Taking the exit, they turned the corner into another small suburban area. After driving through that, they came out on the other side to what looked like much more of a countryside community, more spacious. Up ahead was a rescue center sign. His grandfather parked in front of the building. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
The two men hopped out of the truck, and Greyson walked in to talk to the woman across the counter. She appeared to be the only one on staff, and she was looking a little harried.
She looked up, frowned, and asked, “May I help you?”
“I’m here on behalf of the War Dogs department,” he said. “I believe you were holding the dog that had been accidently shipped here, until transport details could be arranged to ship her back to Denver.”
“Right,” she said, shaking her head. “We haven’t had a dog lost or stolen in all our years, and now we’ve got a high-profile animal that we’re trying to help out in a spot, and, sure enough, it goes missing.”
“Goes missing?” Greyson pounced. “So was it stolen, did it jump out, did somebody accidentally leave a gate open? What happened?” He held up his hand at the woman’s affronted look. “Believe me. I’m not accusing anybody,” he said. “I’m here to do my best to track down the dog and to make sure it’s okay.”
Some of the stiffness left the woman’s shoulders. She nodded. “We don’t have a clue,” she said. “Nobody saw what happened. We had one dog in that run and one dog in the next one. Only the one was taken.”
“Okay,” he said, “that’s good to know. But no sign of the missing one?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing at all. And that was pretty frustrating too. We’re not in the business of losing dogs.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “So what can you tell me,” he said, “from start to finish.”
“Let’s see. The dog came crated and was delivered at four o’clock in the afternoon. We took it out into a run, gave it some food, water, and a bit of exercise. We were here through six o’clock. All the security was checked at the time. No, we don’t have cameras. We don’t have anything other than a basic alarm, and, no, there’s no alarm on the dog runs.”
“Right.” He stopped, turned, and looked around, noting a sleepy-town atmosphere to the place. “Did anybody know? Was there any fanfare, like media coverage or anything like that?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. No.”
“How was the dog? Socially?”
She looked at him, clearly puzzled.
“Was he aggressive or cranky?”
“She,” the woman said with emphasis, “was calm, patient, and well-behaved. She drank some water but then went and laid down in the run.”
“You didn’t have any trouble with her? She wasn’t difficult to approach?”
“No, not at all,” she said. “And I can see that may have been part of the problem. It looks like, you know, if somebody wanted to, they could have come up and spoken to her and even potentially stolen her.”
“Now this was a Malinois-shepherd cross,” he said, “so it looks like a fairly intimidating dog.”
“That was my concern going in,” she said. “I don’t know why anybody would want a dog like that, unless they wanted it for a watchdog or a guard dog.”
“It’s possible,” he said. “Do you ever get any theft or crime around here? Have you had any other animals stolen?”
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
