raced madly up and down the hallway, chasing his toys. But there just wasn’t enough room for that here.
He gnawed fiercely at one of his rubber bones for a while – it was easy to find, as he discovered he’d been asleep on top of it. It wasn’t as good as a walk, though. He sat up and stared hopefully at Anna, who was still sleeping. He put his paws up on the edge of the bed and whined, but she only made a strange sleepy noise and rolled over away from him.
Fred slumped back on to his cushion, and looked at Sunny, who was curled up in his basket on the other side of the saloon. Maybe Sunny would play? There wasn’t a lot of room, but perhaps they could chase each other up and down?
He uncurled himself and crept over to Sunny’s basket, whining a little.
Sunny woke up and stared grumpily at him, but Fred just thumped his huge feathery tail on the boards and put his head on one side, his ears twitching with excitement. Then he dropped down in front of the basket, stretching his paws out, and let out a few sharp yaps.
Sunny sat up and glared at him, and let out a furious growl.
Fred wriggled backwards, upset and a bit frightened. Why wouldn’t Sunny play with him? He barked, suddenly and loudly, so that Anna woke up with a start and banged her head on a shelf. She yelped, rubbing the back of her head.
Fred panicked completely. Sunny was growling at him, and now Anna sounded upset, and he didn’t understand what was going on. He ran backwards and forwards across the boat, barking and bumping into the shelves along the walls, and then the little folding table where Gran always put her tea.