Free Sleeps with Dogs by Lindsey Grant Page A

self-conscious about talking to the dogs so freely. I mentally reviewed what I’d been saying, hoping none of it was too ridiculous. Or openly critical of Trevor or Susan. The dogs were clamoring at the back door and wouldn’t be ignored.
    â€œOkay, okay, out you go,” I said, sneaking a glance over myshoulder into the dimly lit room as I unlocked the back door and released the hounds.
    His room was spartan, almost alarmingly so. Mattress on the floor, thin blanket thrown aside, guitar leaning against the wall, plain curtains closed. And no Trevor in sight. I relaxed a little.
    Interesting that their dog got the feather bed and he had a bare mattress on the floor. Maybe his squatter aesthetic was by choice.
    His open door had distracted me from noticing the window to the right of the back door, and Ash’s only point of entry from the yard into the house. The window was broken—and had been for a while—so Susan or Trevor had propped two brooms in an X over the opening. Ash clearly figured out that he could knock these aside in order to climb through the window. I scoffed under my breath at the notion that broomsticks were sincerely intended to keep a wolf pup outside.
    This client—Susan and her son—were not clients of my own, but one of the many jobs I took on in a subcontracting capacity. Thus, I didn’t have a direct dialogue with them but deferred to the authority of the colleagues I was working for. I know, however, due to my coworkers and my near-constant communication about these dogs’ well-being, that they’d requested many times that Susan fix the window. Word was that Trevor was supposed to take care of it.
    I peeked my head through the window to check on the dogs and saw that there was also a chair adjacent to the open window, further enabling Ash’s access from the patio. My deep and heartfelt eye-rolling was interrupted by Ash starting to take the trademark squat. I caught on just as Maddie did, and I could see her anticipating the treats he was about to drop for her to gobble up.
    Even in my short career of dog walking and animal nannying, I’d already encountered many dogs with strange and sometimes dangerous eating habits. There was the American bulldog who atehis owners’ gym socks at every opportunity. Or the corgi who preferred his dry food with a helping of raw broccoli and cauliflower on top. I pet-sat one weekend for a Rottweiler that I dubbed the Mulcher. She had a penchant for eating the dried leaves that littered the back patio, where she spent her days. Then she’d come inside and leave a loose, detritus-filled dump on the carpet. This I cleaned up with the industrial-grade Hoover the owners helpfully left out for this very reason. In all of these instances, the owners warned me in advance of their pets’ unusual predilections, which helped enormously in both preventing a problem but also in understanding what the hell I was looking at when I showed up to take care of said pet and clean up his or her messes.
    In the instance of Penny, a newly adopted Lab-terrier mix puppy, I hadn’t gotten the benefit of full disclosure. I was running blind when, on one of our neighborhood walks, Penny started to drag her butt on the grass. Worms? I didn’t think so. I knew from her paperwork she’d been spayed and vaccinated and microchipped prior to adoption. Along with all of those procedures, deworming was standard. Yet another detail I’d gathered during my glory days at the pet store, since I was the one who administered the thick yellow tonic to the incoming animals, and then got to flush the worms down the industrial disposal when they came out the other end.
    Farther along on our walk, Penny started dragging again, and I noticed that something bright red was crowning beneath her perky tail. Blood? Intestines? I was freaking out. I got down on my hands and knees for a better look, as more and more red bloomed from her