Read Online Give the Dog a Bone by Leslie O'Kane - Free Book Online Page B

around her neck to stroke her, but she pulled away too fast.
    She darted between me and the wooden front door, panting and letting out audible whines of increasing frequency and intensity. After three or four round trips, she made a hell-bent dash for freedom. She barrelled head first into the door, letting out a little whimper of pain after the thud of her impact. Stunned, she sat down.
    While Maggie was still seated and doing nothing destructive, I operated my clicker. The dog showed no recognition of the sound whatsoever.
    “Maggie! Treat!” Still nothing. She raced past me toward the back door. I lunged for her leash. She dodged past, leaving me calling helplessly and stupidly, “Maggie gets a treat!” I winced when the thud of dog-head-on-sturdy-glass resounded an instant later.
That
wasn’t what I’d had in mind, either.
    Maggie had a full-throttle case of barrier anxiety. “Damn it! I should have seen this coming!” I chastised myself.
    Hearing a man’s voice outside, I looked up and saw a couple of men wearing dark blue wind breakers that sported some official police emblem. The sound of Maggie bashing against the sliding glass door had caused them to rush to the doorway. These must be the crime-scene investigators that the police officer had said would be arriving.
    Maggie began trying to claw her way through the glass at them. The two men stared at her. I managed to grab her leash. She jumped against the door, still clawing at the glass with her front paws.
    “I could use some help in here!” I called to the officers as I pulled Maggie back onto all fours. She jerked madly, trying to whip her head from side to side while pulling back, but I got both hands on the leash and held tight.
    “What do you want us to do?” one of the men said to me through the glass.
    “Door’s unlocked,” I said. In a hand-over-hand operation, I worked my way up the leash in an attempt to get more immediate control of her.
    Behind me, they slid the door open. That opportunity to escape and chase after her owner gave Maggie renewed energy. She was tugging and rearing with the force of a bucking bronco.
    “Is he gonna bite?” the other man asked.
    “Not while I’ve got her on such a short leash,” I said, having worked my way down the leash so that I was holding on right underneath her chin.
    “That dog’s going to hurt himself, crashing into things like that,” his companion remarked as he shut the door behind him.
    Still holding onto Maggie’s collar for all I was worth, I fought the temptation to scream at him: Does the word “duh” mean anything to you?
    “What can we do?” the first man asked.
    I had to get my keys out of my front pants pocket and wasn’t willing to let one of these men do the honors. “Steady her for a moment.” He wrapped his arms around her, and I braced myself as I released my left hand. Sensing the loosening on her leash, Maggie pulled harder.
    “Yow!” She nearly yanked my right arm out of the socket. I got my keys out and tossed them on the floor in the direction of the officers. “The red Subaru out front,” I said, restoring my two-handed grip on the dog’s leash. “Behind the back seat. There’s a dog seatbelt. Looks like a small harness. Bring that.”
    He dashed out, the remaining investigator now shaking his head and chuckling. “I’d help you, if there was more room to grab her. I mean, you must weigh all of, what, eighty pounds dripping wet?”
    “With any luck, you’ll never find out,” I growled at him. “Sit!” I shouted at Maggie just as she seemed to be doing so anyway, really only in an effort to try a new way to break free from me, but this was the opening I needed to reassure her. She sat down, and in a high-pitched voice full of feigned enthusiasm, I clicked my tongue and said, “Good dog! That is such a good dog!”
    Maggie had made a tactical mistake. She’d managed to back herself into a corner. It was only going to be a matter of time till she