The Puppy Present (Red Storybook) by Jean Ure

When Ginger the pup was born, he was one of six. Six little bundles of fur, all warm and wriggling as they burrowed their way towards their mum.

    He wasn’t known as Ginger then, of course. He was just one of the pups.
    To begin with, nobody even knew whether he was a boy or a girl. Then one day someone picked him up, lifted his tail and said, “This one’s a boy!”
    There were two boys and four girls. They were all honey-coloured except for Ginger, who was – well, ginger! Their mum, who was called Lucy, was half Yorkshire terrier and halfsomething else. No one had ever been able to guess what the something else might be.
    As for their dad, he was a great, swaggering, Jack-the-lad who lived up the road and thought no end of himself. He had a bit of red setter in him, so maybe that was where Ginger got his gingerness from.
    The puppies all lived together in a big cosy basket with their mum. To begin with, they did nothing very much except sleep and eat. Their eyes were still closed, and they were so tiny they would have fitted into the palm of your hand.
    But then, as they grew a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger, they started to explore. One after another they went nosing their way out of their basket and plopping across the floor in search of adventure.

    One day Ginger plopped so far that he got lost and couldn’t find his way back. He sat in a corner, a little blind heap, whimpering for his mum. But it was all right! His mum knew where he was. He hadn’t gone nearly as far as he thought – just across the room, in fact. But it seemed like a really long journey to such a small-sized pup.
    His mum pushed him back to his brother and sisters, who all pounced on him, sniffing at him, trying to work out where he had been. Ginger was just glad to be back in his basket! He had given himself a bit of a fright.
    When the pups were just over a week old, their eyes opened. They could see! Ginger could see all the way across the room, to the corner where he had sat and whimpered. It still seemed
quite
a long journey.
    And now the pups began to play. They played rolling games and tugging games. They played chasing games and chewing games. They scampered and they romped, and every nowand again they got a bit rough and had to be told off by their mum. She wouldn’t stand for being bitten by a mere scrap of a pup!
    Sometimes, a great fluffy thing called
a cat
came to visit them. It got into their basket and sat there, all puffed up and making purring noises while Ginger and his brother and sisters dabbed at its tail and looked in its ears and munched at its fur.

    The cat didn’t mind. It even rolled over onto its back and let them settle down on top of it.
    Life was fun for Lucy’s puppies!
    Life wasn’t such fun for James Colin.
    It
had
been fun, once. That was before his baby brother had come along. Now it was simply horrid!
    James Colin had been James Colin right from the very beginning. His mum and dad had chosen his name even before he was born. They had been certain they were going to have a boy, and they did! Just James, all on his own. Which was the way that he liked it.
    He had been the most wonderful baby there ever was. He knew this, because his mum and dad had told him so. Lots and lots of times! They had cooed over him and gurgled over him and waggled their fingers into his pram. They had asked him, “Who is Mummy’s beautiful boy?” “Who is Daddy’s favourite man?” And the answer had always been… James Colin!
    For eight whole years he had been ‘Mummy’s beautiful boy’ and ‘Daddy’s favourite man’. Now a horrible new thing had arrived. It was called Alexander and it was allred and crumpled and not in the least bit beautiful. Sometimes it
smelt
. This was because it sicked itself or messed in its nappy. But Mum still cooed over it and gurgled, just as she had with James Colin. Ugh! James didn’t know how she could bear to touch it.

    The worst thing was that she expected him to touch