Sensing his audience wasn’t impressed, Alec Tate’s bloodhound face reddened. His eyes flickered shiftily, as if he were trying to think of something to say to make the dog appear more attractive. Nat, who was not by nature an unreasonable person, tried to be fair. If you looked past the obvious odd parts — the crusty, sparse fur and the strong smell, which Nat imagined as squiggly stink lines rising upward from the strange-looking body like in a cartoon — it wasn’t that bad.

His mum, who was not usually keen on things that bite, seemed to have recovered well after seeing all those teeth in just the one mouth. She came out from behind the barn door, reached out, and gingerly patted the too-big head.

“Hello, boy,” she said softly.

Mr. Tate grinned for the first time, sensing a shift in opinion. When the sunlight hit his false teeth, the solar glare made black spots appear in front of Nat’s eyes.

Mick knelt down to make friends with the dog. As his lanky body folded up, his knobbly knees popped loudly. Nat’s grandfather was lofty and thin, and dressed in clothes you wouldn’t usually expect to see on a person of his years. He had eight silver earrings in his left ear and a shaved head, usually covered by a hat. Today, to mark the special occasion of dog buying, he wore his favorite: a green velvet pillbox with tiny mirrors embroidered on it. His lack of head hair was compensated for by a long, wispy beard, which he normally wore in a braid. On really special occasions he had been known to dye it purple, and it was at those times, much to Nat’s deep embarrassment, that his granddad could be found playing air guitar, or even worse, air fiddle.

“Is that mange?” Jude asked the farmer suspiciously, pointing to the crusty greenish patches that almost covered the dog’s entire body.

“Mange?” exclaimed Mr. Tate, clearly insulted. “‘Course it ain’t the mange! That’s only a bit of dung. Show me a dog that don’t like to have a roll in a cowpat now an’ then, and I’ll say it ain’t no proper dog!”

Jude snatched her hand away in horror, wiping it hastily on her jeans.

“Why is it, exactly, that you’re getting rid of him?” asked Mick.

“Er … he was the last in the litter,” replied Mr. Tate, avoiding Mick’s eyes.

Nat held out his hand to the dog, which until this moment had ignored him. It got up awkwardly and gave him a halfhearted lick, as though it thought it ought to make an effort.

“There you are — the boy’s bonded with him already!” exclaimed Mr. Tate, giving them the benefit of his false teeth again.

Jude still looked doubtful; she knew that Nat had his heart set on a puppy, not a fully grown dog like this malodorous mongrel.