“Thank you,” Grace said. “My neighbour, Olive, said you were a good vet and that you’d look after us.”
His eyebrows wiggled at this. “Olive? Do you mean Olive Nimmo?”
Grace nodded. “She said you used to live on Foxglove Street. I live there too.”
“Olive’s quite a character,” Joe said with a grin.
“Actually, I only met her for the first time last night.” Grace summarised the circumstances of how they’d met. “It was really kind of her to help me and to bring some dog food for Stanley.”
“She’s a wonderful lady, for sure.” Joe’s gaze softened as he looked back at the dog. “Listen, I’m sure it will all go fine when you call up the dog warden service, but I should give you fair warning that they’re under a lot of pressure over there and are horribly understaffed. Don’t be surprised if they can’t collect the dog immediately. It might take them a few hours, at least, to get to you.”
That was what Grace had feared. Her expression must have betrayed her thoughts, because Joe quickly spoke again.
“The dog warden service will probably explain this to you when you ring them up,” he said. “But if you don’t want to be stuck with this little chap for too long, then you could choose to drive over to the boarding kennels and drop him off yourself. I doubt the warden will mind the helping hand, and if there areany issues, you can just give them our contact details here at the surgery and I’ll be happy to vouch for the fact that you came in here to have him checked over and scanned already. That might speed things along.”
“Thank you. Where did you say the boarding kennels are?”
Joe gave the address, which was much closer to Hamblehurst than the dog warden service.
“If we drive over there now,” Grace said to Ryan, “we could drop him off, deal with any paperwork, and I should hopefully make it to work on time.”
“Then let’s do that,” Ryan agreed.
“You’ll still have to speak to the dog warden service directly before you go to the boarding kennels, though,” Joe advised. “Strays need to be logged on the system and recorded with the warden before they’re handed over to the care of the boarding kennel staff. But as I said, if you have problems, I’m happy to help.”
“Thanks again, I appreciate it,” Grace said.
Back out in the reception area, Grace pulled a handful of coins from her purse and dropped them into the animal sanctuary charity tin that she’d noticed on the counter when they’d first arrived. She hadn’t really expected the vet to charge for checking over a stray dog that didn’t belong to her, but Joe Whitaker had been kind and helpful with his advice, so the least she could do was make a small donation to the animal charity supported by the practice.
She smiled when she saw Ryan also slipping a handful of coins into the charity tin, too.
They left the surgery and let Stanley detour to the grassy verge beside the car park for a sniff. Grace pulled out her phone and dialled the number for the dog warden service. The phone rang and rang for a long time before it was answered.
“Dog warden,” barked out a harassed voice on the other end.
“Um, hello, I’m calling about a stray dog…”
Grace relayed the story yet again about how she’d ended up with Stanley in her care. She’d barely got to the end of the explanation when the man on the phone interrupted.
“It’ll be three or four o’clock this afternoon at the earliest before I can get someone out to pick up the dog.”
“Yes, the vet I just spoke to said that might be the case. He said I could take the dog directly to the boarding kennels you use?”
“If it suits you, that’s probably the best option. I’ll need to take down some details first for our paperwork. The kennels we use are a private business that we have a contract with, and they’ll need information and authorisation from us before they’ll accept a stray directly from the public.”
While Grace answered the dog warden’s questions, she watched Stanley scampering around on the grassy verge, gleefully chasing after a crow that landed not far from where he was roaming and wagging his tail in delight when the bird lifted off into the sky with a grumpy croak. As the bird flapped up towards the tree branches above, Stanley turned to Ryan and grinned, his tongue lolling as he panted.
Grace knew it was silly to think that the dog wasgrinning. But there was just something about the scruffy terrier’s little face that made it impossible not to imagine him as doing just that—grinning in victory and delighting in having defeated the avian foe who had dared to wander into the grassy patch he was exploring.
After several minutes of answering the dog warden’s questions, the harassed man on the other end of the line confirmed he’d notify the boarding kennel that she was authorised to drop off the stray dog.
“What will happen to the dog next?” Grace asked.
“Well, whoever owns him has got seven days to claim him,” the warden explained. “As the vet you consulted can’t find a microchip on the animal, it means we don’t have much to go on. Once the dog is fully logged in our system here, we’ll get the boarding kennel staff to take a photo of him and send it to us, which we can use to check against any reports we’ve received lately about missing dogs. However, from the description you’ve given of him, he doesn’t sound like a match to any of our current open cases.”
“That’s a pity. I was hoping there was someone out there desperate to find him.”
“There might be. But if there is, I don’t think we know about them at the moment.”
