Hotel For Dogs by Lois Duncan Page A

of them.”
    “I wish I could take one,” Debbie said wistfully. She was spending much of her spare time at the hotel and had become very fond of the puppies.
    “That little Hairy is such a darling. I’d much rather have him than Mom’s stupid cat.”
    “It’s not fair,” Andi said. “If we have to send somebody away, why couldn’t it be Red Rover? He eats ten times as much as those tiny puppies. But, no, Red is special, because Bruce and Tim are boys and they like big dogs better than little ones.”
    Despite her feelings, she kept her promise and posted a notice about the puppies on the school bulletin board. She printed it in the tiniest letters possible in the hope that no one would notice it crammed in among all the other announcements. She soon realized, however, that this had been a bad mistake. The fact that the writing was so small that it could not be read easily made everyone who saw it curious about what it said.
    A small group gathered around the board, and other passersby pushed their way in to see what was so interesting. Before long, the hallway in front of the bulletin board was jammed with students struggling to make out the message:
    FREE PUPPIES, BROWN AND WHITE
CAN BE DELIVERED TO YOUR HOME
SEE ANDI WALKER, ROOM 207
    “Free puppies!” One girl let out a little squeal. “What fun! I wonder if my mother would let me have one.”
    “It’s my brother’s birthday next Monday,” another girl said. “He’ll be seven years old. I bet he’d love to have a puppy.”
    “My dog was hit by a car a couple of months ago,” a boy said sadly. “When that happened I felt like I’d never want another pet. But now — I don’t know — when you’re used to having a dog around, it gets kind of lonesome without one.”
    When the bell rang for recess, Andi found four people waiting for her in the hall outside the classroom. The girl with the little brother and the boy whose dog had been run over were definite about wanting puppies. Andi agreed to deliver them the next day. The other girl wanted to know how big they were, and, when Andi told her, she said that she liked small dogs and was almost sure she would take one but would have to check first to get her parents’ permission.
    The fourth person was from Andi’s class, although she didn’t know her very well. She was a thin, quiet, brown-haired girl named Tiffany Tinkle. Andi had always thought of Tiffany as a little beige mouse.
    Now the mouse spoke.
    “I saw your ad on the board,” Tiffany said in a wispy voice.
    “I guess everybody did,” Andi said. As usual, when speaking to someone she did not know well, she heard her voice sounding cold and snippy, even though she did not mean for it to be that way. “I’m sorry, but you’re too late to get one. They’ve already been promised.”
    “All of them?” Tiffany exclaimed. “Every single one of them? That’s incredible! Our dog, Ginger, had five puppies a couple of months ago, and we haven’t been able to find homes for any of them. Ginger’s a purebred Airedale, but her husband was a bulldog. That’s kind of a funny combination.”
    “All puppies are cute, no matter who their parents are,” Andi said. “You’re lucky if you
can’t
find homes for them. I wish I could keep Friday’s puppies and watch them grow up.”
    “Oh, there’s no chance of our keeping them,” Tiffany said. “My father says one dog in the family is plenty. If we don’t find homes for the pups soon, he’s going to drown them.”
    “He’s going to do
what?”
Andi was so horrified that she forgot to be stiff and awkward. She couldnot believe her ears. “Your father must be a horrid, unfeeling monster!”
    “He’s very strict,” Tiffany agreed, looking more like a mouse than ever. “He was hoping Ginger would have Airedale puppies so we could sell them for a lot of money. When she fell in love with the bulldog next door, Daddy got furious. He says he doesn’t want a lot of half-breed mutts around