Read Lessons From Ducks for Free Online

deliberation. She ruled out the awful ones with studs – they looked sadistic – but was torn between the lovely leather ones with the white stitching, or the more practical heavy duty canvas ones, guaranteed, according to the label, to stand up to any amount of activity your dog could throw at it.
    The decision was unnecessary in the end. She spent an hour, crouched on the floor, gazing into the cage where the puppies were housed - a litter of black and chocolate Labradors - watching as they chased tails and nibbled enthusiastically on ears and noses and clambered over the top of each other, tumbling to the ground head over bum before shaking it off and repeating. They were absolutely adorable, no question. A soft, wet inquisitive nose left a smear of something wet on the back of her hand through the bars and she thought her heart would melt into a puddle right there in her chest.
    “Precious little things aren’t they,” a voice had said indulgently over her right shoulder.
    Anna stood up, too quickly as it were, the blood rushing into her head with a deafening and dizzying roar. She’d wobbled on her feet.
    “Whoa,” the female owner of the voice, who also happened to own the pet shop, reached out a hand to steady her. “Are you ok? Do you need some water?”
    “No I’m fine, thank you,” Anna had smiled, embarrassed. “I just forgot how long I’d been crouching down.”
    “Are you sure? I can have my husband fetch a chair -?”
    “No really, I’m feeling much better already,” and she’d let go of the shelf she had grasped a minute earlier, stood as straight as her spine would go and smiled broadly to prove her point.
    “Ok then,” the woman had smiled back at her. Her badge introduced her as Pam, Owner/Operator, and there was a cartoon picture of a dog’s paw print in the top right hand corner. “I can understand why you lost track of time though,” Pam continued, turning to face the puppies. “These guys have been proving very popular since they turned up a few days ago.”
    ‘They’re all from the same litter?”
    “Oh yes. There were originally eight of them but three have already found homes.”
    Anna turned back to the puppies again. For the first time she read the words on the sign tacked to the front of the cage. The price – eighty dollars a puppy – seemed reasonably cheap, at least according to the furtive research she’d done on the computer at work. “Are they purebred Labradors?” she’d asked.
    “No, not at that price I’m afraid” Pam had shaken her head. “The mother is a champion purebred chocolate breeding dog who has produced some very fine litters. But she got a little, shall we say frisky , and made out with a dog of indiscriminate breed from the farm next door. Her owner was not impressed, let me tell you.”
    “Oh dear, no I bet he wasn’t.”
    “It’s not the first time he’s caught them together apparently, but it’s the first litter they’ve produced. Says he’s tried all sorts to keep them apart, from barbed wire fences – bit over the top, if you ask me – to keeping her on a permanent chain. Somehow they keep getting to each other.”
    “Sounds as if they have a romantic relationship,” Anna mused.
    “That’s what I said to him, a modern day Romeo and Juliet, albeit canine. Star crossed lovers. He didn’t find it as amusing as I did,” Pam chuckled.
    “Well they’re very cute regardless of their parentage. I’m sure you won’t have much trouble finding homes for the rest.”
    “Are you interested in adopting one?”
    “I was,” Anna had admitted. “But now I’m wondering if it would really be fair.”
    “Fair?”
    “I work,” Anna elaborated, “full time, five days a week. I do have a nice yard but it’s not big by any means. These little guys look like they need a bit of exercise.” They both observed the puppies wrestling energetically.
    Pam nodded. “They sure do, otherwise they’ll start getting up to mischief. A walk