First thing: a lot of your problems will be helped by hooking up an external mouse on your laptop. I can't play without one. Steal one from a family member if you must: puppies need you to rescue them!

Riding Barbie's bike is done using arrow keys. Your best bet is to hold down forward arrow and bump the side arrows for minor course corrections. Backwards arrow to back up when you crash.

Read "lost puppy" signs by getting off your bike. Dismount using ENTER key. Once you read the sign (on the wall of the construction site in my game) a new pink arrow will indicate the direction to go find puppy in. The construction site has various layers , so hit various layers if puppy is hard to find.

The arrows may seem to point to a spot where there is no puppy in sight. Cruise around in general to get Barbie situated in another area and see if the new arrow placement actually ends up pointing to a puppy. Keep cruising until you see a lit up puppy icon and walk to it (you must be off the bike to get the puppy). Hit ENTER when it says you can, and you will go through a sequence that has you pick up the puppy. In some cases, you need to coax puppy using the arrow key to indicate the item puppy wants.

Find your way back to the shelter. Remember if you aren't finding it one way, cruise around a different way and see if you're better situated to get home by following the arrow using the new way. Drive the bike into the front doors. The game shifts screens to puppy's check up. In the event of a glitch where you can't get in, dismount using ENTER key and hit enter once you are near the door.

Cleaning plaque is done by watching the 4 part light sequence, memorize it, and replay it when it shows the four arrow keys. Fixing cavities, hold ENTER until you are a line under the orange bar. If the moving arrow hits the orange bar, the cavity gets filled.

If you have to vaccinate, try hitting ENTER around the time the circle is farthest out, not when it's almost at the blue circle. I usually get my best gaming family member to do this, as I never guess it right. Aaaack!

In grooming, it is impossible to shampoo on my laptop unless I have an external mouse hooked to my laptop. Same with rinse and a few other operations. Nail cutting: all nails have a number, 1, 2, 3, 4. Memorize which one is which. Then the screen changes you have to clip the four nails in the order the numbers indicate. For example, if it reads 4, 3, 2, 1, then first you clip 4, then 3, then 2, then 1. You move on to paw two, do the same and puppy is clipped!

The basics of helping puppies to graduate to a new home is don't bother playing with them unless you want to for fun's sake. Just hit ENTER on the "i" circle and find out what that puppy's next task is to move towards graduation. Use the arrow key to move down the set of circles and see if puppy is too tired. If so, check the "i" circle on an energized puppy, hit ESC to get into the shelter office, hit right arrow repeatedly until you are at training, grooming, and do it's task. If all the puppies in kennel area (dog house area) are tired, either go to the gear icon and use arrow keys to go down and highlight an object to give puppy, like blanket, bone, food, water. Use right arrow to indicate that these items are free, hit enter, and puppy gets an item. This speeds up recovery from tiredness. Option 2 is to hit escape until you are in the shelter office. Bump arrow keys unil "Town Center" is on the sign and hit enter. Go rescue another puppy while the other ones rest up! Sometimes Barbie needs to ride her bike aimlessly until the phone rings with a good tip. Sometimes right shift key (the key to make capital letters) will take you to a map with some promising puppy spots.

Upon readiness for graduation, from the puppy's dog house, highlight the bottom circle under the "i" circle, hit enter. You go to the shelter phone and computer. Try to find the owner with the most compatible traits and send puppy to its new forever home.

Hopefully this helps new puppy rescuers get the basics if they are on a laptop or computer, since I didn't find too many helpers who could teach me these basics. Go and save those puppies!!