Free Sleeps with Dogs by Lindsey Grant Page B

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    Upon closer inspection, I could see that this was something inorganic. It had a little white tag on it, the tiny lettering hard to make out. I then did what one should never, ever do in this situation. Chalk it up to inexperience, but I bagged my hand, and I pulled.Lucky for me, the object had not become entangled in Penny’s innards, and it came out cleanly (a relative term) in my hand.
    JLo Intimates, the tag read. I was holding the owner’s undigested thong in my hand.
    I knew from my days at the pet store that there’s a technical term for Maddie’s own dietary anomaly. We had many an appalled dog-owner coming into the store to complain about this unattractive habit some dogs have of eating shit, a condition called coprophagia. We’d direct the customer to aisle two, top shelf, where they’d find tablets for this affliction. I can’t say how helpful the pills were in deterring their dogs, but they certainly didn’t work on our darling wolf mix. Bless her, this disgusting habit absolutely tore her already-sensitive stomach apart. Whether it was her own, or anyone else’s, she was indiscriminate in her partiality to poop. And if I didn’t move quickly, she was about to make a snack of Ash’s.
    â€œNo!” I shouted, leaping through the open door to place myself between Ash and Maddie. I didn’t have time to grab the shovel in my mad dash, so I collared Maddie and took her with me to collect the pooper-scooper. But first, I sat down on the patio chair and looked into her precious face.
    â€œHey, you know better! No, ma’am! No poop for you.” It was extremely hard to resist kissing her soft muzzle, but this was not a time for positive reinforcement. I was being as stern with her as I could manage, resisting her charms with all my might. She was a love, but this behavior had to stop.
    Maddie was on a very strict diet of boiled chicken and plain white rice, a combination that seemed to meet the three-prong requirements of going gentle on her stomach, providing protein for her wolf half, and satisfying the domesticated dog in her that could process carbs with alacrity. If she weren’t possessed of such a tendertummy, I feel sure she could have taken down all kinds of meat. I’d worked with a woman who regularly fed her German shepherd raw steaks and swore by the benefits for the dog, if not the expense, of such a high-quality regimen.
    This rice-and-chicken diet, while mostly successful in keeping Maddie fed and comfortable, her stools healthy and firm, was all-too-often interrupted. If not by the shit-eating she engaged in, then when, for example, she figured a way to get into Ash’s delectable puppy kibble. Or the food of Susan’s many cats, whose dishes sat out on the front patio, tempting Maddie every time she passed by.
    I kept a firm grip on Maddie’s collar, and we returned to Ash’s pile. She was way too fast for me, and there was no way I could let her go and clean up after him before she beat me to it. I quickly scooped up the offending mess and only released her collar once I’d dumped it into the trash can left out on the patio for just that purpose.
    Susan tried her very best. I knew that. She loved Maddie, and now Ash, fiercely. She closely followed the recommendations given by myself and the colleagues with whom I shared Maddie and Ash’s care. Except when she couldn’t. Susan worked irregular shifts and long hours, and she relied on Trevor to manage the house and the dogs in her frequent absences. This meant the fifty-pound bag of Ash’s food was often left out and open in the kitchen, where Maddie could dip her face right into it like a horse’s feed bag. Or else Ash was fed in plain view of an uncrated Maddie, setting him up to be body slammed aside by his much larger and hunger-motivated housemate.
    What seemed at first like carelessness or ineptitude on Trevor’s part was looking more and