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Belanger’s dog, and the last time I saw him, he had mange and his hair was falling out.”
    “We’ll change the basset to an Irish setter,” Bruce said. “That way we can use Red.”
    “Andi won’t go for that,” Tim told him with certainty. He’d come to know his friend’s stubborn sister all too well when they’d worked together on the newspaper. “She’ll throw a fit if we don’t stick exactly to her story line.”
    “She’ll have to go along with it,” Bruce said. “She won’t have a choice. We don’t have a basset, so we’re going to have to use Red. In real life Red did get dognapped along with a bunch of other dogs. In her book Andi made him a basset, so now she can change him back again.”
    Andi and Debbie were seated at the kitchen table, preparing a list of dogs to invite to be cast members, when Bruce, with Tim trailing reluctantly behind him, announced his decision that Red was going to be Bobby.
    Tim’s prediction was accurate. Andi was outraged.
    “In my story Bobby is a basset — a
basset
!” she said vehemently. “Bruce, I told you that Bobby’s a basset! Let’s run an ad in the paper and see if we can find one.”
    “We can’t afford to run ads in the paper,” Bruce told her. “Besides, people who answer an ad would expect their bassets to be paid, and we don’t have the money to do that. And the rules of the contestsay this has to be based on
our
dog’s story. The star of the video has to belong to us.”
    “But Bobby is supposed to be old!” Andi argued. “That’s the whole point of my story. Red’s shiny and young-looking. He doesn’t fit the part.”
    “We can sprinkle him with cornstarch,” Bruce said. “That will make him gray.”
    “We could do the same thing with Bebe,” Andi said as a new idea occurred to her. “If Bobby can’t be a basset, then I want him to be a dachshund. Bebe belongs to us just as much as Red does. Why shouldn’t
she
win a chance to go to Hollywood and be famous?”
    “Bebe looks like a long fat worm,” Bruce said. “Bebe is not star material.”
    “She is!” Andi cried. “She’s brilliant and sensitive and talented!”
    Debbie said, “I’m the casting director, and I’m casting Bebe.”
    When Andi had insisted on Debbie’s being part of the project, Bruce had been afraid that exactly this sort of thing would happen. No matter what outrageous idea his sister came up with, Debbie would leap to her support.
    “There’s no way that Bebe can play that part,” hesaid firmly. “Bobby has to unlatch the gate to get out of his yard. He’ll also have to unlatch the door to the toolshed to let the other dogs escape. Bebe doesn’t know how to do that.”
    “She can learn!” Andi said. “I can teach her!”
    “There isn’t time to train her,” Bruce said. “It took me a month to teach Red Rover that trick. Besides, a dachshund’s too low to the ground to reach the latch. She’d hurt her back if she tried.”
    “Oh, all right,” Andi said ungraciously. “I suppose it will have to be Red. But I want you to get a lot of close-ups of Bebe so talent scouts will be enchanted by her. If Red goes to Hollywood, I want her to go, too.”
    “What about Bobby’s girlfriend, Juliet?” Debbie asked them. “The rules don’t say that you have to own the costar. Maybe we could use my dog, Lola. A Chinese crested hairless is so exotic.”
    Lola wasn’t really a Chinese crested hairless, but Debbie kept her shaved so she looked like one.
    “In my story, Juliet is a poodle,” Andi said. “I want to stick to the story as much as possible. We do know a poodle — Snowflake Swanson. She can be Bobby’s sweetheart.”
    “Do you think Mrs. Swanson will agree to that?” Tim asked doubtfully. “After all, Snowflake is a show dog. Mrs. Swanson might want to charge us for using her.”
    “Snowflake is a has-been,” Debbie said. “When I was doing undercover work for the gossip column, I learned that Snowflake hasn’t placed in