His words hung in the air for a moment, sending a shiver down my back as I glanced over at the placid sheep grazing contentedly on the shared property.
Iain might not suspect her of hatching a devious plan of revenge, but I certainly did. And now she was acting out of character bringing in a flock of expensive sheep. Just what exactly was she up to?
I had little time to wonder about Bridget’s latest scheme as we geared up for spring, which meant lambing season. In March I was called on to act as dog chaperone for Joanna and David’s puppy Twiglet David had given Joanna the yellow Lab as a birthday present, but her girth made it uncomfortable for her to attend the puppy obedience class that Twiglet badly needed. Since David was working long hours to save up for the baby, I offered to do the honors for her.
Iain had little patience for the enthusiastic, if sweet, puppy, but he agreed to chauffeur us to and from the class. The evening of our first class he drove us to a nearby grammar school gymnasium and dropped us off, saying he’d be at the local until we were finished. I snapped Twiglet’s leash on her, let her have a few moments of walkies time on the grass, then headed into the gym. A small table had been set up near the door with a variety of dog-related products.
“And who are we?” A small perky woman with a pixie haircut and seriously cute smile tipped her head as she gazed down at Twiglet, who was spinning around on the end of her leash much in the manner of a top, trying to see everything and everyone all at once. “My, we’re a bit excited, aren’t we?”
“We are indeed,” I replied. “We always are when we see new people and dogs.
We will, however, settle down as soon as we’ve seen all there is to see.”
“Yeees,” she drawled, watching with a disbelieving eye as Twiglet, suddenly possessed with the knowledge that cleanliness is next to godliness, sat down to attend to a bit of personal hygiene in the nether regions.
“Please sign in,” Pixie ordered, her expression distasteful as she avoided watching Twiglet I signed my name, added the puppy’s name, and handed over the fee for the class. Pixie deigned to read my information. “Twiglet. That’s quite an unusual name for a dog.”
“Yes, isn’t it” I wasn’t about to tell that Joanna had named the puppy for the sweet she was addicted to.
“We’re all waiting over there, on the steps, until Frau Blucher arrives.” She nodded across the room.
“Frau Blucher?” Wasn’t that the name of a character in Young Frankenstein !
The one whose very name caused the horses to panic?
“Frau Blucher,” Pixie said firmly, and pointed her pen to the wall where a flyer had been taped up. I looked closer. Frau Blucher looked like one of my old sadistic gym teachers, Miss Wentwhistle, the one who cruelly refused to allow cramps as grounds for failing to join in the activities. “Frau Blucher is a well-known dog trainer from Germany. We are very pleased to have her, and count ourselves lucky that she chose Cozy Canine Corner to teach for rather than”—
she sniffed—“that other establishment.”
The other establishment being the only other dog-oriented business in our small town. Their rivalry for customers had become legend in this area, starting on the small scale with occasional bouts of price one-upmanship on cases of canned dog food, and ending with a yearly battle to see who could put out the lushest and most enticing spread at Christmastime, to entice customers into visiting their shop for the annual “Father Christmas and Pet” photos.
“Ah, Frau Blucher,” I repeated, pausing to listen for the sound of horses whinnying outside. Pixie just pointed across the gym toward a few steps leading up to a stage. I took a moment to eye some of the nice leashes and collars available for purchase, decided I’d better wait until the puppy was past her chewing on everything stage, and was about to claim a seat on the steps leading to the stage when a small reedy little voice crawled over me.
“I have a puppy, too. It’s a boy puppy. What kind of puppy do you have?” I stiffened. It couldn’t be. Not—not the hellspawn imp!
“My puppy has a penish .”
It was, it was the hellspawn imp!
I turned around slowly, a terrible smile plastered to my face.
“Why, hello Miracle. What a surprise to see you here. Yes, you do have a puppy, don’t you. Is he a cocker spaniel?”
“Yes, his name is Toby and he’s a cocker spaniel. He’s only six months old. I’m nine. How old are you?”
A shriek from across the room indicated that Phillippa had noticed where her child had gone. Or more particularly, to whom her child was speaking.
“Old enough to know better,” I said under my breath, and spruced up the smile for Phil.
“Kathie,” she said breathlessly, grabbing Satan’s Little Helper and hauling her up against her. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Yes, well, even Iain and I take time off from snacking on each other to do other things,” I said with a feral smile.
Phil stared at me in horror.
“This is my daughter-in-law’s puppy. I’m just helping out,” I added, about to explain that Joanna was expecting, but stopped when I noticed what Toby was doing.
“Uh… he’s uh… very frisky, isn’t he?” I asked, using my foot to try to pry him off Twiglet. She was spinning around again, trying to dislodge the dog that had suddenly attached itself to her rear end.
Phil blanched, jerked on the leash a couple of times, and ended up having to bodily remove her dog from mine.
“Are they going to make babies, Mom? Can I watch? You said I could watch when Toby has babies.”
“Toby is a boy, dear, remember? He can’t have babies.” Miracle nodded solemnly. “I remember. He has a penish . But Mom, Kathie’s dog is a girl dog. Can I watch her have babies?”
“She won’t be having puppies,” I replied, wondering if it were possible to get into another class. I had a vision of what this class was going to be like with the Dr. Ruth of the primary school set, and it wasn’t pretty. “She is going to have an operation that will make sure she doesn’t have any puppies, so there’s no use in your asking if you can watch her make or have puppies. And before you ask, no you cannot watch her have her operation.”
Phil tightened her protective arm across the imp. Miracle’s eyes opened wide as she squirmed in her mother’s grasp. “Mom, I want to watch an operation!”
“I think Twiglet and I will just go over there for a bit. Nice seeing you again, Phil.”
Phil just stared at me as if she suddenly expected me to strip naked and dance around the room. I tugged Twiglet away from a small moose disguised as a Great Pyrenees puppy, and sat down next to an elderly couple who had two small hairy things resembling largish rats. The hairy rats yapped incessantly during the class, but the couple never seemed to mind.
Mrs. Hairy Rat eyed Twiglet with a disapproving eye while the puppy stood with her head tipped to one side as she watched the interesting hairy little toys dance and sing for her. I tightened her leash, figuring it wasn’t going to look good on her obedience record if Twiglet ate one of the other class members’
dogs.
“Labrador retriever?”
“Mostly,” I said, resisting the urge to reach down and shake one of the Rats into silence.
The woman sniffed and looked significantly over at her husband. He gave Twiglet and me a haughty stare, and went back to counting the number of tiles in the ceiling. Or stretching his neck. Or draining his sinuses. I never did figure out why he spent the entire class time staring at the ceiling. I scootched down a bit and smiled at a woman and her fox terrier puppy, and managed to get Twiglet relatively settled just as Frau Blucher rolled in. Short, stout, with one of the blocky wedge-type haircuts that so many German ladies seemed to prefer, she was one of those women who had an endless supply of energy. She was constantly moving, constantly talking, and I will say this for her—none of the dogs in the class were a challenge to her. She just rolled right over them, squishing them into compliance.
“Velcome! Velcome everyone!” She snatched the clipboard away from Pixie, waved her back toward her table, then strode over and stood in front of the stage area. A few people were still chatting. She clapped loudly for attention.
“You vill be quiet, please. Excellent. Velcome, I am Helga Blucher, and you are here for zome obedience, yes? Yes. I am here to teach you obedience.” She waited for a moment. No one said anything but the yappy Hairy Rats.
“But the obedience is for your dogs, yes, and not you? Although you too will be obedient by the end of the class! Ha ha ha ha!”
We all laughed at her little joke. Obediently. I thought it sounded more like a threat than a joke, to be honest.
“Now, ve have here tvelve of you, yes? Yes. And you all have puppies, yes?
Yes?”
Mrs. Hairy Rat stood up. “Lalla and Baby aren’t puppies any more, but they’re small, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Frau Blucher stared at the rats, frowned at them for a moment, then marched over to them. They responded by increasing the volume of their output. She squatted down and clapped her hands in front of their yapping little mouths.
“You vill stop that noise this minute!” she bellowed. They stopped. Mrs. Hairy Rat looked a bit put out, and picked up Baby and Lalla, murmuring comforting noises in their little Hairy Rat ears.
“You zhould not let them be the master of you,” Frau said sternly to the Hairy Rat people. Twiglet chose that moment to lunge over to where she was kneeling. Twiglet loved people, and was more than happy to greet anyone, whether or not she knew them. She took the opportunity presented to march over and greet this wonderful new person, her whole rear end waggling with the joy of making a new friend.
“Twiglet!” I hissed, reeling in the leash. I was too late. She had managed to give Frau Blucher a few wet kisses on her cheek.
I figured we were in for it now. Slowly Frau Blucher’s head turned toward us.
She eyed Twiglet first as she wiggled between my feet, then me. I felt like squirming, too. “Tviglet?”
“Uh… yes, she’s just five months old. I’m sorry about that, she loves people so and I hate to discourage her friendliness.”
“No,” she said decisively. “It is good, yes? This friendliness is good.” Much to my amazement she reached out and patted the puppy on her head. Twiglet was in seventh heaven. Frau Blucher stood and marched back to the center of the gym. “You vill all be praising good behavior and,” she shot a stern look at Mrs.
Hairy Rat, “discouraging naughty behavior. Kisses are good. Barking is not good. Yes? You have a question little girl?”
Miracle took a few steps out, Toby in tow. “This is my puppy Toby. He’s a boy puppy. That’s Twiglet. She isn’t going to have a baby because she’s going to have an operation. My mom told me how babies are made but I didn’t know about the operation.”
Phil popped up and grabbed Miracle, smiling and muttering things under her breath as she hauled her back toward the steps.
Frau Blucher tapped her clipboard twice, then nodded sharply at Miracle.
“Now we can proceed, yes? Yes.”
“Well, at least we got away without her mentioning the penishes” I whispered to Mrs. Hairy Rat. She looked scandalized and scooted away from me.
By the time the class was over, Twiglet still had enough energy for five dogs while I was so exhausted I could barely walk. Phil had done her best to keep Miracle out of the range of what she no doubt imagined was my bad influence, but I could see by the hesitant glances she shot my way that there was something she wanted to say to me. I figured it was a lecture about stifling her little darling’s desire to see Twiglet spayed, but it turned out to have far more sinister overtones.
“Er… Kathie… do you have a moment?” she asked as I was using a plastic shopping bag to scoop up the gift Twiglet had felt necessary to deposit on the gym floor. Pixie was already heading my way with a bottle of disinfectant and a roll of paper towels.
“Sure. Why don’t we go outside,” I offered, waving the bag of poop toward the door. Phil nodded, hustled Miracle off to her car, then hurried back to where I was waiting for Iain to pick us up.
“Bob will kill me if he finds out I bothered you with this, but men are so unreasonable at times! He says Iain knows what he’s doing, and I’m sure he does, but we spent every cent we had on those Blackface sheep and we can’t afford to lose the herd now.”
“Flock,” I corrected, a horrible suspicion growing. “You aren’t, by any chance, about to ask if Iain’s sheep are infected with a disease, are you?” She nodded, her face relaxing from its tight mask of worry. “You see, I knew you’d be reasonable about this! But Bob said it would be an insult to Iain to question whether or not his sheep were liable to infect ours. And we can’t afford to have any of them become sick!”
“I assure you, Iain couldn’t afford to lose his sheep either,” I said dryly.
“There’s no infection, but I’m curious about something, Phil. Who told you there was?”
“Bob,” she responded promptly, not hesitating to shift the blame. “He said he heard it at one of those farmer places he insists on hanging out at three times a week when he should be home helping Miracle with her math. You wouldn’t believe the sort of math problems they make children learn over here! It’s enough to squeeze the creativity right out of her.”
“One of those farmer places?” I could see Iain’s Land Rover turning the corner a block away. I didn’t want to worry him with word of more rumors spreading about infection on the farm, so I had to make my interrogation quick. “What sort of a farmer place? The co-op? An NFU meeting?” She shrugged and grimaced as Miracle started honking the car horn. “I’m not sure. One of those places. I just wanted to be sure our flock wasn’t in any danger from Iain’s sheep.”
“No danger,” I reassured her with a lot more confidence than I felt. After dropping off Twiglet, I spent the ride home mulling over what possible gain Bridget could have slandering Iain’s sheep, but decided the next morning it was nothing more than a petty attempt to annoy him Three days later the first ewes went down sick.
“Well?” I asked Iain that night. I had spent the day trying to write but unable to because of the dread that filled me when Iain brought word of a half-dozen ewes showing symptoms of EAE, an infectious disease that caused ewes to abort their lambs prematurely. “Is it what you think it is? Are the ewes aborting?” He peeled off his coat and sank down heavily onto a kitchen chair. The laugh lines around his eyes stood out white against his skin, his face filled with anguish and exhaustion. “Aye, they are. We’re not sure if it’s EAE, or another infection, but eight of the ewes have lost their lambs.” Poor ewes. Poor Iain. I knelt down at his feet and put my hands on his where they rested limply on his thighs. “Will you have to destroy them?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. The vet’ll be out in the morning to collect some samples. We’ll know more then.”
I held his hands for a few more minutes, my heart breaking at the bleak weariness in his lovely eyes. We had a silent dinner, a depressing evening with Iain checking periodically on the isolated ewes, and a long, sleepless night in which I held him in an attempt to protect him from the probable disaster.
Losing a flock of sheep would not devastate us; being forced to destroy all of the sheep within range of the infection would. Iain had mentioned that there was a vaccine for EAE, but the only sure way to eliminate it was to cull the flocks. I wasn’t sure if Iain would recover from such a drastic measure, either emotionally or monetarily.
It was with a very grim face that I stopped by Graeham’s office the following morning. I had been shopping for a few necessities, and was heading home to hear what the vet had to say. Since Graeham was on my way, I ran in to his insurance office to let him know I wouldn’t be at our weekly Gaelic tutoring session.
He stood up, smiling as he held out his hand when I slipped past the outer office into the small, close room that reminded me of a rabbit warren. “Kathie
!
Don’t tell me— you’re finally going to allow me to take you to lunch! After four months, I was beginning to suspect you were holding a grudge against me for that regrettable incident.”
I forced a smile to my lips, but I was willing to bet it looked pretty sickly from the other side. The regrettable incident in question was his attempt at a grab during one of our early sessions. I came close to smacking him, but managed to get my feelings across with a few sharp words and glares. He had apologized and never tried anything on me since, but I was still vaguely suspicious that he’d go into octopus mode again if I weren’t vigilant.
“Thanks, Graeham, I don’t have the time today. I’m on my way home, but I wanted to let you know I won’t be in later.”
“Oh?” He hadn’t let go of my hand. I tried to pull it back without being too rude. “Not trouble at home, I hope?”
I fluttered my free hand toward the window and safety, exerting a little more pull on my hand. His tightened. Damn. I didn’t want to have to get miffed with him, either, since he was such a good Gaelic tutor, but I wasn’t about to play handsies with him when I had a dishy Scot waiting for me. “Oh, you know how life is. It has its ups and downs.” I stepped backward toward his door, taking my hand with me. Luckily he decided not to follow.
“Ah, that is too bad. You’re talking about the EAE outbreak, of course. I heard the rumor that Dulnain was is infected; I’m sorry to find out it’s true.” I smiled another feeble smile and started for the door. As I passed his secretary his words sank in. I paused at the outer door to the office, then spun around.
Graeham was standing framed in the doorway to his room. His eyebrows rose as I stepped forward a step.
“Graeham, who told you that Iain’s farm was infected?” His eyebrows rose even higher. “Who told me?” He sucked in breath and furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure I can remember… Doris, do you remember who mentioned the MacLaren’s farm was infected?”
Doris, the blond fifty-something secretary, made a face. “I haven’t any idea.” Graeham tugged at his earlobe as he pursed his Ups in thought, a calculated move I suspected he thought was an endearing trait, but which made me want to smack his hands. “I’m sorry, Kathie, I don’t remember who it was who told me about your farm. Is it important? I can try to find out if it is important to you.”