Читать книгу Vets and pets: Jamie and the magic whistle - Helen Brain Nicky Webb Rico Schacherl - Страница 3

Ilona is a knitwit

School was over. Jamie wanted to say hello to her mother, vet Arabella Waine. But first she had to get past Arabella’s receptionist, Ilona.

“Get that goon out of my surgery,” bellowed Ilona as Jamie’s dog Fungi came bouncing in behind her, barking. “This is a vet practice, not a circus.”

Fungi jumped onto the waiting room bench and grabbed a bag of biltong from the treat stand.

“Out, OUT, OUT!” Ilona bellowed, smacking him with her knitting needle.

Jamie tried to grab her dog, but he rushed away into the garden, his tail wagging like a helicopter blade.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I’m still busy training him.”

“Hmmmmmfff,” snorted Ilona. “That mutt is untrainable. I can quite see why his previous owners got rid of him.”

Jamie felt her hackles rising. Poor Fungi had had a horrible start in life. She and her mother had been driving on the highway when they saw the tiny puppy being thrown out of the car in front of them. They had stopped and rescued him. Luckily he wasn’t injured.

“He should have been sent to the SPCA. I can’t imagine why your mother agreed to keep him,” Ilona said with her nose in the air.

I will be the Better Person, thought Jamie, remembering her beloved headmistress, Mrs Jones. I won’t lose my temper. I won’t tell her she looks like a sweaty walrus, just not as good looking.

It would still be a few minutes before her mother was finished with the last patient. She would have to think of something to talk about.

“What’s that hanging around your neck, Ilona?” she asked, pointing at the small silver tube hanging from a red cord.

“It’s Knight’s Magic Whistle,” said Ilona.

“What’s so magic about it?” asked Jamie.

Ilona huffed and plonked her knitting down on the desk. She was knitting a thick cable-knit sweater. It looked very hot and it smelt like dog. She was making it from the hair of her St Bernard, Justus.

“First and foremost,” Ilona said as though she was talking to a dim-witted three-year-old, “it was made by THE Dr Knight. You know … the famous TV vet? The one I used to work for?”

Jamie nodded. Of course she knew him. Ilona never stopped talking about him. Arabella hated him. She called him a “smug, self-satisfied windbag”.

“Well,” continued Ilona, patting the whistle fondly, “this is a training whistle that he made for my Justus. A dog can be trained to do ANYTHING with this whistle.”

Jamie’s face lit up. “Can I borrow it?” she asked. “For training Fungi?”

“Of course not,” snapped Ilona, spinning her knitting around to start a new row. “You’ll get spit in it. It will rust. And there are only two in the whole world.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Dr Knight’s very own invention. This is the prototype. He’s asked me to train Justus with it.” She beamed at the photo of her St Bernard puppy that stood in a silver frame on her desk. “If anything should happen to the whistle – well, I shudder to think about it!” and she pursed her lips tightly and said, “Now run along. We’re trying to get some work done here.”