“All right,” he said. “If they haven’t found Junior by the time I drop the kids off at school, I’ll stop by and help, too. Do you want breakfast before you head out? It won’t take more than a couple of minutes to fry eggs and make toast.”
That was one of the advantages of marrying a man who had started out in life as a short-order cook. Joanna didn’t have to think long before making up her mind. Depending on how her day went, the next opportunity to eat might be hours away. Besides, this was Alvin’s case. She and her people were there as backup only. In addition, Butch’s over-easy eggs were always perfection itself.
“Sounds good,” she said. “Do you want any help?”
“I’m a man on a mission,” Butch told her with a grin. “Sit down, drink your coffee, and stay out of the way.”
Doing as she’d been told, Joanna slipped into the breakfast nook. She’d taken only a single sip of coffee when Dennis, their early-bird three-year-old, wandered into the kitchen dragging along both his favorite blankie and his favorite book—The Cat in the Hat. There wasn’t a person in the household who didn’t know the story by heart, but Joanna pulled him into a cuddle and started reading aloud, letting him turn the pages.
They were halfway through the story when two dogs scrambled into the kitchen—Jenny’s stone-deaf black lab, Lucky, and a relatively new addition to their family, a fourteen-week-old golden retriever puppy named Desi. The puppy carried the tattered remains of one of Jenny’s tennis shoes in his mouth. Both dogs dove for cover under the table of the breakfast nook as an exasperated Jenny, wearing a bathrobe and with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, appeared in the doorway.
“I was only in the shower for five minutes,” she fumed. “That’s all it took for Desi to wreck my shoe.”
“Wait until you have kids of your own,” Butch warned her. “Desi will be over it a lot faster than a baby will. Besides, it could have been worse. It’s only a tennis shoe. When Lucky was a pup, he always grabbed one of your boots.”
Leveling a sour look in Butch’s direction, Jenny knelt down by the table. Rather than verbally scolding the miscreant puppy, she glowered at him and gave him two-thumbs down—her improvised sign language equivalent of “bad dog.” Next she motioned toward her body with one hand, which meant “come.” Finally she held out one cupped hand and patted the cupped one with her other hand, the hand signal for “give it to me.”
There was a momentary pause under the table before Desi squirmed out from under his temporary shelter and handed over the mangled shoe. In response, Jenny gave him a single thumb-up for “good dog.” Two thumbs would have meant “very good dog,” and currently, no matter what he did right, Desi didn’t qualify. Once the puppy had been somewhat forgiven, Lucky dared venture out, too. He was rewarded with the two-thumb treatment before Jenny took her damaged shoe in hand and left the room with both dogs on her heels.
Joanna couldn’t help but marvel at how the hand signals Jenny had devised to communicate with Lucky were now making it possible for her to train a service dog as part of a 4-H project. There was the expectation that, at some time in the future, Desi would make a difference in some person’s life by serving as a hearing assistance dog.
“Your breakfast is on the table in five,” Butch called after Jenny as she left the room. “Two eggs scrambled, whole wheat toast. Don’t be late.”
“I’m afraid training that dog is more work than Jenny anticipated,” Joanna commented. “After losing Tigger the way we did, I’m worried about her ability to let Desi go when it’s time for him to move on.” Tigger, their previous dog, a half golden retriever, half pit bull mix, had succumbed within weeks of being diagnosed with Valley Fever, a fungal disorder commonly found in the desert Southwest that often proved fatal to dogs.
“Jenny and I have already discussed that,” Butch said, “but you’re right. Talking about letting go of a dog is one thing. Handing the leash over to someone else is another.”
Joanna nodded in agreement. “We all know that when it comes to horses and dogs, Jennifer Ann Brady has a very soft heart.”
“Better horses and dogs than boys,” Butch observed with a grin. “Way better.”
That was a point on which Joanna and Butch were in complete agreement.
“Speaking of horses, did she already feed them?”