I am stone deaf and live alone in a large house, but I never worry about break-ins because Trey handles that sort of thing for me. He could raise the roof with his barking, and it wouldn’t bother me because, as I said, I’m stone deaf. He could scare the bejeebers out of anyone who dared to enter without his approval, and, problem solved, pad happily up to me and explain what had happened. He can explain without words.
Trey is a sweet,
three-year-old bichon, the small white fluffs of the dog world, and a highly
trained service dog who takes his job seriously. I named him Trey because he’s
the third fluff I have owned and loved. Another dog, also a bichon, lives with
us. I call her Kim because she reminds me of the young hero of Rudyard
Kipling’s book—small, white, and desperately poor. More on her later.
It started on an ordinary
day when I was up in my third-floor observation deck. BTW, I am a mystery
writer, and I publish under my real name of Jessica Chastain. Friends call me
Jessie. Anyway, the floor started vibrating so I hurried down two flights of
stairs, colliding with Trey, coming up. His little black button eyes danced
with alarm. He reversed his path and led me to the front door and to Kim,
standing there with blood all around her mouth. Was it Kim’s own blood? I was
afraid to stick my fingers in her mouth, given the excited state she was in, so
I took a minute to sit, stroking her, and wait for her fury to subside. As I
sat with her, I spotted a couple of light blue threads lying on the floor near
the door. I grabbed them and twirled them between my fingers. Denim? Could have
been from the fringe of my stylishly frayed jeans.
Kim settled down a bit
and let me cuddle her. I ran my forefinger around inside her mouth, and she did
not wince or complain, so the blood could not be Kim’s. It must be the blood of
whoever or whatever she had bitten. Squirrel or bird would be my first guesses,
but Kim hadn’t been outside since early morning. For one awful moment I thought
it might have been a snake, but if so, where was it now?
In one of my most intelligent moves, I grabbed a white cotton facecloth and removed some of the blood from her teeth. I say intelligent because, even though I had no thought at the time of how it could be used for DNA analysis, I put the bloody cloth in a zip-lock bag and saved it.
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