Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I looked at Holly and smiled, though it didn’t reach my eyes.
“Tell it to me straight,” I said, tearing the rawhide into strips. “Do you think he can get better? Do you think that he’ll ever get to the point where he can be around other people without attacking?”
She thought about that for a long moment before she said, “I think that he’s shown remarkable change in just a week. I think that, given enough time and incentive, he’ll learn to be more than okay with you. And probably Gentry. What I do not think he’ll ever be able to do is trust other people.”
My head ached.
“That’s fine and good for now, but he has to be able to go to the vet. And I have to be able to take him outside. He can’t stay cooped up in my trailer all day or he’ll go mad.”
“Gentry has a fenced-in yard, and a large house that you could take him,” Holly suggested. “I also think that this kennel he’s in isn’t the best thing after he’s been held in it as a punishment while he was at that dog fighting ring. I think that it would do him a world of good if he could go out and be in a space that wasn’t concrete floors and chain-link fence.”
That was the same thought I had.
Only, minus the bringing Gentry into it part.
My stomach was in knots as I walked closer to the kennel where Neo was staying in the very corner of the large room.
Neo looked up at me and stared.
He didn’t snarl, but he definitely wasn’t welcoming, either.
His tail didn’t thump in happiness once.
What I wouldn’t do to see his tail wag for me one more time.
“I would recommend a muzzle if you’re out in public,” Holly said. “They’re not always a bad thing. They can be both a comfort and a safeguard for others and Neo. He gets to be out of that kennel, but he also has to be safe. If he bites another person, Sage…”
I didn’t need to be told what would happen.
I knew.
“Get him outside, get him to go on walks. Hell, bring him to the search and rescue meeting to get him some socialization without the pressure,” she said. “You’re going to that, right?”
I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten roped into it.
One day I’d been talking with Mable, who’d been like a rock these last few days since we’d finally found Neo, and the next I was agreeing to join a search and rescue team.
Mable had convinced me by sharing that several of the women were going to join.
And since I was so desperate to make some friends here, I’d agreed. Even though I knew next to nothing about search and rescue.
“How do I get the muzzle on?” I wondered.
Without getting my hand bitten off for coming too close.
Though at this point, I had gotten close enough to pet him. I’d just given him the space that he so clearly wanted and hadn’t breached that particular act with him yet.
Holly was right, though.
He had made significant progress since he’d first been brought in a week ago.
Just not enough.
“Maybe I’ll try my place first,” I suggested.
“Don’t be surprised if he has trauma where that trailer is concerned,” she pointed out. “That’s where this all started for him. He was taken from your trailer.”
He was.
There was a man who was on Bear Pass city council who had admitted to taking the dog from my trailer. Apparently, the lock that I had on my door had been a universal RV one, and he’d been able to bypass the software to open it.
He’d taken Neo straight from my trailer while I’d been at work to his own. Where he’d then left with Neo in the back of his RV.
He’d taken four other dogs that day, and Koen, the RV park owner, had put up so much surveillance equipment afterward that it now felt like I lived in Fort Knox.
I pulled out my phone and texted Gentry.
Me:
There’s something I want to try.
Gentry answered within two minutes.
Gentry:
You’re not taking Neo home with you.
I rolled my eyes.
Me:
You can’t tell me what to do. Anyway, I might not be taking him to my place. I was thinking about taking him to yours.
Those three little dots appeared. And stayed for a solid five minutes before they disappeared.
No reply.
“He say no?” Holly guessed.
Before I could answer that, the door to the kennels opened and Gentry appeared in uniform.
My heart skipped a beat like it always did when I saw him.
It was weird.
Over the last few months, my pull to him had grown stronger. Darker and sharper.
I literally lived for the moments that I’d see him around town.
When he showed up at the ER when I was working, I literally couldn’t stand the attention that he got.