Published by Barrington Stoke
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HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in 2024
Text © 2024 Helen Peters
Illustrations © 2024 Isobel Lundie
Cover design © 2024 HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
The moral right of Helen Peters and Isobel Lundie to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
ISBN 978-1-80090-256-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For the children of St Mark’s CE Primary School, Brighton, and their Secret Garden Library
CHAPTER 1
A Cosy Stable
In a warm, cosy stable, on a cold night, seven little puppies were born. Six were black and white like their mother, but the seventh was different. His fur was all white, and his mother called him Snowy. His brothers and sisters laughed at him. “You look just like a lamb,” they said. “But we’re sheepdogs, not sheep.” When the puppies played at being grown‑up dogs, they herded Snowy all over the yard as if he were a lamb.
“One day soon,” said their mother, “you will
all go to your own human families, who will love you, and feed you, and teach you to be sheepdogs.
“But you must remember that humans are not as clever as dogs. They can’t hear or smell very well, and they talk in words not barks and smells.
“Don’t get cross with them when they get things wrong, and keep telling them things until they understand what you mean.”
Every day, Bethan the farmers’ daughter came and sat in the stable with the puppies. She liked to play with the puppies and stroke them.
Snowy liked Bethan a lot, and he could always tell from Bethan’s smell and how she talked to him if she was happy or sad, calm or worried.
One evening, Snowy smelled something strange and new in the yard. His mum lifted her head, and she smelled it too. She gave a sharp bark and jumped over the half‑open stable door. Snowy heard her paws run across the concrete, then another bark, and loud squawks from the chickens.
A minute later, Snowy’s mum jumped back over the stable door. “Fox,” she said, and flopped down in the straw. “It wanted to kill a chicken. Foxes catch anything they can, sometimes even a young lamb. But remember this, puppies –foxes are afraid of us dogs. You’ll always be able to scare off a fox.”
One morning, when the puppies were two months old, Bethan came into the stable with her dad, Farmer Joe.
“We can only keep one sheepdog puppy, Bethan,” said her dad. “Which is it to be?”
Snowy looked at Bethan, and she smiled and picked him up. He wagged his tail as she gave him a cuddle.
“This
one,
of
course,”
she said, laying her cheek on his soft fur. “I’m
going to call him
Snowy.”
Her dad nodded. “He’s not a pet, remember,” he said. “You have to train him to be a sheepdog, or he’ll be no use on the farm.”
Snowy licked Bethan’s cheek. She smelled very happy indeed.