She shook her head. “We’ve never had a problem at all. People leave them here. They don’t steal them. There was an issue on the road that day, and I wondered if the dog had somehow got involved in that, but I don’t know how she would have.”
“What issue?”
“A car accident out front here. A couple bumpers banged up. I know the cops were here to talk to the people involved. The dog would have been visible from that run on the side, but there wasn’t any reason for the dog to have tried to get away.”
“Could I possibly see the run, so I have a good idea of what the dog was up against?”
She hesitated and then gave a clipped nod. “I’ll sure be glad when this is over with,” she said. “We don’t have any failures around here. And to know that it was a dog like this, with the government involved, it’ll probably never end,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a shame because it puts a smear on our spotless record.”
He waited with his grandfather beside him as she had to answer the phone, then dealt with a cat in a cage on her desk. When that was finally done, he’d had a chance to check out the very simple front reception area, realizing that, while not a whole lot of money was spent on the place, it appeared to be sound and well cared for.
She opened the double doors and led them into the back, past a bunch of cages with small animals inside and a lot of empty cages.
“Thankfully you don’t appear to have a full house right now,” he commented.
“We hate being full,” she said. “We’re constantly doing drives to raise money for looking after the animals, but, more than that, we’re always looking for people to take the animals home and to get them out of these cages. It’s not a good way for any of them to live.”
His grandfather looked at some of them and shook his head. “It doesn’t look like much fun for anybody,” he said sadly.
“If you see someone you want to join your family,” she said with a bright smile, “just let me know.”
He shook his head. “Not without the wife’s permission. That wouldn’t go well at all.”
“Bring her back with you then,” the woman encouraged.
As for Greyson, he let the conversation go back and forth. He doubted his grandfather wanted a pet to look after at this stage of his life, but Greyson had been wrong before. As his grandfather passed a basset hound lying all alone in a cage, his footsteps slowed. He crouched and reached out a few fingers toward him. The dog stretched forward and sniffed, then got the most woe-be-gone look in his eyes. Knowing that his grandfather was already getting quite hooked, Greyson turned to the woman, who was still walking away. “What’s the story with the basset hound?”
“His owner died,” she said, “and the family surrendered the animal.” She frowned. “He really needs a quiet home with somebody to love him because he not only needs a good home, but he’s grieving too.”
Greyson’s grandfather straightened up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and determinedly turned away, but his gaze kept going back to the dog behind them. The dog stared out at them as they walked away. The woman led them to the rear door. Greyson stepped through to a large gate and then went out to the dog run. A walkway was between two of the runs, and then another walkway between two other runs.
“She was on the outside run,” she said, pointing to the left.
“Any reason for that?”
She shook her head. “It was random. Completely random. Well, not really random, I guess. We put her in the largest of the runs. She was a big dog and had been cooped up in a crate on a plane for who knows how long. We just thought it would give her the best chance of easing up from a stressful day.”
That made sense to him, and he appreciated the thought. He crossed into the dog run and walked up and down, looking for any sign of anything. He stopped when he saw hair on the top of one of the wires. He pulled out his phone and quickly took an image of it.
“What are you looking at?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just hair,” he said, “caught on the top of the fence here.”
“That could have been there forever,” she protested.
He gave her a sideways look. “Maybe,” he said, “it also could be from the K9 dog.” She didn’t say anything more. He walked back a little bit and checked out the ground. “Thank you for letting me see this.” He took a few more photos of the area from inside the cage, realizing he could see a little bit of the street and a bit of the forested area nearby. And, with the receptionist at his side, he slowly walked back through the building toward the front of the place. They found his grandfather crouching in front of the basset hound again.
The woman stepped forward. “He really would appreciate a good home,” she said. “He’s really depressed.”
“How long has he been here?”
She hesitated. “Two weeks. Normally we can’t keep them past ten days.”
Grandfather looked at her in horror. Then at Greyson, as if asking what he should do.
“You could always call Grandma and see what she says.”
“Or …” and his grandfather fell silent.
But Greyson knew exactly what he’d started to say. “Or you could take him home, knowing she will fall in love with him, the same way you just did.”
Grandfather winced. “I do miss our dogs,” he said.
“I’m sure you do. Is there any place to walk?”
He nodded. “I walk the trails. Miles and miles of them every day,” he said. “And I’m always alone now.”
At that, the woman reached down and opened the cage, letting the dog out to say hi. And, sure enough, he headed right for Grandpa, the connection already forming. Grandpa gently rubbed the dog’s long ears. “How old is he?”
“The best we can tell is about five,” she said.
Grandfather nodded. “What is his name?”
“Leo.”
He chuckled at that. “Well, that makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. “What kind of fees are we talking about?”
She hesitated. Greyson looked at her, then at his grandfather, and said, “Why don’t you let me cover that for you? It will be a gift for letting me stay with you.”
Grandpa looked at him and smirked. “If you think your grandma will let you get away with that, you’re wrong, son.”
“We can hope though,” he said, laughing.
“Well, it might make things easier.”
Decision made, Greyson went out to the front and took care of the paperwork, while his grandfather and Leo got to know each other. And when Leo was allowed in the front area and led out to the truck, it seemed the dog had just been given a priceless gift. And it was true. The dog had just gotten a loving home with two people who would spoil him rotten, and what could be better than that? Leo was getting a new life, and, considering what the woman had said about not keeping them past ten days, Greyson figured that Leo had well and truly been given the gift of a second life—literally.
As they got to the truck, his grandfather looked down at Leo and over at Greyson. “I don’t have much room in here.”
“I’ll hold him,” Greyson said, and that’s what they did. His grandfather hopped into the driver’s side, and Greyson picked up the big basset and, holding him in his arms, managed to get himself into the front of the truck and buckled the seat belt around the two of them.