“Like dogfighting stuff?” Dev frowned.
“Yeah, or a puppy mill or sometimes a pet hoarder. In any of those cases, there are always dogs that need to be rehabilitated mentally as well as physically, and not all of them make it anyway,” Leaf said and sighed.
“You go in and help them reprogram the dogs into adoptable pets?” Dev peered at him through his fringe.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“That’s so awesome,” Dev said in a very honest tone, and squeezed Leaf’s hand.
They walked in silence for a while, just heading toward the river, keeping an eye on the ecstatic dogs that were running around them and the bushes along the way.
“She looks so young.” Leaf smiled at Grace, who really did seem younger there for some reason.
“She likes the great big outdoors, eh?”
“Yeah, she’s the pack leader after me, so when it’s just the three of them, she’s in charge, always. Now that I’m here with them, looking over them, she can relax. At home she keeps an eye on the other dogs and Seth at all times, even when I’m home.”
“You mean she thinks Seth is below her in the barking order?” Dev asked, sounding amused.
Leaf chuckled. “Yeah, she does think that. And I get it. She’s the oldest dog, and while she obeys Seth, I think she sort of… humors him, maybe?”
Devin snorted. He was about to say something when Missy came bouncing along the path to them and would’ve jumped on them both, but Dev beat her to it. “No, absolutely not,” he snapped firmly, yet kindly.
Leaf’s heart lurched pleasantly when the overly enthusiastic dog dropped on her butt to sit in front of Dev.
“Now that’s a good girl,” Dev cooed at her and leaned down to pet her, accepting a quick doggy kiss before sending her on her way. “Go on, then.”
She wriggled her short, stocky body around them, then dashed to look for her siblings.
“Did Seth tell you why she’s called Missy?” Leaf felt pleasantly surprised when Dev took his hand again.
“No. There’s a reason?” Dev looked curiously at Leaf.
“Yeah. See, she’s from a crappy shelter near Denver. We were driving past one day, on our way back from meeting some friends, and it was some sort of an open-doors thing at that place. Seth told me he wanted to stop by, that he felt like we should. This was a bit over a year ago now.”
“Uh-huh?” Dev’s gaze was still firm on him, and he’d stopped walking to concentrate on the story properly. If possible, it endeared him to Leaf even more.
“So, we park at the curb and go in, and it was….” Leaf sighed at the memory. “It wasn’t that they weren’t trying, you know? They were a kill-shelter that was trying their best to keep from killing any dogs unless absolutely necessary. They were full to the brim, struggling to get some dogs out to make room, not to have to euthanize any of them.”
“How did you end up taking Missy home?” Dev asked, his intense attention like a caress on Leaf’s skin.
“One of the owners recognized me from somewhere and wanted to ask about couple of dogs. See if they were ones I thought had a chance to be rehomed. I spent a moment with them and saw that with right retraining and rehab, they would be. I told him that, and he seemed both relieved and annoyed at the same time.”
“Because he would’ve had those dogs euthanized first?”
“Bingo. So suddenly Seth asks what the dogs in the blacklist were now. Like, who took these dogs’ spots. And he takes us to this quiet back room, as quiet as it got there, which wasn’t that quiet, and pointed us to this large crate. He says this one is on top of the list, that she came in a few days before. Scared of everything. Doesn’t handle people well at all.”
“Missy?” Dev’s tone was shocked, and it made Leaf smile.
“Yeah. She was maybe eight or nine months old, tops. A baby still by dog standards. She was malnourished and scared to death. She sort of zoned when she was scared, went still and signed out, that’s how the guy described it to us.”
“So, what happened?”
“Seth peeks into the crate, then at this clipboard on top and whirls around to the guy and shrieks at him, ‘You call her that? What the hell is wrong with you people?’ I could tell he was close to losing it. I’d never, ever seen him so pissed off. I calmed him down and went to look at the papers, and they’d fucking named her Misery.” The memory made him feel agitated even now.
“What the fuck?” Dev looked at him, clearly enraged for his new dog friend.
“Yeah, so the guy then makes some excuses that it was a joke and a volunteer was a Stephen King fan and so on. And Seth glares at him like he wants to murder the guy and just says, ‘We’re adopting her. Make sure the paperwork is ready in fifteen minutes, because that’s when we’re leaving with her.’”
