Poppy's Christmas Cracker

Poppy sat up and sniffed. There was a very funny smell in the air - as if the woods she walked in every day had come into the house.
"Scully!" she barked, calling to her best-friend-in-all-the-world, "Scully! Come here quick!"

Scully got up and stretched, then sat down again - she wasn't going ANYWHERE quickly unless there was food involved.

Poppy came running to see where Scully was, and gave her ear a friendly chew.
"What's that smell?" she asked excitedly, "It smells like the WOODS!"


Scully grinned (dogs CAN grin, you know) and said, "Our People must have got a tree again. They do things like that - every year, they bring a tree into the house and cover it with pretty things. Then in a week or two, they take all the things off it and throw the tree away."
Poppy was very puzzled by this answer, so she went off to ask Beamer, who was a lot older and wiser than Scully.

"Our People have brought a tree into the house. Why?" she asked. "I thought only BOY dogs needed trees, and WE'RE all GIRLS!!"

Beamer laughed out loud. "You funny puppy!" she said."They have brought a tree in because it's nearly Christmas, and this is a Christmas Tree. It's a special tree, just for looking at."

Poppy still wasn't sure about it, so she went back to ask Scully some more. "Why do we have to look at it?" she asked Scully.

"Just you try TOUCHING it and you'll find out!" Scully warned her, and then ran off to chase Next-Door's-Cat.

Bounce, the cat who lived with them (and therefore was NOT allowed to be chased) came wandering in. "Wassamatta?" she meowed (cats have a VERY funny accent compared with dogs.) "Wa'youwann'ano?"
Poppy told her about the tree. "You'secrackers, youis!" meowed Bounce, and wandered off out again.

"Crackers?" thought Poppy, "what does 'crackers' mean?" and off she went to ask Beamer.

"Crackers are a type of biscuit," said Beamer. "You put butter on them, and eat them with cheese."

Now Poppy knew all about biscuits, and cheese, and she also knew that their People didn't let her have many in case she got fat. She didn't see how Bounce could think she was a biscuit.

So she decided to ask Scully what she thought 'crackers' meant.

"Crackers? You mean firecrackers? Where? Where!? WHERE?!?" said Scully, spinning around and looking everywhere and getting more and more worried.
"No, I didn't mean FIRE crackers! Just that Bounce said I'm crackers ..." but Scully had stopped listening and gone off to check on her favourite hiding place, just in case.


'I know I can be noisy, and sometimes I shoot around in all different directions, but I don't think Bounce meant THAT sort of 'crackers' either!" thought Poppy, and she went to her basket to have a Really Good Think.

Of course, as soon as she really started thinking hard, her eyes began to close and she drifted off to sleep ......



"Wake up, Poppy! Wake up!" .... "Look, she's dreaming, she's running in her sleep..." Poppy was indeed dreaming, dreaming that she was running away from a firecracker, and she was having to run very fast to get away from it. She woke up with a start and jumped out of her bed. She was quite sure it wasn't THAT sort of cracker Bounce was thinking of!


The people were very busy with their Christmas tree and took no notice as Poppy came into the room. Beamer and Scully had gone to their baskets to keep out of the way, but Poppy thought it looked like FUN so she wanted to stay and help!

She watched for a little while to see what they were doing. They had a box of pretty things, and they were taking them out of the box one by one and hanging them on the tree.
"I can do that!" thought Poppy, and she picked something up from the box and headed towards the tree.
Before she knew what was happening, her feet were all tangled up and she was tumbling towards the tree!

"POPPY!" they shouted, and picked her up, untangled the sparkly stuff from round her feet, and put her down again. "Off you go, you crazy puppy!" Poppy was very cross. Nobody would tell her what "crackers" meant, and nobody would let her help either. She was beginning to think that this Christmas wasn't much fun after all.

Just then, Bounce came back into the room. Poppy ran up to her. "You said I was crackers," she said, " but I don't know what crackers means. Beamer says it's a kind of biscuit and Scully says it's a kind of loud firework."
Bounce laughed. "You really IS crackers!" she purred, and started to wash herself.

Poppy wanted to cry.

Suddenly, she was picked up and carried back through to the tree again. "Come on Poppy, you can help us with the crackers." Crackers? CRACKERS? What on earth was going on?

They put her down by the tree and picked up a box full of bright-coloured paper tubes. "Look Poppy! Here's a Christmas cracker with YOUR name on it!" and they gave her one of the tube things. She sniffed it .... it smelt good, it smelt of doggy chocolates and biscuits, and she was sure she could even smell a toy bone inside it.

Poppy carried it off to her own special place and started to tear it open. It was indeed full of all sorts of wonderful things, just for her.

"So THIS is what 'crackers' means!" she thought. "Crackers is LOVELY! Crackers is DELICIOUS! Crackers is REALLY SPECIAL! Bounce must like me a LOT!" and she went off to find Bounce and gave her a really big snuffle and lick.

Bounce was NOT amused.

"Waddacrazypuppy!" she thought, "PoppyREEELYcrackers!"


Here is a photo of Beamer, Scully (see - she DOES grin!)
and of course, little Poppy.

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