Auntie, who is a dog trainer, thinks Clifford needs to learn obedience, but to Emily Elizabeth the big red dog is perfect already.

The overweight and unathletic son of a famous former football star discovers that his equally fat and lazy dog is unexpectedly--and obsessively--interested in competing in dog agility contests.

Hadley is an angry girl: angry at her mother for embezzling money, angry at her estranged older sister, Beth, whom she has to live with while her mother is in jail, angry at having to move to Kentucky away from her friends, and angry at the world because she has retinitis pigmentosa and is slowly going blind; but then she meets Lila, a rescued pit bull who has not responded to anyone else--so if Hadley can train Lila, maybe the dog can get adopted...

It is Pig the Pug versus obedience school in this rhyming story of a dog's rebellion and downfall.