Benny Neusner is a fourteen-year-old with learning disabilities who wants a dog. Bess Rutledge is a seventy-year-old recently retired Standard Poodle breeder who lets Benny have the pick of her last litter. Benny names his new puppy Breaker and sets out to train him to enter the Westminster Dog Show.
Almost Perfect contains examples of:
- Daddy Didn't Show: Benny lives with his dad and his stepmom Sonya. He badly misses his mom, but she's always missing their visits. Sometimes she has an excuse, like the sales clerk taking too long to check her credit card.
- Family Theme Naming: Bess sells Breaker's five littermates to Hannah Washington, another breeder, who gives at least three of them food-related names: Chicory, Licorice, and Crumpet.
- Groin Attack: During training, Breaker gets too excited and pounces on Benny's groin.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Bess's son David becomes attracted to Dr. Kate, the therapist at Benny's special school. When Bess meets Kate, she understands why, because both women have dedicated their lives to their work.Bess: My kennel, your school. The kind of women people don't think have real lives.
- Married to the Job: Bess admits that she's Maternally Challenged. When her son David was growing up, she spent more time breeding and showing dogs than she spent with him. He was so desperate for attention from her that he entered junior showmanship, despite having no interest in dog shows and hating every minute of it. He and Bess have a better relationship now that he's an adult.
- Meal Ticket: Benny's mom reads about his and Breaker's dog show successes in the paper and immediately sues for custody so she can get rich off him. She even suggests that he trade Breaker for a Pomeranian that would look better on TV. Benny has spent so much time wishing his mom would want him, but now that she does, he realizes that she is fundamentally self-interested and incapable of having the relationship with him that he wants.
- No Animals Allowed: Benny's dad and stepmom won't let him have a dog, and his dad particularly hates poodles, so Breaker lives with Bess, and Benny takes care of him and trains him after school.
- Only Mostly Dead: Breaker's mother Susie starts to give birth while outside. Breaker is born first, and lies in the snow for some time before David finds him and, thinking he's dead, wraps him in a newspaper and takes him inside. When David unwraps him, he and Bess are surprised to find that he's still breathing. Bess tucks him inside her shirt until he's warmed up.
- Starbucks Skin Scale: David compares Dr. Kate's skin to café au lait.
- Tomato Skunk Stink Cure: After Breaker has a run-in with a skunk, Bess and Benny wash him in tomato juice. Bess says that if it doesn't work, they'll have to shave him, but luckily for them it does.
- Tropey, Come Home: A man abducts Breaker's father McCreery from Bess's home. Benny has dreams about finding McCreery in a particular area of the forest, and he eventually does. McCreery is exhausted, with bloody sores on his foot pads. The thief is caught months later when he tries to steal from Hannah. He has a puppy mill and was trying to add quality to his stock.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Benny is convinced that if he and Breaker win Westminster, his mom will finally stop ignoring him. In the past he's come up with various other plans to win her approval, like getting a black belt in karate, winning a skateboard championship, and earning a basketball trophy, all of which ended when it became clear that Benny had no aptitude for any of those things.
