Hounds Abound (21 page)

The three of them left, and I walked Bella out to our cars.

“That was such a wonderful idea, Lauren,” she said. “Whatever their answer, I really thank you for coming up with it.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Anything to help animals. I’ve heard of shelters being run this way, although the trusts were established after the main people funding them had passed away. I just hope the Frankovicks are kind and smart enough to go for it.”

I was smiling almost the whole way back to HotRescues. Until I got a phone call from Carlie.

I answered on my car’s hands-free system. “Hi,” I said. “I may have another angle for you to toss into your show on Save’Em.”

“Great,” she said. “But … well, Lauren, we’ve got a problem. Your guy Pete from HotRescues just brought a dog who’d supposedly been an owner relinquishment to my clinic. But she was actually a dog we were supposed to be treating here at one of the Animal Services shelters. She was stolen this morning. And—Lauren, she most likely has parvo.”

Fortunately, I was close to HotRescues. Otherwise, I might have broken a lot of speed limits to get there.

I soon parked and sprinted inside. Nina was in the welcome area, as usual. Zoey wasn’t, but I heard her
woof
from the office. Good. Better that she was there than in the thick of things.

Instead of smiling a greeting, or even saying hi, Nina stood before I could start hammering her with questions. Her brown eyes were teary.

“I think I made a terrible mistake, Lauren,” she said. “I couldn’t help it, though. The puppy was so cute …”

“What happened?” I stayed as calm as possible while wanting to shake the truth out of her. Fast.

“This older man came here,” she said. “He had a puppy in his arms—looked like part Basset hound and maybe
some Lab. An adorable combination. He told me he had adopted the pup from a high-kill shelter a month ago, just before she was scheduled to be euthanized, but he had a family emergency and had to leave the area. He couldn’t take the dog. He said he knew this was a private shelter but seemed to know that we could take in owner relinquishments. If we couldn’t accept her, he’d have to take her back to a public shelter and couldn’t bear the thought of having her put down. Couldn’t we save her?”

“And you said yes?”

Nina nodded. “We filled out the paperwork. I looked her over, walked with her for a short while—but not long enough. The guy disappeared just about the time the puppy threw up.”

I know my eyes widened. “Any diarrhea?”

“Yes. Right afterward. Pete immediately took her to Carlie’s clinic. He just called a little while ago. It’s what I was afraid of.”

“I heard from Carlie,” I said. “It’s even worse than you thought.” I told her how Carlie had related that the dog was stolen from The Fittest Pet Veterinary Clinic just that morning.

“What the hell is going on, Lauren?” she asked as tears poured down her face.

“I don’t know,” I said grimly. “I’ll find out. But not right now.”

Grabbing all the cleaning equipment from the storage building at the rear of our original HotRescues property would usually have been Pete’s job, but I couldn’t wait till he got back.

Parvovirus is a highly contagious disease that can kill dogs, especially puppies. It’s one of several illnesses that shelter administrators are worried about occurring in their facilities. It’s often fatal. Vaccinations are available, but they don’t work well with younger dogs. The best thing is to keep all dogs away from contact with other canines with parvo—and any of their eliminations since the virus can survive for quite a while. Rushing this one to the vet had been the right thing to do.

I didn’t go to see Zoey yet. I wouldn’t, until everything else had been sterilized, and then I would clean my office.

All of Zoey’s shots were up to date. Of course. I wouldn’t have allowed otherwise. But I would still have Carlie check her out. Our residents here, too.

First, though, with the help of Ricki and several other volunteers, as well as Nina and even Angie Shayde, I gathered mops and towels and, most important, bleach and other cleaning liquids. We marched toward the front of our shelter to begin our cleaning foray. Nina showed me exactly where the relinquished pup had been—not in areas where any of our residents were, thank heavens.

Even so, I was glad we were always diligent about making sure our residents got all inoculations as soon as they arrived here, as long as they were old enough. Those we had only recently saved from the public shelter had already been to Carlie’s clinic and gotten their shots. They should be well protected against this horrible virus.

Most fortunate, as much as I enjoyed bringing puppies here, we currently had no dogs that were too young to have gotten their vaccines against parvo or other diseases.

Even so, I made sure that Angie looked everyone over—not
just the dogs, but any elimination they had deposited in their kennels, from either end.

Fortunately, none had vomited. Nor were there any signs of diarrhea.

I made sure that every place the ill pup could have been was scrubbed down and sanitized with lots of bleach and disinfectant. Then the entire cleaning crew sanitized ourselves, too, by spraying our shoes and using lots of antibacterial hand soap.

I knew we had done a good job of cleaning.

I just hoped that was enough.

“Yes, the poor dog’s still alive, even after all that,” Carlie told me. I’d phoned her from my office when our cleaning frenzy was done.

Zoey lay stretched out below my chair on the sterilized and gleaming tile floor. The rug that was usually under my desk was now in our washing machine, just in case.

I’d even had Margo, our new groomer, give Zoey a bath.

Yes, maybe that was preferential treatment, but our other dogs, too, would get baths as quickly as could be managed. Their kennel areas had already been cleaned. With their inoculations, I believed they would all be safe.

“Just alive, or likely to stay that way?” I cringed, waiting for her response. I hated the possibility that, after all this, the poor dog might not survive.

“Good chance she’ll be fine,” Carlie said.

“Nina said that the guy who left her here called her Lassie. Is that right? Did she come from the public shelter with that name?” I’m not a superstitious sort, but I didn’t
want to call her the same thing as that horrible dog thief had unless it was definitely what she would respond to. But I also didn’t want to continue calling her “the dog.” That was so cold and impersonal.

And if she healed, I would do all I could to bring her to HotRescues instead of sending her back to where she might wind up being euthanized despite her survival.

“Not Lassie,” Carlie said. “In fact … no, I’ve got her paperwork here, and the only name listed is ‘Female Dog.’ But I’ve started calling her Miracle.”

I rolled that around in my brain. It worked.

“Miracle it is.” I hated to put Carlie on the spot, but I had to ask her. “How was she stolen in the first place?”

“Unsure. She was one of several young dogs that Animal Services brought in because of a parvo outbreak, for extra care—and to get them away from the rest of their population. None of them had names, by the way. Maybe no one wanted to name them until it was clear they’d survive. Anyway, Miracle apparently had no symptoms then but had been housed with another young dog that was sick. I gather that she was taken from their van while the others were being brought inside our clinic.”

“That’s so strange … Well, how long will you need to keep her there?”

“Unknown, but I assume you’ll want to take her in at HotRescues when she’s recuperated.”

“Absolutely. As long as I can get the okay from Animal Services—and there’s no further possibility of contagion.”

“She’s in isolation now, but by the time I’ll be willing to let her go there’ll be no way she could pass this along.”

“Gotcha. And …”

“And?”

“Thanks, Carlie.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll pay.”

Of course HotRescues would pay. She knew that. She also knew that meant Dante DeFrancisco would underwrite it—at least whatever Carlie wasn’t able to collect from Animal Services. Even though Miracle had been stolen from outside Carlie’s clinic in the first place, she had been brought back there by HotRescues.

Still sitting at my desk, I called Dante on my BlackBerry to let him know what was going on here.

“Everyone there—dogs included—you’re all okay?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “And we worked hard to keep it that way.”

“No chance of the cats catching this?”

“We scrubbed the cat enclosures, too, just in case. But the feline parvovirus is different from canine, so I don’t think so.”

“Great. Like always, keep up the good work, Lauren.”

“I’m so sorry, Lauren,” Nina said for the millionth time. We were back in the welcome area. She looked stricken.

She had been the one to accept the owner relinquishment.

I always had final say over such things, and she knew it. But in this instance, as she described it, the adorable young dog was friendly and looked healthy.

And her life had been in imminent danger. That took precedence over everything.

“Don’t blame yourself, Nina. You did the right thing.”
With potentially disastrously wrong consequences, but she couldn’t have known that at the time. Her feeling guilty wouldn’t help the situation. And I didn’t really fault her. Not with a dog’s life at stake—one who had initially appeared to be fine except for having a monster of an apparent owner.

The guy might not have known Miracle was sick when he’d stolen her from Animal Services—but he’d taken her from outside a veterinary clinic. And then, instead of returning her there when he might have suspected that the poor thing was ill, he’d dropped her off here as a claimed owner relinquishment. Why?

“Here is all the information the guy gave me.” I’d already asked Nina to put together the relinquishment application and anything else that was pertinent to the situation.

I wanted to find the cruel jerk and give him a piece of my absolutely furious mind. Then I’d turn him over to Animal Services.

I sat at the table near the window, and Nina joined me. She handed me the paperwork he’d filled out. His handwriting was atrocious, but it appeared that his name was John Russell. He lived in Granada Hills, which was also our location at HotRescues.

I tried calling the phone number he had written down. It belonged to a restaurant in Sherman Oaks.

“Do a little Internet search for me, will you, Nina? I bet there are hundreds of John Russells, if that’s even his name. It’s so close to Jack Russell, like the terrier, that it could even be a joke. Let’s see if there’s one at the address he gave. And if there’s anything else you remember about him that might lead to figuring out who he is, let’s talk about it.”

First, though, I had her describe him.

He was a senior citizen who appeared as old as our volunteers Bev and Mamie, maybe older. He was stooped a bit, so his height wasn’t clear, but he had been strong enough to carry the puppy. A mixed Basset-Lab at that age wasn’t huge, but it was larger than a combo of toy breeds.

“He wore jeans, loafers, and a blue UCLA sweatshirt,” Nina continued. “They all looked large on him, like he’d bought them a size or two too big.”

“Or he’d shrunken after he bought them,” I said. “That sometimes happens with senior citizens.”

“Yes, but …” Nina’s voiced trailed off.

“But what?” I prompted.

She pushed her long brown hair back from her face in a gesture that suggested she was trying to wipe a cloud of haze away from her mind. “You know, I hadn’t really thought about it, but when I had Lassie—I mean Miracle—in my arms and John Russell walked out through the door”—she gestured toward the door that led to the parking lot—“he seemed to straighten a bit, like he was relieved of a burden. I noticed that since I thought he seemed just a bit too happy for having to leave a poor, sweet member of his family here, even one that had only been with him a short while.”

“We already know he’s a jerk,” I reminded her.

“But … well, he also seemed to walk faster. Like he was escaping, yes, but it was more than that. He’d seemed older, somehow, before that moment, but it was as if he’d shed years along with poor Miracle.”

Interesting. “Anything else you remember about him?”

“Well, there was something odd about his voice. It was
high, almost female, but I know that sometimes happens as people get older.”

“Okay, let’s both do a little Internet searching and see if we can find him. I’ll forward any pictures I find of likely candidates to you to look at. When you say he was a senior—”

“He had as many wrinkles as anyone I’ve ever seen,” she explained. “And he had no hair.”

Even more interesting.

I spent the next hour or so on my computer, comparing lots of John Russells and where they lived, their ages, their social networking—just in case, although if he really was older he might shy away from such things even more than I did.

No John Russell apparently lived at the address he’d given. I didn’t see one anywhere nearby, either.