SHE DIDN’T HAVE the right pet anyway.
All the way home on the train, Kiara told herself over and over: ‘They don’t need a dog. They need help far above anything the addition of a dog can cure.’
They needed help far above anything she could cure.
She’d brought her laptop with her. She had plenty of work she should be getting on with as she travelled, but instead she found herself staring out of the window. But she wasn’t looking at the scenery, which grew more and more breathtaking as she neared her Blue Mountains home. Instead she saw a wisp of a kid declaring she didn’t want a dog. A kid who, in some intangible way, reminded her of the lonely child she’d once been.
Alice has it much, much worse than I ever did, she told herself, and that made her feel even more bleak.
As did the thought of... A man who looked gutted?
He’s nothing to do with me, she told herself. He’s rich, arrogant and insensitive. He doesn’t want a dog. He just wants to get rid of responsibilities.
But when she got back to Two Tails she couldn’t help herself. She leafed through the files of the dogs she had in care, and then went out to check the pens, greeting the dogs in question, asking herself...could this one help?
And of course there wasn’t one.
Two Tails was a refuge with specific aims. It was Kiara’s dream refuge, a vision she’d had since she was...well, as long as she could remember.
The animals on her father’s farm had been just that, animals. A means to an income. Her father had never treated his livestock badly—that’d hurt his income. But he’d never looked at an animal with anything other than consideration of how useful it could be.
The same went for how he saw his daughter. Kiara’s mother had walked out when she was six, and in fairness Kiara couldn’t blame her. She’d married a cold, hard man. The only thing Kiara blamed her mother for was not taking her with her, and hearing of her mother’s death a couple of years later had only cemented that feeling of abandonment.
So Kiara had been left with her father, who treated her as a nuisance when she was small and free labour as she grew. But she’d also been left with her father’s animals. He never knew that she had a name for every one of them, that she cried her eyes out every market day.
So Two Tails was her answer. Early on she’d set her heart on being a vet, but the aim of veterinary science, for Kiara, was to give as many animals as possible as good a life as she could manage. She ran a normal clinic at the rear of Two Tails—she had to do something to earn a living and the tiny town of Birralong appreciated having a resident vet—but the rest of the time she spent matching relinquished pets with those who most needed them.
And that didn’t include Bryn Dalton, she told herself as she walked from pen to pen. But still she found herself thinking...
The little Peke whose owner had died unexpectedly two weeks ago? The relatives had taken the dog to a vet on the other side of Sydney. ‘Can you put it down, please? There’s no one to look after it.’
Pamela the Peke was ten years old and spent her life trying to find a lap for a cuddle. She also yapped, but that was a small price to pay for a friend. Kiara had a score of clients waiting; she just had to decide the best match.
But a yappy Peke for Bryn? No, she corrected herself. She’d meant to think, a yappy Peke for Alice? Either way the answer was no.
Who else? The wolfhound in the next pen? Ralph was gorgeous but aging, and wolfhounds had such a limited life expectancy. The last thing Alice needed was another heartbreak, and she had two alternative clients wanting Ralph already.
A whippet? Maybe, but the whippet in question was a bit stand-offish. Kiara’s career was matching people with pets, and she just knew they wouldn’t suit.
It was the same for all the dogs in her charge, she decided, and then she thought that it was just as well because if there’d been such an animal she would have been torn.
And she couldn’t have helped, even if she was torn.
‘Kiara?’ The voice came from the front yard, hauling her out of her thoughts of the two people she’d met that morning.
Hazel.
Hazel Davidson was pretty much Kiara’s best friend. They’d met at university, had bonded over their love for animals, and Hazel had helped Kiara set up Two Tails.
Two Tails was established on the property that Kiara’s grandmother had left her, but establishing the refuge had cost money neither of them had. They’d worked side by side at a vet clinic in Coogee until they’d saved enough to set the refuge up. But the refuge and tiny clinic didn’t provide an income to support them both, so Kiara worked here full-time, and Hazel came when she could.
Kiara wasn’t surprised at her arrival. What she was surprised at, though, was the urgency she heard in her friend’s voice.
‘Kiara, where are you?’
‘In the pens. Hang on, I’m coming...’ she called out and headed out to see what the matter was.
Kiara’s grandma had been an indigenous Australian. She’d married an Irishman who’d died soon after the birth of their only child—Kiara’s mother—and she’d lived at Birralong ever since. Her passion had been the native bushland and the garden within the house yard, and she’d eked a living by propagating and selling plants. When she’d died, the garden had been overgrown but gorgeous. It was gorgeous still. Kiara walked into the front yard now and saw Hazel stooped over something lying under the shade of a native frangipani. The soft yellow blooms were wafting down on Hazel’s head and the perfume was everywhere.
But this was no time for taking in the beauty of the place. What was the urgency? She headed down the path—and stopped short.
A dog. A collie? Hard to say from here.
Hazel was bent over it. What...?
‘I found her on the side of the road near the bus stop in Birralong,’ Hazel told her. ‘She’s... Oh, Kiara, this is just awful...’
There was a stomach lurch. This had happened before. The bus stop was at the corner, right by the sign to her clinic. What was it about the sign ‘Veterinary Clinic’ that made people feel they had a licence to dump animals nearby? Kiara crouched by her friend, seeing what Hazel was seeing.
A border collie. Small for its breed. Black and white.
But this was no healthy dog suffering simply from road trauma. Kiara had seen neglected dogs in the past but this...
Hazel sat back, tears in her eyes, as Kiara moved in to check. The dog was lying on its side—her side—on the grass. Her bones stood out with horrific clarity. Kiara could see grazes along her side and her legs, from the bitumen on the road? What fur she had left was filthy and matted. But there was worse.
There were deep sores around her neck—a gouge where, at first guess, she thought a rope must have fastened so tight it had dug in. There were still traces of rope left in the wounds. Her hindquarters were a mass of pressure sores. She looked as if she’d spent her life sitting at the end of some appalling roped existence, with no choice but to sit, and sit, and sit. Or lie.
There were similar sores along her ribs, and her thigh... It was swollen, oozing. A massive infection?
Kiara put her hand gently on the dog’s head. She expected nothing. The dog looked too far gone to flinch, to snarl, to react.
The little collie did none of these things, but instead of passive stillness, as Kiara’s hand moved under her head to cradle and lift, the collie’s eyes widened. Big, dark eyes met hers.
She saw calmness.
Trust?
And as she shifted her hand to see the damage, the dog raised one filthy, matted paw to rest on her arm. Like a plea for help?
If ever there was a heart twist, this was it. A dog, appallingly mistreated, looking up at her as if humans were to be trusted. As if Kiara was to be trusted.
‘Can we even do anything to help her?’ Hazel’s voice was a wretched whisper. ‘It might be kinder to... On top of everything else that’s happened today, I don’t think I can bear it.’
What was happening with Hazel? Kiara cast her a concerned glance, but her attention had to be solely on the dog. She could hardly tear her gaze from that of the dog. These wounds were indeed horrific but...
‘She’s only young,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe...’
‘Oh, Kiara, look at her. She’s been so abused that, even if we did manage to save her life, how scarred is she going to be? Physically and emotionally? Then there’s the cost. Who’s going to pay? We both know that sometimes the kindest thing to do is...is to let them go. We can make sure she’s not in any pain.’
The dog’s head was still in Kiara’s hands, and she was still looking into those trusting dark eyes. But Hazel was right, she thought grimly. What lay ahead if she decided to treat were X-rays, blood tests, and who knew what else? Then coping with infections, refeeding programmes, months of treatment. And after this amount of mistreatment the dog might end up a snarling, terrified neurotic. Who could blame her?
But those eyes... That paw, still resting on her arm...
She took a deep breath. ‘We’re going to do more than that,’ she said. ‘Let’s get her into the surgery. I know it doesn’t make sense, and we can’t afford to take on a case like this but, dammit, Hazel, we set up Two Tails for a reason. If I’m going to end up bankrupt, then I’ll go down doing what I do to the end.’
They carried the dog into their clinic at the side of the house. They X-rayed and, thanks be, found no breaks. No sign of major internal blood loss from injuries like a ruptured spleen or liver.
They set up an IV to rehydrate. They organised anaesthetic—no easy feat in a dog so near death—and then they worked together to painstakingly get rid of the matted fur so they could clean and debride the myriad foul sores.
The thigh was the major problem. The wound had ulcerated and the infection was deep. And the smell...
Clostridial myositis? That was a heart sink, but the look of the wound, the smell... Years ago she’d seen a similar wound in a horse that had been left unchecked for too long. The owner had elected to have the animal put down.
Sensible? Yes, it was, but now...those eyes...that paw...
‘I’m suspecting clostridium myositis,’ she said grimly, and Hazel looked at her in astonishment. She’d settled now, emotion taking a back seat to allow veterinary competence to hold sway. They were two vets, two friends, working their hardest to save a dog that would cost Kiara a mint.
‘How can you tell?’
‘I’ll need blood tests to be sure, but I’ve seen it before.’
‘Oh, Kiara...’
And she knew what Hazel was thinking. Kiara’s focus was on her role, coping with the ulceration of the thigh, but some part of her was still conscious of Hazel’s reminder of money—or the lack of it. The astronomical quote to repair termite damage had been hanging over her since she’d first seen it, growing more and more impossible, and in the silence as they worked it seemed to grow even bigger.
‘We can fix this.’
‘Yeah, but the cost.’
‘Let’s just do it.’
What followed were hours of meticulous work, to clean and debride what seemed an endless number of lesions. And because Hazel was her friend, because they were used to working together and knew exactly what they were doing, they were able to distract themselves a little by talking about other things. Even if they were also unpleasant.
‘Have you any idea how you might cover costs?’ Hazel asked as they worked.
‘Why bother?’ She shook her head, the dreariness of her situation closing in. ‘What’s another debt among so many? Two Tails is doomed to close anyway.’
‘What?’ Hazel had known they were strapped for cash, but not about this latest disaster. ‘No!’
‘I got a quote to repair the termite damage and it’s...well, it’s impossible. Even if I mortgaged the property to find the money, I wouldn’t be able to meet the repayments.’
‘You can’t close!’ It was an exclamation of horror. ‘What if you charged more?’
‘How? By taking in more dogs and selling them to the highest bidder? That’s not how we do things.’
‘Publicity, then?’ Hazel asked slowly.
She thought about it. Hazel’s boss, Finn, was a celebrity vet, hosting a TV show called Call the Vet. Finn would know all about publicity—but her shy friend? Not so much.
‘I took part in an episode of Call the Vet that was being filmed today and I talked about Two Tails,’ Hazel told her, sounding a bit self-conscious. ‘The show’s producer is interested in coming out here and doing an episode, and with a bit of luck it could lead to donations.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Kiara’s interest was caught. ‘I thought you swore over your dead body that you’d never appear in that programme again.’
‘I did. But there was a hit and run outside the clinic.’ Hazel shrugged. ‘I guess it comes with the territory but this one got to me. A gorgeous old black spaniel who’s apparently a stray. He needed surgery to plate a tibial fracture. Finn thought he must be about fourteen or fifteen years old. He also needed a name, so I called him Ben.’
So that was what had made it so awful. Two abandoned dogs in one day.
But... Ben?
‘Ben? Wasn’t that your first ever dog?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So we’re both suckers for dogs.’
‘I guess we are.’
They worked on for a bit, but there was something about Hazel. Something she wasn’t saying.
‘Well, then,’ Kiara prodded. ‘Was that what made it a bad day for you? Having to work with Finn? Or did Ben not make it?’
‘Ben’s doing well, as far as I know,’ she said diffidently. ‘I’ll go and check on him when I’m done here.’ There was a self-conscious pause and then, ‘It’s Finn who’s not doing so well. A baby got left in the waiting room with a note that said it was his.’
‘No! Tell me!’
So she did. It seemed as if Hazel’s boss had been landed with a baby. A baby he swore he didn’t know.
As they carried on chatting about Finn’s predicament more and more of the dog’s matted hair fell away. She could now see clearly what she was dealing with, and as the dog’s breathing stayed steady, Kiara was starting to feel positive again. There was nothing like a bit of gossip to make a girl forget her troubles.
So...why not share?
‘I had my own share of drama today, too,’ she told Hazel, and as she worked she told her about Beatrice’s visit, and her own trip to meet Bryn and his little niece.
‘The amount she offered me was ridiculous,’ she told her. ‘And I don’t even have a dog suitable for a child.’
‘How about this one?’ Hazel asked, and Kiara stopped what she was doing and stared. Then she stared down at the ragged, skeletal dog they were working on.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Maybe.’ Hazel paused as well and stood back, looking at the dog they were treating. Surely no one would want this dog, at least not for months, and even then, not if her temperament proved impossible. ‘But it sounds as if there are two wounded souls that need help. Why not make it three?’
‘Hazel, that’s ridiculous.’
‘You’ll need to find a home for her, even if you are bankrupt,’ she said, reasonably. ‘Especially if you’re bankrupt. You know, I’ve sort of fallen for her, too. Why not give her to someone who can pay?’
And for a crazy moment Kiara let herself think it might be possible. She let her thoughts drift forward...
‘Maybe I could call her Bunji,’ she murmured, thinking back to her grandmother, who often slipped into her First Nation language. ‘It means a mate. A friend.’ She smiled ruefully then, hauling herself back to reality. ‘Who am I kidding? How could I give such a dog to a ten-year-old?’
‘Give her to the uncle. He sounds like he needs a friend, as much if not more than his niece. And hey, if he falls for Bunji he might even be prepared to backpay for her treatment. How’s that for a thought?’
Okay. For a moment Kiara let herself seriously consider.
She thought of the pair of them, of their underlying desperation.
She thought of Bryn.
For some reason Hazel’s words resonated. ‘He sounds like he needs a friend, as much if not more than his niece.’ She thought of his shadowed face. Of the pain she saw, a pain that wasn’t just physical.
That’s not my problem, she told herself fiercely. She had enough problems of her own to deal with.
‘They really don’t want a dog.’ She tried to say it with authority, tried to believe it was true. ‘Besides, I’d have to stay there. A week at least, he stipulated, and who’s going to take care of this place? I can’t ask you to take more time off.’ Hazel had used her last holidays helping her build new pens, and there had to be limits to how much she could ask. ‘I can’t afford to pay anyone. The whole thing’s impossible.’
She looked down again at... Bunji. How had that name stuck so fast? She looked like something out of an anatomical diagram, Kiara thought grimly. Almost skeletal.
And yet part of Kiara was still caught by the look in the dog’s eyes as she’d carried her inside, as she’d organised the anaesthetic. There’d been such trust...
And then Hazel’s phone beeped and beeped again. Whoever was trying wanted her urgently.
They’d done almost as much as they could do tonight. Hazel cast her an apologetic glance, stripped off her gloves and went to check. She read and her face changed.
‘I need to go,’ she said.
‘Ben?’
‘I...no. I’m sure he’s okay but I would like to see for myself. And you’ll want the results on those blood samples as soon as possible.’
Kiara nodded. ‘No worries. We’ve done all we can for the moment. I’ll finish up and get her settled. Thanks so much for your help.’
‘Think about what I said before,’ Hazel said as she gathered her gear. ‘About giving Bunji to that uncle. Maybe it’s true that people—and dogs—come into our lives for a reason.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, as the door closed behind Hazel. Then she sighed. ‘Or maybe not. Oh, Bunji. Mate. What are we going to do?’