Free Lost & Found by Jacqueline Sheehan

wouldn’t fall, but she did want Tess to stay a little longer. Something about her felt good.
    Rocky and Tess put on their coats and coaxed the big dog outside. The wind came in surges, just like the surf of the ocean. The dog gratefully peed, wisely not trying to lift a hind leg, but squatting like a puppy. She was called into service to help with the black dog when Rocky brought him home. The sight of the wound on his shoulder made Tess wince and imagine the blasts of red and orange that the dog had endured before Rocky had found him.
    “You can’t keep calling him Black Dog. That’s like calling someone Furrowed Brow or Capped Tooth,” said Tess as she and Rocky sat once again in the dog warden’s kitchen.
    Rocky reached over and patted the dog. “Somewhere that dog has an owner and he has a name. I just can’t change his name. That’s horrible to think about, being hurt and lost and no one knows your name and suddenly you are called Roberta or Ethel,” said Rocky.
    “No one is called Ethel anymore. I suspect there is no danger there.” The wind swooped down on the house, seeming to come straight down in a vertical stab from the sky rather than across the ocean.
    “I want to wait. I’ve got calls in to the animal shelters and dog wardens on the mainland. I called in an ad to the newspaper. I already know that he doesn’t belong to anyone on the island. And this dog had no computer chip on the back of his neck.”
    “Good for you,” said Tess to the dog. “I don’t plan on getting a chip either. He needs a strong name, one with deep, mellow tones to match his voice. And a name with an eccentric sense of dignity. He is one of the most dignified dogs I have ever seen. He looks like an ambassador. Who knows, we might come up with his real name.” Tess squatted downby the dog and looked into his dark eyes. “Lloyd. Lloyd!” she said. The dog lifted one ear up.
    “That could make him seem like a criminal. Don’t people named Lloyd end up robbing banks?”
    “No, that’s Wayne and only when it’s the middle name,” said Tess.
    As a temporary name, they decided it would do.
     
    It was bad enough that the dog was injured and was now recovering from surgery, but something else was really wrong with him, something that Rocky had seen in his eyes on the day she found him. He had lost someone and it was horrible for the dog. Rocky knew that food, a warm bed, lots of water, and encouraging words would not be enough. He longed for someone.
    She tried to picture what might have happened, how a big dog like this would have gotten separated from his owner and then shot with an arrow. Maybe it was the owner who hurt him, a deranged, despicable person, the kind of person one reads about in the grocery store tabloids. But no, this dog would be different if that was the case, he’d be shy, passive, hide his tail between his legs. Or he would be aggressive and in a state of constant vigilance. That wasn’t it. Maybe someone stole him from his really loving owner who was grievously worried and had put up lost-dog posters in the hometown of someplace like Oklahoma.
    After Tess reluctantly left, Rocky squatted by the Lab. “I’d sure like to hear your story.”

Chapter 7
    No one on the island, except for Isaiah, knew she was a psychologist. Not that being a psychologist was so extraordinary, but it was what she had been and now she was nothing that she had been before. Here, the work was cleaner. Relocate the raccoons, the skunks. Capture dogs abandoned by the summer people, the new litters of kittens destined to become feral. Pick up the dead seagulls. Report on beach erosion. The beach erosion part was extra, not a part of her original job description, and the first time that she gave Isaiah a report on changes along the beach after a storm, he told her that the animal warden’s job had obviously expanded.
    “Don’t go writing yourself a new job description. All we’re paying you for is animal control,” said