The Dearlys had just moved into their new home, Cherrytree Farm, and though less cramped, it was just as bustling with activity as it had been a month or so before, in their couple’s apartment.

   Then again, any place is bound to be teeming with life when you have not only barnyard animals, but dogs. Not just dogs, but Dalmatians.

  Not just one or two Dalmatians (although that is how it began) but a grand total of 101 Dalmatians!

   That’s right, ninety-eight puppies and two parents, Pongo and Perdita. These two had started out with just fifteen little ones of their own, but when a mad, evil woman called Cruella De Vil had stolen their puppies and imprisoned them in the London Countryside along with eighty two other pups to make her own Dalmatian fur coat, the loving pair had raced to their rescue, bringing all the youngsters home with them. Their dog loving pets, Anita and Roger, along with their Nanny, just couldn’t turn the pups away, and took them in on Christmas day.

   But the apartment had been far too small for the mass of spotted dogs that inhabited it, so the Dearlys had packed their things and moved to this little patch of heaven that pet Roger lovingly called their own “Dalmatian Plantation”.  He wrote songs for a living, and this song of the same name was his second smash hit, so feeding such a large family was not difficult.

   Now the pups played in the barnyard, in the pond, in the cow stables, in the chicken pen, and in the farm house, able to run as wild as they pleased without stepping on each other’s paws. The farm animals were rapidly getting used to being chased, chewed on, ran into and knocked over.

   On this bright sunny day, most of the pups were out cooling off in the pond or having a nap in the shade before lunch. Perdita was helping to keep the pups outside of the house while Anita arranged the various pots and pans, bowls and plates and any other vessels that could be used to hold the puppies’ Kanine Krunchies dog food on the kitchen floor.

   Pongo was up in the attic with pet Roger, taking a break from counting his many new children, which had become a habit of his, while the man practiced on the piano. Nanny was out doing chores like milking the cows and collecting eggs from the chickens. Right now she was in the middle of hanging laundry and trying to keep two girl puppies, Dotty and Specks from pulling the sheets off the clothesline and from Dipstick taking a nap in the laundry basket.

   In the barn where the pups slept in the hayloft at night, four puppies were hanging about behind the bags of horse feed. It was a favorite place of theirs, where they could take a break from the sea of spots that had become their brothers and sisters.

   One girl puppy was reading yesterday’s paper, laying on her belly deep in thought. She was pretty enough with rare liver brown spots and caramel eyes to match. A bigger female pup, with short legs and tail and a very round belly was snoring loudly on her back so that it was a wonder the liver Dalmatian could focus on her reading at all. This pup had very large black spots, really far too big for a Dalmatian, so that her coat pattern looked somewhat like a cow’s. Huddled in a corner, his eyes darting this way and that, was their brother, looking small and scared as usual, his tail thumping nervously. He had tiny black spots in patches on his belly and hips. This is why he was called Pox.

   “Chip, can you tell Bessie to quit s-snoring so loud?” he addressed the pup engrossed in her paper. “Sh-she might wake that old rooster, Crowley, and he-he’ll—”  He had a shaking, stuttering British accent.

   “Why can’t you do it, Pox?” clipped Chip, giving him a quick, annoyed sideways glance at being interrupted from her reading.

   “Well, b-because she might be angry with me, a-and besides she always wakes up for—for you…” whimpered Pox.

   Chip rolled her brown eyes and sighed dramatically, shaking her head up at the hayloft as if to say, Why me? And got up, stepping over to the stout snoring pup, Bessie.

   “Wake up, Cowgirl.” She grunted, prodding her sister with a paw.

   “Snnrk-zzznuh…huh, wah?” Bessie’s eyes came half open and she remained still on her back for a moment, blinking sleepily at the roof of the barn. “What, then? I’m up, I’m up, ay!” Her accent was like that of a lazy London cabby.

   She slid her eyes slowly over to Chip, who had turned around to go back to her paper. “What’s the big idea, eh, Chipper? You got somethin’ against a mid-afternoon nap, ay?”

   “Pox does.”, said Chipper, pointing her hind foot at her brother before lying on her newspaper again and ignoring the two.

   Bessie reluctantly rolled onto her belly and gave Pox a questioning look.

   “Heh, uh, I w-was afraid that, um…” All of a sudden rousing Bessie for the sake of telling her not to snore seemed like a poor reason. Pox smiled weakly at his sister, who was now giving him the dreaded raised eyebrow. Bessie didn’t speak much, and not a lot bothered or angered her at all. She was in fact, a rather level headed, calm and mature pup...when she was awake.

   But waking her up was one of the three things she didn’t like, the other two being doing anything athletic and not eating. And she was known to drool on the people who had offended her in her sleep.

   “W-well uh, I feared…that you’d miss lunch. It’s in half an hour.” He stammered quickly, tail daring to wag.

   Chip gave him a fast but distracted smile. Her brother could be clever when he pleased. At least someone else had a brain around here.

   Bessie lowered the terrible eyebrow. “Oh. Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it.” She stood up slowly, yawned, stretched and immediately sat down again. Standing up was the most exercise she got in a day. “What’s on the reading list today, Chip?” she grunted. Bessie was usually the only one out of her siblings that Chip spoke to the most. The bright liver Dalmatian was smart enough to know that Bessie was more clever than she looked, and she respected that.

   “ ‘Robbery in London. Twelve fur coats stolen from Moira’s Finery’s! Scotland Yard baffled!’” she read aloud. Her tail thumped the ground. It always did when Chip was interested in something.

   “How much would you like to bet it was Cruella?” asked a new voice.

   A dusty-coated Dalmatian pup with nicked ears and a tuft of scraggly hair on his head stood on one of the feed bags over them.

   “Ohhhhhhh!” moaned Pox and pressed his paws over his ears.

   Bessie blinked lethargically at Splatter. “Try not to mention the Mad Missus C., ay? You know how ‘e gets.” She glanced at Pox to point him out. Pointing with her paw would’ve been too much work.

   “Sorry,” said Splatter sympathetically. He hopped off the feed bag, lost his balance, and skidded off Chip’s newspaper. Graceful, he was not. The little dog tumbled into Pox.

   “Splatter!” cried Chip, “You’ve just ruined my—oh! Ohh, now it’s covered in mud!”

   “Sorry,” repeated Splatter, then again to his brother Pox. “Sorry!”

   “Oh…never mind. Where have you been? You’re covered in muck!” she asked. Chip had a tendency to point out Splatter’s dirtiness when she was miffed.

   “I was at the pond with Lucky.” Replied Splatter happily. He was always covered in something. Most of his spots were shaped like someone had taken a broken ink pen and squirted its contents out on the pup. There was a particularly huge splat spot on his right ear. His right hind paw was black like it had been dipped in an inkpot, with little spots shaped just like droplets around it. He was cute, but he wouldn’t win any dog shows.

   He loved to get dirty in just about anything, so it wasn’t surprising when Bessie raised her left eyebrow. The right eyebrow was for angry or sarcastic reactions, the left one was reserved for being surprised or disbelief or curiosity. “YOU went to the pond for a swim?!”

   “N-No way.” Pox grinned shyly.

   “Well, no, not for a swim exactly.” Splatter’s tail thumped in the shady dirt floor of the barn, adding a new layer of dust to his tail.

   Chip nosed her messy article. “He probably just wallowed in the mud on the banks.”

   “Ohhhhh…” Pox and Bessie said at once with a nod as if it all suddenly made sense.

   Splatter’s tail drummed faster. “You might’ve come for a while, it was absolutely champion! It was soft and cool and—”

   “And mixed with cow m’nure…” Bessie winked at Pox, who giggled.

   “What? Oh, yuck!” Now here was one thing Splatter wouldn’t roll in. He began sniffing his mucky paws carefully.

   Chip, only barely listening, began squinting at her paper and mouthing something, tentatively swiping at the muddy paw prints with her tail.

   “W-what?” asked Pox, lifting an ear.

   “Speak up then, eh Chips?” grunted  Bessie.

   “I was just thinking, you know. It’s not quite Cruella’s style to—” she was cut off from a yelp of fear from Pox, who was horridly afraid of Madame De Vil. “Ooh, sorry Pox!”

   “Well if not for ol’ skunk hair, who then?” asked Bessie, yawning lazily.

   “Probably the Baddun brothers, Horace and Jasper. She could’ve sent them.”

   Splatter brought his eyebrows together in confusion. “But I thought they hit the clink. You know, after Patch and Thunderbolt—”

   “Oh, that’s right!” Chip was nodding now. “And Cru—I mean, you know, SHE is locked up in the asylum since then too. So who--?”

   “Oy, you lot!” another Dalmatian head poked up from the other side of the horse feed. It was Scruff, their other brother, who had shaggy fur, dark spots under his eyes and a spike of hair sprouting up at the base of his skull, glared down at them. He sounded in a bad mood, but that was typical. Scruff usually didn’t hang around with his siblings during the day unless he wanted to poke fun at them, so all four of the puppies gave him their attention immediately.

   “Ol’ pet Anita’s got the grub out, mates. Better make quick, cuz the others already heard the dinner call!” with a wicked chuckle at their misfortune, their big brother raced to beat them to the farmhouse kitchen.

   Splatter and Chip leaped over the horse feed. Pox scrambled behind, and Bessie almost fell on her head trying to climb the bags herself.

   “Gruff gets on my nerves when he does that. You know, only drops in to tell us how we’re going to miss the food and then leaves us behind.” Muttered Chip as she and Splatter turned to help Pox heave Bessie up.

   “Well, he did tell us lunch was ready. He could’ve let us miss it entirely.” Splatter mused as he yanked Bessie to her feet by the collar.

   “Well, that is pretty decent for Gruff,” Agreed Bessie between huffs of breath as they ran out of the barn.

   When they came into the barnyard, they saw dozens of Dalmatian puppies stampeding—and causing a stampede in the cow pen—off towards the farmhouse across the path.

   Scruff was pushing and shoving rudely to the front of the pack, racing a three legged pup called Tripod. The two were in constant competition.

   “I hope T-Tripod beats him there!” Pox panted.

   “If Tripod had any wits about him at ALL, he’d ignore Scruff’s challenges altogether.” Snorted Chip huffily. “All brawn and not a shred of brains about them, the big bully!”

   Bessie was panting so much she might’ve been hyperventilating. “Huh-huh-huh….where’s…Splatter then, eh?” she gasped.

   Just as the three siblings were about to look around before joining in the mad dash for food, a loud braying came from around the barn.

   “Wahoo!” howled Splatter. He was seated on top of a hay cart being pulled by the farm’s donkey. The cart was going at top speed as the mule trotted towards the farm house. “Totally ripper!” he barked as the cart passed his siblings, who were staring dumbfounded. “Come along, we’ll get there in no time!”

   “Hurry up kids, I’ll give you a ride.” Drawled the old donkey.

   Chip charged after the cart. “Hurry, you two!” she leaped into the cart with ease.

   Bessie waddled as fast as her fat body could go, panting raggedly. “Wonderful, eh? More running.” She wheezed sarcastically. 

Pox ran behind reluctantly. He was skinny and built for running, with nice long legs, but the little pup was lagging back for some reason.

   “Come on, Poxy!” shouted Splatter. “We’ll miss lunch!”

   Pox panted, looking terrified. “I-I-I can’t do it!” he yelped.

   “Sure you can, Chickenpup!” scolded Chip. “Just jump!”

   “W-what if I fall?” he panted. Bessie was beginning to fall behind, and the donkey wasn’t stopping.

   “I’ll catch you, I promise!” barked Splatter, wagging his tail reassuringly. They were nearing the back of the sea of spots that were racing towards the house.

   Pox looked from the cart to the house frantically.

   “Pox!” Chip shouted. “If you don’t get your hindquarters up here NOW, I’m going to pull them off when we reach the house. Do you hear me? You’ll be a Dalmatian with no spots, just a pink, naked tail end, and everyone will call you Shiny Hiney. Understand?!”

   Pox’s eyes stretched wide. Bessie wasn’t too exhausted to lift her left eyebrow. Even Splatter stared at Chip.

  Pox jumped. Splatter grabbed his blue collar to give him an extra boost and they tumbled to the back of the cart. Bessie panted. “I ain’t gonna make it.”

   Chip gave her the skunk eye. Bessie blinked. “On second thought, get ready to catch me!”

   Bessie leaped. Her front paws barely tapped the edge of the hay cart. She would’ve fallen back, but her siblings caught her by the collar as well, and though it took all three of them to pull her up, she made it.

   As they lay in a heap on the bottom of the cart, Bessie groaned. “Next time, Splats, let us get in the cart afore you get it movin’, ay?”

   They got up and put their paws on the edge of the cart to enjoy their triumph. (All except Bessie, who lay panting and wheezing and swearing off exercise forever.

    Puppies began yelping and scrambling out of the donkey’s way, or slowing down and staring in amazement or jealousy as they rode to the head of the pack.

   “Out of the way!” shouted Splatter, laughing.

   “Coming through, you lot!” added Chip, looking like a war princess on her chariot.

   “Oy!” shouted a voice to their left.

   Pox looked up from his spot at that side of the cart. “It’s Scruff!”

   The other two came over to that side and looked down on their brother, who was still running and trying to keep up with them. Tripod was right behind him. “Let me up, you blokes!”

   The three looked at each other. Chip smiled down at him. “What’s the magic word, Gruff?”

   Scruff panted and struggled to keep pace. “Oh come on, chums, aren’t I—”

   “Better say ‘please’, Scruff.” Splatter gave him a sympathetic but unwavering look.

  Tripod suddenly put on a burst of speed and came neck-and-neck with Scruff.

   Scruff panted, tiring, and shouted, “All right, okay! P-Please can I come up?!”

   “Jump aboard, Gruffy!” winked Chip. Scruff jumped. He hadn’t gotten as high as Pox, but he was higher than Bessie and less heavy, so his littermates easily got him into the cart.

  The donkey stopped. “Alright then, ev’rybody off then, puppies.”

   “Thanks, Jessie,” said Splatter. The others muttered their thanks as well, except for Scruff.

   “Don’t mention it. I reckon ev’ry spotty pup in this brood’ll want a ride next time, so consider this cab out of business! I’m no carrying service.” She brayed with a decisive stamp of her hoof.

  The four of them hurried inside ahead of the other pups.