Gunks Dad wears fluffy chicken slippers.  His sister, Fliss, is into weightlifting and his mum is searching for aliens. Gunk has Spot, his pet dog or is it? (A dog, that it.) Spot has a long neck, a flat tail and eats lettuce. Lots of it. Come to thnk of it, Spot is the silliest-looking dog Gunk has ever seen. Spot is scared of cats, too, and Fliss\'9291s motorbike. And then Spot starts to grow... Will Spot ever learn to bark? What strange secret does Pete, the girl next door, keep in her shed? Can Gunk teach Spot to like dog food? Or, will everyone in the world want to take Spot away when they find out that he isn't really a dog?