The Doberman was clearly food aggressive, and that worried Leaf enough to write a red warning text in the whiteboard attached to the door of the kennel he put her in.
THE NEXTday, he and Chay worked with the puppies and Husky, letting him play with them in the large fenced yard behind the kennels.
“He’s great with them,” Chay said, as Husky tirelessly corrected wrong behavior from the young dogs.
“Yeah, he’s learned from the best. My pit bull, Grace, she’s a multitool of a dog.”
“She getting old?”
“Yeah, but she needed to stay home for another reason this time,” Leaf said, smiling wistfully.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of my partners found a kitten a while back. She’s been mommying the cat, and now he’s old enough to be castrated and I didn’t want to leave him without his momma for that, you know?” Leaf scratched the back of his neck, knowing how ridiculous his statement might sound to most people.
Chay was quiet for a while. Then she said, “First of all, one of your partners? You’re poly? And secondly, you’re a good guy, Leaf DeWitt.”
Leaf ducked his head and grinned a bit. “Thanks. And yeah, we have a poly relationship going on. We found a third some months back, quite by chance, really. We’re pretty damn happy.” He couldn’t help but grin as he lifted his right hand to show her the ring with the three puzzle pieces on it.
“Congrats, man. My last girlfriend walked when I told her I was going to expand the kennels next year,” she said and grinned, but he could see she was still hurting.
“Not everyone gets the lifestyle.”
“From what I hear, you’ve been home a lot lately. Not taking jobs?” She pointed at some benches, and they went to sit down.
“Yeah. Lately it just doesn’t feel right to be away. I’ve been thinking about something like this, actually.” He gestured behind himself at the kennels. “A training center of sorts.”
“You have the space?”
“Not at the current house, no. That’s the problem, really.”
“Talk to your partners? See if they’d be willing to move. Unless it’s a commute thing, you know?”
“Dev works at home. Seth’s taking a sabbatical, so he’s at home right now too.”
Chay hummed, then leaned down to scratch one of the pit bulls behind a floppy, blessedly uncropped ear.
“Talk to them? That’s all the relationship advice I have when it comes to this job and mixing it with family. I mean, I could’ve probably not sprung the expansion on Mira like I did, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that when I get home, I think.”
He looked at the time and realized it was around when the guys would be getting home from Weasley’s operation. Alex rarely kept cats or dogs at the clinic if their owners knew what to do with them and lived close, so he expected them to get to take the cat home afterward.
As if on cue, his cell rang in his hand.
“Hey, Seth.” He smiled into the phone, but immediately sensed something was wrong.
“Hey, honey. Uh… we have a bit of a situation here.”
“What’s wrong?” Leaf got to his feet and paced across the fenced area, already forming horror scenarios in his head.
“Weasley had a reaction to the anesthesia. He almost didn’t make it, Leaf.” The way Seth sobbed at the end made Leaf squeeze the phone hard enough for the battered case to creak.
“How’s Dev?”
“Not good. I had to take him home almost by force, and he’s wrapped in a blanket in our bed with Grace halfway on top of him and Missy behind him.”
Leaf could hear from Seth’s tone that it was more than “not good,” but he chose not to call Seth out on it. “How’s Weasley?” he asked instead.
