This is a young adult (teen fiction) book that my wife is trying to find. It had a little girl and an old woman on the cover. The old woman had a French bull dog called Mr. Kunyatta (I am not sure of the spelling of that name).
The genre of the book was possibly a mystery.
Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Leslie Blume? (It fits some of the parameters, but maybe not all…)
You got it! Thanks so much!