A week before we were to go to Oak Cliff William began to us every morning and evening. We were rubbed all over with a cloth that was wet with something that smelled good and left our coats smooth and . We were brushed, too, and our claws were cut and our teeth were cleaned and he even washed our ears! I stood everything very well but that. I do hate to have my ears washed. Don’t you?  
As for that bare spot on the end of my tail, poor William worked and worked and fussed and fussed and worried and worried over that. “I’m thinking,” he told me once, “that it would be fine if you’d wag your tail hard when the judge is looking at you and maybe he won’t see where the hair’s off!” I suspected that William put some sort of medicine in our food those days. I couldn’t find it, but there was a little different taste to things. I think that is a very mean thing to do to a dog. Poor Freya had a hard time getting enough to eat that week, because William said she was a little too fat and so he only gave her about half what he usually did. Sometimes, if I wasn’t hungry and William wasn’t looking, I’d leave a little in my dish and let her finish it.
 
Of course all the attention we had took a lot of time and it was hard to stay quiet so long. But I went through with it as best I could because I knew that the nicer I looked at the show the more likely I was to get a pretty ribbon. The worst of it was that after William had us we were supposed to be very good and keep ourselves clean. That wasn’t much trouble for Freya. She liked being fussed over and I think she was glad of an excuse to be lazy and lie around in the sun and not go hunting. But it wasn’t so easy for me, and try as hard as I might I seemed to be always getting into scrapes. Like the time I caught the turtle.
 
William had just me all up until I felt much too clean for comfort and told me to be good and not get dirty. I really meant to obey him, but I didn’t think it was much fun to just lie around the stable and so I asked Freya to go for a run with me. She wouldn’t, though. She said William wouldn’t like it if she did. So I went off alone and wandered down into the meadow and chased for awhile. There isn’t much fun in that, though. They’re not good to eat when you catch them. So I went on down to the and presently I saw the funniest looking thing you can imagine. When I told Mother about it afterwards she said it was a turtle, but I didn’t know what it was then because I had never seen one before. It lived in a shell that was a sort of greenish-brown on top and yellow . There were two funny little paws on each side and a funny little tail behind and a much funnier little head in front, and it was crawling along very slowly toward the brook. I watched it a minute and then I ran up to it and barked. Then it did the queerest thing! Instead of barking back or saying “quack” like the ducks or “cluck” like the hens it just pulled itself inside that shell until there wasn’t anything in sight but the place it liv............