Duke was a German shepherd who’d washed out of police work for lacking the aggression: all the instincts, none of the bite. Next was Tova, a yellow lab, calm and dopey-looking, one of the permanent residents I used for therapy work and general sanity maintenance. A beagle named Frank who had been surrendered by an elderly woman who’d gone into assisted living and cried when she handed over the leash.
“Duke and Tova will probably be here permanently, but Frank’s placement is already lined up,” I said. “The original owner’s granddaughter is taking him. She just needed a few weeks to get her apartment approved for pets. So he’s temporary.”
“And the dogs that don’t have a plan coming in?”
“They stay until the right situation comes along. I don’t place animals in homes I’m not confident about. Sometimes that takes a while.”
“And you’re feeding all of them in the meantime.”
“I am.” I kept my voice light. “It’s fine. I have a system.”
The system was held together with stubbornness and a credit card that was two months from its limit, especially since our grant had fallen through a few months ago. But Logan didn’t need that information.
I showed him the feed room next. The laminated cards, the color-coded bins, the schedules posted on the wall in clear sheet protectors.
“The feeding system is nonnegotiable,” I said. “Every animal has specific dietary needs, and the cards tell you exactly what, how much, and when. If it’s not on the card, it doesn’t go in the bowl.”
“Understood.”
“I’m serious. Princess Whiskers up there on her throne? She only drinks filtered water. I know that sounds insane. It is insane. But she gets kidney infections from tap water, and the vet bills from the last one almost killed me, so she gets her Brita water and we don’t argue about it.”
“Filtered water. Got it.”
He didn’t even look like he thought it was the most insane thing he’d ever heard, so I took that as a win.
We walked out the back of the barn and into the open air. The paddocks spread out in front of us, rolling slightly towardthe tree line, the mountains beyond. Two horses stood at the far fence. Duchess, my bay mare, and Maverick, a retired police horse who’d come to me with a behavioral file thicker than a phone book and had since mellowed into the most unflappable animal I’d ever known.
“Forty acres, give or take,” I said. “Pastures, training areas, a few outbuildings. The north fence line is?—”
I stopped myself mid-sentence. I’d been about to rattle off the entire list. Every broken thing, every patch job, every temporary fix that had become permanent. Cataloging problems and pre-explaining them so he couldn’t form his own opinion first.
I took a breath. “Let me just show you.”
We walked the north fence line together. It was worse than I’d described at the coffee shop. The zip tie I’d joked about was real, and it was holding together a section that should have been replaced six months ago. Three posts had started leaning. The wire was slack enough in one stretch that a determined goat could walk right through it.
Logan stopped at the first leaning post and wrapped his hand around it. Rocked it gently. It moved about four inches in either direction.
“How deep are these set?”
“I don’t honestly know. They were here when I bought the property.”
“Probably eighteen inches, based on how much give this has.” He crouched and looked at the base where it met the ground. “Should be at least thirty for this soil. Do you have a post driver?”
“I have a manual one. It’s old, but it works.”
“What about an auger?”
“No.”
“Digging bar?”
“I have a regular shovel.”
He stood up and brushed dirt off his knee. “I can reset these with what you’ve got. It’ll just take longer. A ratchet winch would help for the wire tension.”
“I might have one in the equipment shed. I’ll check.”
He nodded and kept walking, stopping every few yards to test another post or run his hand along the wire, checking tension. He didn’t narrate what he was finding. He just looked, and every loose post and sagging wire felt like something I should have fixed six months ago.
