Gun Shy by Donna Ball Page A

Hero just stood there stoically, ignoring her. Then I let Cisco have a turn; he was far more interested in sniffing out the aroma of chicken and dressing that clung to my hair and my clothes than he was in the stranger in the play yard. After all, he had seen them come, and he had seen them go. The Australian shepherds did their best to entice Hero to play, leaping, twirling and play-bowing, but he just gave them a long-suffering look and lay down on the ground with his head on his paws.
    I had intended to keep the Lab in the boarding kennel, as was my usual custom with rescues, but something about his brokenhearted demeanor changed my mind. The other dogs obviously did not feel threatened by him, and I thought he could benefit by some hands-on interaction inside the house. So I dragged out another big wire crate and washed and sterilized another dog bowl.
    When Sonny came knocking at my door around six that evening, there were five, not four, dogs waiting to greet her. Some were better behaved than others.
    The happy chaos of welcoming a visitor began with Cisco spinning and play-bowing his greeting, Majesty barking, and the Aussies bouncing from sofa to chair to floor and back while awaiting their turn to be petted; Mystery, the border collie, who accompanied Sonny everywhere she went, playfully pawed and tugged the ears of each dog who crowded around Sonny. Sonny sank quickly into a chair by the door, her long silver braid swinging over her shoulder as she bent forward with outstretched arms to give each of my pushy pets the greeting they demanded. I let this go on for about ten seconds, because Sonny would have scolded me if I had not, and then sent each of the girls to their separate crates, where they found a peanut butter-stuffed rubber toy waiting for them. Cisco, who tended to panic in small enclosed spaces like dog crates, was sent to his rug in front of the hearth, while Mystery pranced around the room picking up toys and trying to tempt him to come play. Some people might have said that was unfair to Cisco, but I thought it was good for his self-control.
    Laughing, Sonny held up a bottle of wine to me. “My contribution to the meal. Maybe I should have brought dog biscuits.”
    In all this time, Hero, who had been lying quietly in his crate with the door open, had not moved or made a sound. As I took the wine and thanked her, Sonny noticed the newcomer. “Well,” she said, rising, “who is this?”
    Sonny was a tall, slim-built woman whose prematurely gray hair and porcelain skin gave her a kind of natural beauty that she never enhanced with makeup or artifice. She was probably in her fifties—only about fifteen years older than I was—but she suffered from a debilitating form of rheumatoid arthritis that sometimes was so severe it actually immobilized her. She had had a good summer and claimed a noticeable improvement in her symptoms since Mystery had come into her life. But I noticed tonight she had brought her cane and used it to balance herself as she stood. Immediately I felt a pang of chagrin for letting my dogs jump all over her.
    I said, “I’m calling him Hero. We don’t know his real name yet. He’s just visiting.”
    I would tell her the full story, of course. But, I admit, I wanted to get her initial reaction to the dog before I said anything more.
    She went over to the crate, and I thought she was going to bend down to pet him. It’s never a good idea to invade the personal space of a strange dog, and I started to say something to that effect, but I didn’t have to. She suddenly drew in her breath and straightened up, closing her eyes. I moved quickly toward her, thinking she was in pain, but she opened her eyes then and looked at me. She said, “What happened to this poor fellow?”
    I answered cautiously, “What do you mean?”
    She looked at the dog again. “Such despair,” she said softly. “Oh, you poor, poor thing.”
    I said, hesitantly, “I don’t suppose . . . I mean,