Nonstop Spaniels Part 1

Nonstop Spaniels.

Linda O. Johnston.

As always, I dedicate this story to my wonderful husband, Fred.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

As always with my Pet Rescue Mysteries, Nonstop Spaniels is completely fiction. It does, however, recognize something very real: NKLAa"No Kill Los Angeles. The mission of NKLA is to end the needless killing of healthy and treatable animals in L.A. city shelters. NKLA is an initiative of Best Friends Animal Society. I want to applaud the wonderful efforts the organization is making to educate people and stop unnecessary killing of adoptable pets. To donate or adopt, visit nkla.org! And the no-kill movement isn't only in L.A. Why not help to bring it to your area?

Chapter 1.

I stood smiling in the welcome area of my wonderful pet shelter, HotRescues, talking to a husband and wife who were eager to adopt Fluffarina, a cat. That's when Pete Engersol dashed down the hall from the entrance to the kennel area.

"Lauren, is Angie here? I looked around but couldn't find her."

Angie Shayde was our veterinary technician. She worked here pretty much full time, but I'd given her today off because of a family commitment.

"No. Why? Is something wrong?"

"Y-yes," he stuttered.

It took a lot to rattle our senior handyman. I immediately excused myself from the couple and ran over to my excellent a.s.sistant, who sat behind the leopard-veneer welcome desk working at her computer. "Nina, would you please help these nice people?" In other words, I had to get out of there.

She understood. "Of course, Lauren."

"And keep Zoey with you." Zoey was my adored Border collie/Australian shepherd mix who accompanied me everywhere. She'd been lying at my feet, and now, sensing my anxiety, she began pacing. Nina offered her a small treat to distract her.

"Now, what's going on?" I hurried to keep up with Pete's tall, lanky form.

"It's Shasta. She's got something stuck in her mouth and we can't get it out."

"I'll get her to Carlie's right awaya"a.s.suming there's enough time to take her to a vet?" I looked at him for an answer as we reached the door to the kennel area.

"Not sure," he said. "She's gagging, not choking. Buta""

"Lauren?" a familiar voice called from the hall we'd just left.

I smiled in relief. It was Ricki Robard, a longtime volunteer who was now in school to become a veterinary technician. She had been attending cla.s.ses long enough that maybe she could help.

"Nina said Pete was looking for Angie," Ricki said. The young African American woman wore a yellow HotRescues shirt that was obligatory for volunteers, and her long black hair was gathered in a clip at the back of her neck. "Is something wrong with one of the animals?"

"Shasta apparently has something caught in her throat."

"I'll get my bag and meet you in the kennel." She turned and sped toward the entrance.

I continued hurrying through the area where kennels lined both sides of a wide walkway, past our security building on the right, and toward the end of the row of enclosures. I didn't see any volunteers, and the medium to large dogs occupying the kennels we pa.s.sed barked and leaped as we went by.

"Last kennel on this side?" I asked Pete. That was where I'd last seen Shasta, although the kennel staff sometimes moved our residents around.

"Yes."

We soon got there, and I was glad to see Shasta wasn't alonea"not that I believed Pete would have left her without help. Two senior volunteers, Bev and Mamie, were with her. Mamie sat on the cement kennel floor with the spaniel cuddled on her lap, their hair nearly the same reddish shadea"although Shasta's was genuine.

Mamie's wizened hands stroked the dog's head, while Bev, sitting near them, cooed, "You'll be fine, little one. Just hang on."

I pulled open the gla.s.s door and darted inside, immediately kneeling beside the group. "How is she?" I asked Bev, whose face looked even more wrinkled than usual, out of concern.

"A little better than before. She was trying to spit whatever it is out and started gagging. We've got her quieted so she's not choking but I don't know how long we can keep her calm."

I scooted past Bev and looked at the dog. Her eyes were wide with fear, and her mouth hung open with drool oozing out. I gently put my hand beneath her muzzle and pulled up but couldn't see what was inside.

"Here," Ricki said from behind me. "Let me take a look."

I moved away, and so did Bev. Ricki held a moderate-sized bag that looked appropriate for a medical kit. She sat down facing Shasta and Mamie.

"Come here, sweetheart," she said gently. She pulled a flashlight from her bag and looked inside Shasta's mouth the way I had, only now, with the light shining on it, we could see something small and colorful and fluffya"part of a toy, most likely, that had gotten stuck.

She moved Shasta's muzzle around gently but firmly. "We can fix this," she soothed. "Lauren, would you please find my tweezers?" She continued to talk softly to Shasta as I yanked her bag toward where I still knelt, pulling things out and handing them to Mamie to hold. A stethoscope. A scalpel in a box. Then I pulled a plastic case out that held a couple of instrumentsa"including tweezers.

"Here." I placed them carefully into Ricki's right hand.

"Hold the flashlight, would you?" She handed it to me, and, as I shone the light inside the dog's mouth, I bit my lip and held my breath.

She had to work at it since the toy was wedged in. Shasta moved, too, but frail, aging Mamie managed to hold on, keeping the dog's head nearly still.

In about a minute, Ricki had removed the toy from Shasta's mouth. Still manipulating the tweezers, she dropped the offending item into my hand. It looked like part of a cat toy, a small stuffed mouse. How Shasta had gotten it was a mystery.

But what was important was that it was no longer stuck. Shasta would be finea"but to be sure, I would drive her right over to The Fittest Pet Veterinary Hospital, run by my closest friend, Dr. Carlie Stellan.

I thanked them all profusely, and Ricki most of all.

"I'm just glad I could help her, Lauren." She paused, and the look on her face suggested she had something on her mind. "I'll be here for a little while," she said. "I need to talk to you when you get back."

a a a My trip to Carlie's didn't take long. I left Shasta there to be checked again by a vet and watched overnight to make sure there were no bad aftereffects. But Carlie's initial exam didn't find anything that looked particularly worrisome.

"Your young vet tech student knows what she's doing," she'd said.

"I'm glad," I'd said in relief. "Anything about this that could go on your show? There's some irony here. We rescued Shasta only a couple of weeks ago from a public shelter, just before she was about to be put down. It would have been terrible if she'd died anywaya"at HotRescues, a no-kill shelter."

"I'll think about it." Carlie was an attractive and poised animal lover and used it to her advantage on her weekly television show, Pet Fitness, on the Longevity Vision Channel.

Me? I'm Lauren Vancouver, mid-forties, with my dark hair kept short so it doesn't get in my way as I save animals. I am decent-looking, but I'm not really into my appearance.

After my visit to Carlie's, I parked in the HotRescues lot outside our welcome building and went inside.

Nina was talking to another family who was filling out an adoption application. The parents sat at the table under the window, and two kids, a boy and girl of around ten and twelve, sat on the floor petting Zoey.

"Hi," I said brightly, then looked at Nina inquisitively.

"They're hoping to adopt Peyton." She was smiling as usual these days. When I'd first hired her, she got frazzled easily, since she was recuperating from an abusive marriage. Now, although her eyes remained large and waiflike, she appeared mostly happy and relaxed.

"Excellent," I returned. "Peyton's one of our favorites." He was a boxer mix, gentle and smart and attention-loving. I took Nina aside for a minute. "Is Ricki still here? She said before that she wanted to talk to me."

"She's in the cat house, I think."

I gave my Zoey a quick hug, then went down the hall that led to the kennel area. Smiling at the dogs as I pa.s.sed, I hurried around the corner to our newer facility that contained several buildings, including the one where we kept our cats.

Ricki was there, and so was another volunteer, Sally, who was about her age. Both were playing with the catsa"and Ricki was teasing one with a toy that resembled the small stuffed mouse that had gotten stuck in Shasta's mouth.

"Oh, you're back, Lauren," Ricki said. "How's Shasta?"

"She'll be fine, thanks to your excellent help. Carlie said we can pick her up tomorrow."

"That's wonderful!"

I glanced toward Sally, who was also smiling. "Ricki told me what happened." She looked at the cat toy in her hand. "We need to start keeping better track of these things."

"Amen," I agreed.

In a minute, I walked out and Ricki joined me. "What did you want to talk about?" I asked.

We headed toward the outdoor picnic and meeting area near the rear storage shed, where we let potential adopters visit with dogs they wanted to get to know. We sat down on a bench.

"I just . . . well, you know I'm doing an internship as part of my vet tech studies, don't you?"

I nodded. "How's it going?" I had a feeling that, since she wanted to talk about it, it might not be going wella"and that surprised me.

But what she described was not what I was expecting.

"HotRescues is one of the shelters within NKLA, isn't it?"

NKLA stood for No Kill Los Angeles. It was a program dedicated to trying to end the killing of healthy pets in city sheltersa"so the private shelters wouldn't have to do last-minute rescues, as we had with Shasta.

"That's right," I said. "I'm a real advocate of the organization. How about you?"

"I am. Definitely." There was an almost belligerent look on her pretty face that I didn't understand. "But not all shelters around here are."

Oh. That was what this was about. "Like which ones?"

She folded her hands on her jeans-clad lap and stared at them. "Have you ever heard of the PetForYou Shelter?"

I pondered for a few seconds. "I think so. Where's it located?"

"In Eagle Rock. That's within L.A.'s city limits, so that shelter should be able to join NKLA, right?"

"Probably. I take it that it hasn't, though."

"No. And I've been a.s.signed to do my internship at the animal hospital that's part of the facility before I can finish my studies to become a veterinary technician. That shelter is run by a veterinarian, Dr. Dan Ideman. I started the internship a few weeks ago, and . . . well, there have been some situations I didn't like. A couple of very cute dogs who'd been there a while were being discussed as possible candidates for what's so euphemistically called euthanasia. Like it really is mercy killing." She snorted. "I didn't know if the threat was real or not, but I fortunately found people to adopt them. And as far as I know, no healthy animals have actually been killed there since I started, and supposedly for quite a while before, but I still asked if Dr. Ideman knew about NKLA and its goals. He basically told me to shut up and work if I wanted his recommendation to get my degree." Ricki looked at me. Tears rolled down her cheeks from her dark, sad eyes. "Oh, Lauren, what am I going to do?"

I didn't know, of course. Not yet.

And I certainly didn't antic.i.p.ate that Ricki would soon be accused of murdering that nasty Dr. Ideman.

Chapter 2.

Ricki seemed so upset about her internship situation that I told her I'd be glad to meet this Dr. Ideman and try to get a sense of why he wasn't willing to join NKLA.

"He says PetForYou is already part of the New Hope Partners program of L.A. Animal Services and he doesn't need another organization looking over his shoulder," she said. "He claims PetForYou already treats animals well enough, and maybe he's right. But I just have a bad feeling about him . . ."

"NKLA isn't intrusive, and neither is New Hope Partners," I said. "I'd be glad to tell him what I know about them. Maybe, once he understands them better, he'll be willing to have PetForYou join NKLA, too."

Ricki's next scheduled day there was tomorrow, and I agreed to meet her at PetForYou.

Her concern made me worry. HotRescues was a New Hope Partner, as all NKLA Coalition members had to be. New Hope, a really good program, allowed member shelters to take in animals that might otherwise be in danger within the public system. It saved a lot of lives. No shelter had to join NKLA, tooa"but it was a wonderful group, and membership also helped to make a statement against killing healthy animals.

Even L.A. Animal Services recognized and belonged to NKLA. They joined the event called No Kill December last wintera"which resulted in a much better save rate than in the past.

I talked about the PetForYou situation and Ricki with Matt Kingston that night when he and his dog Rex came to join my dog Zoey and me for dinner.

Matt is a captain with Los Angeles Animal Services, head of SMARTa"the Specialized Mobile Animal Rescue Team, a conglomeration of the former Small Animal Rescue Team and other animal saving units that used to be separateOur dogs, as always, got along famously. Rex is a black Lab mix, nearly as smart and playful as my Zoey.

Matt and I get along famously, too. We'd been seeing each other for a while. I care a lot about him personally, not to mention I appreciate the way he keeps me informed about some of the animals in danger in the public shelters so I can rescue as many as possible by taking them to HotRescues to be adopted out.

I told Matt about Ricki's concerns over a dinner of salad, spaghetti Alfredo, and red wine. We ate at my small kitchen table, the dogs sitting attentively at our feet, no doubt hoping we'd drop something.

"I've heard of PetForYou," he said, holding a forkful of twirled pasta near his mouth as he spoke. Matt is a great-looking guy, with short, dark hair, sparkling brown eyes, and a smile that always warms me. Now, though, his expression grew pensive. "They're a typical private shelter, as far as I know. I'm fairly sure they've come to Animal Services facilities to pick up both dogs and cats to make them available for adoption at their place. I can't say whether I've had any direct contact with their personnel, but I don't recall any." He ate the bite of pasta, then said, "I take it that, since you mentioned it, you're going to do something to help Ricki."

"I am just going to look into it," I said, after a sip of wine. "Ricki's a true animal lover. If she's concerned, there's probably a reason."