Dogtripping by David Rosenfelt

Author:David Rosenfelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Annie

I was in the San Fernando Valley to pick up a golden retriever at the West Valley animal shelter. Shelters knew us, since we were there all the time, and after some training they were semi-programmed to call us whenever a golden came in. It was hit or miss, but it improved gradually over time.

While I was there, a kennel worker named Denise called me over. I knew her only to nod hello, and I don’t think we’d ever had a conversation more substantive than discussing what a dog’s age might be or whether it had the mange.

We went into a back office, and within moments she was sobbing. At that moment I would have rather been on Pluto than in that office. Her sobbing caused me to feel sympathy, as much for me as for her.

Nevertheless, I asked her what was wrong. I don’t know if she heard the question, but it didn’t matter, because she was going to tell me anyway.

Once she composed herself, at least for the moment, she told me about Annie, a one-and-a-half-year-old shepherd/collie mix. Annie had come in seven weeks before, which surprised me, since dogs generally did not last nearly that long in that shelter if they weren’t adopted.

But there was a good reason that Annie had stayed alive. Annie had come in with a badly broken leg, which would under normal circumstances have ensured her quick demise. There was no way the shelter would have the inclination or the resources to have a vet fix the leg, since the injury would probably kill any chances she’d have of getting adopted. So, they would reason, why spend the money on a dog that would eventually be euthanized anyway?

But Denise fell in love with Annie, in a way that she said had never happened before. Shelter workers are generally caring people who like dogs as well as anyone else. I don’t know how they deal with watching what happens to so many of them, but I guess they just shut themselves off to it.

But Denise couldn’t shut Annie off.

In order to keep her alive, she started moving her around to different cages, fixing it so that each time, the record showed that she was a new dog, having just arrived. My guess is that the records system within the shelter is not without its flaws, and Denise used the inefficiency to put off Annie’s euthanasia.

She managed to do that for five weeks, at which point her bosses caught on, and the dog jig, as they say, was up. But Denise was not about to fail, and she took Annie out of the shelter and to a nearby vet.

But Denise had no money, and the vet was refusing to operate without getting paid, so Annie just sat there with her broken leg, in a cage, for going on two weeks. It was driving Denise crazy, and she had nowhere else to turn, so she was turning to us.

She knew we concentrated on golden retrievers and

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