Heather Peck

Beginnings

Farmer Fred had lost his dog. Scratchy Patch had one white patch over one eye and one brown patch over the other eye. She also had long soft ears and the waggiest tail you ever saw. If you talked to her, she wagged her tail a lot. But if she didn’t understand what you said, she sat down and scratched while she thought very hard. Patch normally spent most of her time with Fred, checking round the hens, being polite to the geese, and chasing the rats. But today she’d gone missing.

Farmer Fred had been having his first breakfast – the little one with cereal and toast, not the big second breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausages and mushrooms. As you can tell, Farmer Fred liked breakfasts. If Mrs Fred hadn’t put her foot down, he’d have had at least three.

It was during first breakfast that Patch had sat down in the sun and scratched hard. After a lot of thinking and scratching, she went off to the old barn where Marigold the house cow lived. They exchanged polite nose sniffs and Marigold said ‘good luck Patch.’ Then Patch made a soft nest in the hay and sat in it. She turned round and round a few times then sat down again and waited. And waited.

So now Farmer Fred was looking for Patch. She hadn’t come in for lunch. And she hadn’t come in for her tea. Now it was evening and she hadn’t come in to sit by the fire. He was worried.

He looked in the tractor shed. No Patch. He looked in the milking parlour where he milked the cows. No Patch. He even looked in the potato shed. No Patch. At last, he looked in the old barn. No Patch. He sighed and leaned on the gate to talk
to Marigold.

‘Where’s Patch?’ he asked Marigold. Of course, she couldn’t answer but she looked very hard at a pile of hay. And as Farmer Fred looked where Marigold was looking, he saw Patch. She popped up out of the hay, looking very, very proud. Then she went back to her nest. And there in the warm soft hay were four squeaking, tiny versions of Patch. Patch had puppies!

All the puppies had brown patches and white patches and tiny waggy tails.

‘Clever Patch,’ said Farmer Fred. ‘Four puppies. What shall we call them?’

Well, this made Patch scratch a lot. To her, they already had names. There was Puppy-who-came-first, Puppy-who-squeaks-loudest, Puppy-who-is-biggest, and Puppy-who-scratches-like-me!

‘I know,’ said Farmer Fred, ‘we’ll call them Bramble, Bracken, Bumble and Bob.’ He picked up Puppy-who-squeaks-loudest and said ‘This is Bramble.’ And Bramble squeaked, VERY VERY loudly.

Farmer Fred put Bramble down in the hay with her Mum and set off back to the house, almost running.

‘Missus,’ he shouted, with what breath he had left from running. ‘Missus, Patch’s had her puppies and they all look exactly like her, and there’re 4 of them and…’ but he’d run out of breath.

‘Well now,’ said Mrs Fred in her comfortable voice that sounded just like cream cakes, if cream cakes could speak. ‘We’d better find a treat for Patch.’

‘Hurry up Missus,’ panted Farmer Fred. ‘Come and see.’

‘Now just you wait a minute Fred,’ said Mrs Fred. ‘Patch needs her treat and those puppies won’t be going anywhere.’ And she warmed up some milk, put some sardines in an old bowl, then looked at Fred again.

‘Ready now,’ she said. ‘A nursing Mum needs her treats if she’s going to look after all those puppies.’

Farmer Fred set off at a shambling run back to the barn, and Mrs Fred followed at a steady pace, careful not to spill the milk or drop the sardines.

Patch was exactly where Farmer Fred had left her. Three of the puppies were suckling, and one was getting a wash.

‘They’re beautiful Patch,’ said Mrs Fred to the proud mother. ‘Well done. Here’s some milk and a little treat for you.’

She bent down, creaking a bit in the middle, and gave Patch the milk and the sardines. Patch wagged a thank you, waited for permission to start, and wolfed down the sardines, bones and all, washing them down with the milk. Then she sat back, licked her milky moustache off, as much as she could, and went back to her puppies.

‘They’re fine puppies. What shall we call them Fred?’ said Mrs Fred.

There was a silence. Marigold edged closer to hear better, and Farmer Fred looked uncomfortable. He took his cap off, rubbed his balding head, and then twisted his cap in his hands.

‘Well,’ he said, when the pause had gone on so long Marigold had had time to stick her tongue up both her nostrils. (Marigold does this quite a lot!) ‘Well, I’ve sort of already named them.’ And he put his cap back on with a defiant air.

‘What names?’ asked Mrs Fred in a slightly cold voice.

‘Bramble, Bracken, Bumble and, err, Bob.’

There was another pause, during which Patch sat up and scratched, knocking two of her puppies over in the process.

‘Good names,’ said Mrs Fred, and Marigold heaved such a big sigh of relief she blew hay clean across the barn.

Puppies have Adventures

Two weeks later, something quite magical was happening to Bramble and her litter mates. They had been born deaf and blind. For two weeks all they could feel was the warmth from snuggling up to their Mum. And of course, they could taste her milk. Oh, and they also felt her wet, rough tongue every time she thought they were a bit grubby and needed a wash. Which seemed to happen quite a lot.

But now, their eyes had opened and they could see. They could see that the spiky bits that sometimes stuck in them were straw. And they could see the soft bits that made a warm bed with their mother were hay. And outside their warm nest, was a huge world.

At the same time, suddenly they could hear lots and lots of things. They could hear their Mum’s friend Marigold chewing. She was a very noisy chewer! And they could hear something scratching around on the floor and clucking. But tucked away inside the nest, they couldn’t see Marigold and they couldn’t see the cluckers.

‘I know,’ thought Bramble, ‘if I just scrambled out of this nest, I could see….’ and as she tumbled out of the hay, her little legs all over the place, she looked up. She looked up, and up and even more up, and there was MARIGOLD!! She was BIG. She was HUGE. But she was friendly. She looked down at Bramble, a long way down, and said ‘Hello Patch’s Puppy-who-squeaks-loudest. I’m Marigold.’ She swallowed a mouthful of hay and dribbled in a friendly fashion all over Bramble’s head.

Bramble sneezed and thought ‘Oh boy, more washing!’ Then at that very moment she saw what had been making the scratching and clucking noises. There were hens all over the barn floor. Now Bramble and her litter were bred to chase birds. And here were birds. Lots of birds. All the puppies scrambled and tumbled out of the nest. They chased the hens and the hens ran away! There was a lot of clucking. And a LOT of chasing. The puppies were having such fun. Bob got a feather
in his mouth and ran off with it. Bramble nearly caught a hen bigger than she was.

And then. And then.......she looked down and there was a big pair of flat feet. With webbing between the toes.

‘They don’t look like hen’s feet,’ she thought. She looked up a bit and the legs were big and strong. ‘They don’t look like hen’s legs either.’ And she tilted her head a bit more and saw a big white body. Just as she was thinking, ‘that doesn’t look like a hen’s body,’ a long, white, snaky neck bent down and a big, flat beak pecked her hard on her little snubby nose.

‘Ow!’ she squeaked, very, very loudly. ‘Ow and ow. That hurt! Who are you! Why have you pecked my dose?’ - because her nose did really hurt and it was runny and sneezy.

‘I’m Gertie Goose,’ said the big white bird, ‘and I pecked your nose because you were chasing my hen friends. You need to learn some respect puppy! Hens are good people who lay eggs. You must not chase them.’

Bramble, and Bracken and Bumble all stood still. If they hadn’t had fur they would have blushed. Bob dropped his feather and tried to pretend he was somewhere else.

‘Sorry Miss Gertie, sorry Mrs Hens’, they muttered. And they went back to their nest, where Mum was waiting.

‘First lesson pups,’ she said, ‘no chasing hens.’ And then she gave them all another wash, and a cuddle and some milk.

‘We won’t,’ chorused the puppies, and Bob added, ‘no, definitely not! Not while that goose is around anyway!’

After supper, Patch left the puppies drowsing in the nest and went to the farmhouse to see if there were any titbits on offer. For a few minutes, all was peaceful. Then the puppies woke up. The door of the barn stood open and the evening sunshine looked so very inviting. The embarrassment about the hen-chasing forgotten, Bramble said a polite ‘Hello’ to Marigold, and they stood in the doorway, sniffing. All four little noses whiffed in and out.

‘I smell something very strong and sort of muddy,’ said Bracken.

‘Yes,’ said Bob. ‘But I can also smell something sort of worried and woolly. Like Farmer Fred’s woolly jumper, but nervous.’

So they followed their sniffs towards the strong muddy smell. There was a pen in the corner of the yard and in it was an animal as large as Marigold, but with much shorter legs and no fur! Just bristles.

‘Hello,’ said Bramble politely ‘What are you?’ The big white animal looked at her and snorted loudly.

‘I am Ormesby Sally Ann, known as Sally-for-short, and I’m a sow.’ The puppies looked at each other.

‘What’s a sow?’ whispered Bumble quietly, but not quietly enough. Sally-for-short gave a big rumbly laugh and said, ‘A sow is a mummy pig. Look at all my baby piglets.’ The puppies put their front paws on the gate of the pig stye and stretched to look in.

‘Oh look,’ said Bumble in excitement, ‘there are lots of little pigs and they are all pink and round like sausages.’

Sally coughed. ‘We don’t say that word here,’ she snorted.

‘What word?’ asked Bumble in surprise? ‘You mean saus…..’

‘Ssh,’ said Sally. ‘The S word is banned!’ she whispered.