Page 49 of Between the Shady Groves
“If we go look at Josiah’s house, we can keep animals there. Since we wouldn’t be living on top of the bakery.”
“That’s another point in favor of getting a house,” she said. “You don’t have to talk me into it.”
A small whine interrupted their conversation.
Cannon had been so interested in what they were talking about, he hadn’t even thought about where the dog might be. But as he stopped and turned carefully, they saw her standing just three feet outside the doorway, her tail wagging, her belly drooping almost to the ground.
“Oh my goodness. She wants to come see her new bed,” Lauren said, although Cannon wasn’t quite sure that was exactly what was going on.
“I wanted to name her Lacey, by the way. Is that okay with you?”
He wanted to shrug his shoulders and say something along the lines of “I don’t give a flip what you name the dog,” but he thought that maybe she really did care about his opinion.
“Lacey sounds like a good name. She looks like a Lacey.”
As he’d suspected, his interest made his wife smile, and it was a smile and look that lingered on his face before she turned back to the dog, crouching down.
“Lacey. Look what we did for you,” she spoke softly, in a coaxing voice.
“We got some treats with the dog food, didn’t we?” he suddenly remembered.
“Oh. We did. I actually haven’t given her any of those yet.”
“Okay. Brace yourself. I’m going to walk slowly over to the corner. Do you keep the treats with the dog food?”
He knew that the dog food bag was in the far corner of the shed. They had put it there after carefully checking to make sure that there were no leaks and it wouldn’t get wet.
“Yes. They’re unopened and sitting beside the bag.”
He walked slowly over and decided that it might be best for him to open the bag there to keep the rustling and any extra noises as far away from Lacey as possible.
Lacey seemed like maybe a little bit of a fancy name for such a scruffy dog, but perhaps once she got cleaned up, it wouldn’t be so bad.
He wasn’t sure how many to get, so he grabbed four. Two for Lauren, and two for him.
“Here you go,” he said, putting two treats in her hands. Moving slowly and carefully so as not to scare the dog.
But he really needn’t have worried. Either she was extra hungry or extra happy to see them.
She came right over, and as Lauren held a treat on the palm of her hand, with her fingers flat out, Lacey came over, sniffed, and took it up delicately, as though someone had taught her not to snatch treats from human hands. Or to be careful not to bite human fingers when she was getting a treat.
“I think she might let me pet her,” Lauren said, looking up at him with questioning eyes.
She didn’t say the words aloud, but he almost felt like she was looking to him to make sure it was okay.
“All right,” he said. If she got bit, he was ready to tackle the dog, and they would deal with whatever they had to deal with.
The dog did have a collar, so it had been someone’s pet at one time from the looks of it. And if they could get close enough and manage to get her to the vet, maybe they could figure out whether or not she was microchipped, since there was no license. Sometimes collars had little tags with their names on them, but he didn’t see anything like that on hers either.
“She ate them both!” Lauren said as Lacey took the last one.
“I’m holding two more.”
“Why don’t you try to give them to her?”
“If I’m going to give her treats, she’s going to have to do something to earn them.”
“She came the whole way over here and allowed us to feed her. That certainly deserves a treat.”
