Snowhook by Jo Storm

Hannah and her dad untied Nook and Rudy and tied them to the bumper of the SUV so they could work on the doghouses. They nailed a piece of tarpaper over the hole in the roof of Rudy’s doghouse and poured cold tar on it — which didn’t really pour so much as glop and glump onto the wet shingles.

Nook’s doghouse was in worse shape. “Held together with spit and duct tape,” said her dad. He looked at the two doghouses. The sides of Nook’s kennel were scratched and splintered from her chain rubbing against it and from animals nesting in it during the spring, before they arrived for their summer vacation. “I guess we have our summer cut out for us, kiddo. Time for some new doghouses.” He knelt in the snow and began testing the other parts of the structure.

Now was her chance. Hannah took a deep breath. “Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“I want to go to camp this year.”

He looked confused. “We’re at camp.”

Hannah shook her head. “No, like a real camp. Like, with other kids.” She had thought about this for three months. She took another deep breath. “There’s one called Tabigon, in Temagami. They have leadership courses,” she offered, hoping it sounded adult and mature.

Temagami was pretty close to Timmins, only a couple of hours away. It took fourteen hours to get from their house in Toronto to the cabin in Timmins, so compared to that, it was very close. This was the sneaky part of the plan. Hannah’s best friend, Lindsay, went to a sports camp, but it was many hours south, in Muskoka. They had their own lake and sailboats and jet skis and three tennis courts, including an inside one. They had boys and horses. They went rock climbing and kayaking. They had everything. Everything.

If she could just get them to let her go to any camp, she and Lindsay figured they could get her parents to agree to Lindsay’s camp later. First they just had to get them to agree to let her go at all.

“What kind of camp is it?” asked her father.

Hannah tried not to yell with happiness that he hadn’t just said no right away. “It’s a sports camp. It’s good for you,” she said. She knew those were magic words. Good for you was always better than fun. “I looked it up. You get up early and go swimming in the lake and learn to rescue people in canoes.” This part would particularly interest her father. He had wanted to show them how to do that himself, but their pond was far too small and shallow. “They teach you how to survive in the bush, too.”

“You already know that,” he replied quickly.

“But it’s different, Dad. It’s with other kids. I could … I could maybe help, too.”

“Hunh.”

“And it’s pretty close. I could come here on weekends and stuff. It’s only for two weeks. It’s good for me. Please?”

“Sounds expensive.”

“Dad, I’ll give up my allowance forever if you let me go. I promise. I’ll never ask for anything, and I’ll help Kelli with her homework and walk the dogs every day.”

Her dad frowned. “Sweetie, you’re selling it a bit hard.”

She stopped talking and held her breath.

Her dad pushed his toque back and rubbed his forehead. “It’s not for a while, so let’s keep our minds on the task at hand. Go grab Nook and Rudy.” He paused and looked over at the two huskies. They saw him looking and began jumping and barking. “Poor guys. They think we’re going out. They just want to work. You know what? Let’s take them tomorrow instead of driving to Jeb’s. Make a day of it. I’ll ski and you can drive the sled. Tomorrow, guys!” he hollered as Hannah trudged over.

The dogs were pretty excited, now that her dad had talked to them. They also knew that whenever they were tied to anything other than their kennels, it meant they were about to run. They jumped and whined, and Hannah knew she’d have to take them over one at a time.

She decided to take Nook first. Nook was a true northern sled dog, with dense, thick fur that stood out all around her face like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Rudy was one of her pups and looked just like her, except his ruff was brown. When Hannah’s mom and dad had come back to Canada and decided to move to Toronto, her dad’s friend Pierre had offered to keep Nook for them. Pierre had thirty dogs — thirty! — and he competed in races all over North America, so Nook and Rudy stayed with him all year, except when the Williamses were at their camp.

“There’s my girl!” said Hannah’s dad as they approached. “Get up, Nook, there you go. Tomorrow, I promise.” After he’d clipped her collar to the kennel chain again, he ran his hands over her fur and lifted each foot to look closely at the pads. “Still got it after all these years, eh?” he said, and he scritched his fingers through her age-whitened ruff the way she liked.

Nook was a veteran, a dog who had run big races and traplines both. She had trained other dogs to be leaders and rebellious puppies to run in a team. She had once, Hannah’s dad said, gone after a black bear that got too friendly with his camping supplies. But she looked just like one of the house dogs as she sat on her haunches and thumped a foot on the ground in happy time to the scratching.

“Check Rudy’s front left foot, will you?” Hannah’s dad said.

Hannah started to object, then remembered her vow from only a few minutes ago. She went to Rudy and lifted his paw. She studied the heart-shaped pads carefully. One toe had a wide pink crevice running through it. Over that crevice was a sort of clear coating — the special glue that Pierre gave them to seal wounds on the feet to let them heal. Bandages would never work; they always fell off or got torn off by the dogs themselves, then the wounds would get wet and then become infected.

“It looks okay,” she said.

“Any pus?”

“No.”

If my friends heard this, they’d laugh until they peed themselves, thought Hannah.