I’ve already talked about how we had record snowfalls that winter, so fierce that roads had been closed for more than 24 hours. Well, around the beginning of April, the weather turned freakishly warm. All the snow that had accumulated throughout the winter melted, all at once it seemed. Then it started raining and continued without pause. Flooding arrived in short order. The marshy ground beside the driveway and the lower part of our front lawn were now under about two feet of water.
John, deciding to see the humorous side of it, put up a sign: “Griffiths Lake, No Fishing”.
It was almost impossible to tell where the driveway dropped off into the newly formed pond. We had visions of clients who attempted to navigate it without pontoons making “glug, glug” sounds as they slowly sank from sight.
We called everyone who was scheduled to arrive to pick up or drop off their pets, and offered to meet them at the end of the driveway or at a Park and Ride further up the road. John had acquired a pick up truck which was high enough off the ground to traverse the depth of the flooded driveway. You just had to judge the width accurately and not put a wheel off the traveled part, ending up in Griffiths Lake.
We were astonished at the good humour we met from our clients. No one complained. Smith and Wesson’s owner simply pulled out a pair of tall rubber boots from her trunk, unloaded the dogs and waded up the driveway, carrying little Smith and laughing her head off when Wesson jumped off the driveway and went off a swim. He thought this was a fabulous new feature being offered by Oak Meadows.
In addition to this obstacle, everywhere that wasn’t actually under water became a field of mud. Even in a normal year, the Ottawa Valley doesn’t have spring so much as it has two months of unrelenting grey skies and rain. This turns the Ottawa Valley river clay we were located on into a glue-like mass that would suck down anything or anyone unwise enough to put a foot onto it. One dog I was walking dragged me off the gravelled driveway into a mud filled trench which had been dug to lay the phone line. I went in up to my knees. It took all the strength I could muster to pull myself out, and I left my boot behind in the bottom of the trench. It’s there still. I have visions of future, post-apocalyptic archaeologists deciding it was an offering to some obscure god.
The furnace in the house suddenly quit. (Yes, it was cold enough in April to require the furnace to run at night. As I edit this, on the morning of May 31, it is 4 degrees/39 Fahrenheit in our old stomping grounds.) The cellar was so horrible that we didn’t go down there unless it was absolutely necessary, so the furnace was left to do its thing in solitude. We reluctantly opened the cellar door to see why the furnace wasn’t running and were met by three feet of water sloshing about at the foot of the rickety wooden staircase. It hadn’t occurred to us city slickers to check that the sump pump was working.
John screwed up his courage and waded up to his hips through the dark, murky waters, dodging the albino frogs, to try to start the furnace or at least the sump pump.
No joy. He then called Clarence for a consult. Clarence gave him the name of the appropriate guy. We had discovered that in the country there is always ‘a guy’ for whatever job needed doing. Clarence of course, knew them all. The guy came and pumped out something like 10,000 gallons of water.
We then called another guy recommended by Clarence to look at the furnace. It had to be replaced. I had already been stressing about the rate at which we were going through our ever diminishing supply of cash. This didn’t help.
Since we had begun the business, we had cursed our lack of a fenced area outside for the dogs to run around and play. We had used the indoor playroom and were doing four walks per day to compensate, but we were determined to get our fences in as soon as the ground thawed. Perhaps that explains the spectacular lack of planning and foresight we displayed.
I mentioned the Ottawa Valley river clay turning into a sea of mud with snow melt and spring rains. An intelligent person planning to fence in yards in which dogs could play, especially someone who had been walking dogs through this slough of boot-sucking sludge for weeks, might have said to herself, “Gee, it sure is muddy in these fields. When we fence in a yard, we better make sure that it will be very well drained so water will run off the area we enclose.”
Another effect of that unstable clay soil is that the heaving and settling of the ground through the freeze and thaw cycle is very pronounced. An intelligent person planning to fence in yards would think about how the freeze/thaw cycle would inevitably create gaps between the bottom of the fence and the ground; gaps through which a dog could wriggle and escape. Since an animal escaping was our biggest nightmare, this might have been considered a really important issue. An intelligent person might even have said to himself, “Gee, we better look into how we can anchor the fence securely in concrete below ground level to make sure dogs can’t dig out.”
Did we two supposedly intelligent people say any of this to ourselves when we put the fences in? No, we did not. We called the fencers, indicated where we wanted the fences to go, and that was it. We were smart enough to reason out that we wanted two yards so we could separate incompatible dogs. John was smart enough to have the fencers construct a fenced aisle between the back door of the kennel and the entrance to the fenced yards so the dogs could run directly out the back door to the yards. But we never gave drainage or gaps a thought.
My only excuse is that we were both so exhausted and strung out, mentally as well as physically, that our thought processes weren’t operating at peak efficiency. It was pretty much, “Fence. Get fence. Get fence in big hurry.”
As soon as the flood waters receded, the fences were duly installed. Then it started raining again. It quickly became apparent that the slope in the location we had chosen was actually towards the part we had fenced off for play yards. The back half of our yards therefore served as a large drainage pond for the fields. The yards transformed into muddy sloughs which were partially or entirely unusable for weeks.
Finally it dried up enough that we could get the dogs out there. When we decided play time was over the first time we used the yards, John headed back to man the door to the kennel, while I stood at the gate to the yard and called the dogs. It was a good group. Most of the dogs headed off towards John. Wolfie, a low slung Corgi type, was still lingering behind. He was looking at me though, so I called him by name and slapped my thigh to give him some encouragement. He only stared at me with even greater intensity and woofed inquiringly. It was at that point I realized Wolfie was on the wrong side of the fence. He had apparently successfully negotiated a gap at the bottom into freedom, but couldn’t figure out how to get back in.
Fortunately, he came to meet me when I raced out of the yard and around the fence to collect him. But it was a terrifying moment.
We had loads of gravel and concrete pavers delivered and expended a huge amount of time and physical effort over the next months and years shovelling loads of gravel into the low parts of the yards, placing patio stones on top and generally trying to build them up to grade.
We blocked the gaps at the bottom of the fences with concrete blocks and big rocks from around the property. But we could never relax our vigilance, as gaps would open up overnight in the freeze and thaw cycles. Not our finest hour.
Eventually, we enclosed the open areas between the back of the kennel and the existing fences, giving us four yards. These yards were on slightly higher ground, being adjacent to the kennel building and one of them was mostly gravel, left over from the building project. We used them when the worst of the spring run off and mud was happening. One of the yards had a gate opening directly to the fields and the walking path. That yard was where we mostly piled our gravel, patio stones and cement blocks, because it was the only place where you could enter the dog yards from outside.
When the dogs were out playing, I would often use the time to walk back and forth between the outer yard and the others, ferrying patio stones to the wetter yards.
One day while I was so engaged, a bunch of dogs were following me back and forth. One of these was a little Jack Russell named Abby. As I leaned over to grab a couple of patio stones from the pile beside the outer gate, I noticed a small gap had opened up under that gate. Then I noticed that Abby was also looking at the gap. She looked up and me and I could tell the instant that she decided to make a break for it. I threw down my stones and made a grab for her, but all I caught was air. It took her one second to wriggle under and she was off, hell bent for election across our back forty.
I went through the gate after her. Hopeless of course. John was in the kennel. I ran in to tell him what had happened and that I was getting the car and driving to the neighbouring farm, where Abby was headed. He said he’d get the dogs in and wait til I got back. If I couldn’t find her, we’d search together. I reached the neighbours and asked if they’d seen any sign of Abby. No joy. They promised to keep an eye out for her. I drove back to the kennel to find John standing at the front door, cradling an ecstatic Abby in his arms. She had doubled back to the kennel within seconds of breaking free.
We never did lose a dog. We had some who, like Abby or Wolfie, saw an opening and took it. We had a lead break once while walking. We fell on ice or snow while walking and despite out best efforts, once or twice let go of the lead. But no dog was ever gone for more than about two minutes. Our strategy was that if we made the kennel a fun enough place for dogs, if they did get loose, they would soon be back to the kennel or go on to the next dog walker.
The biggest worry we had was that a dog with a strong prey drive or an exceptional nose would somehow get loose the instant a deer wandered onto the property and they would chase after it, never to return. The only one we had ever had a problem with in that regard was the last dog we owned ourselves, Caesar. He was a giant; a cross between a great dane and a rottweiler who looked alarmingly formidable. He weighed more than John. Anyone who boarded their dogs at Oak Meadows after we acquired Caesar probably has a Caesar story. Because despite his ferocious appearance, he was the best tempered dog we ever owned.
Everyone loved Caesar: people, dogs and cats. Dogs who were fearful, dogs who were dog aggressive, big dogs, little dogs – they all took to Caesar.
Our cats adored him and he tolerated their incursions into his bed and his personal space with absolute equanimity.
When we left Canada, two of our clients very kindly gave Caesar a home. This couple had had two German shepherds who came to us as puppies. Zeus and Xena were lovely dogs and started out getting on well with others. Then there was an incident with an aggressive dog (not at Oak Meadows) which engendered some fear aggression in them. This was fine while they were at Oak Meadows, because we just let them play in a yard by themselves. But tragically, Zeus died while still relatively young, leaving Xena on her own. She was sad in her lonely yard and we decided to shove Caesar in there with her. To our delight, she frolicked around him like a little flirt and they played happily together. Caesar’s new owner employed him at the obedience classes she taught, to settle nervous dogs.
So, Caesar, great dog. Except around food (he would steal anything food related if he got the least chance – I’ve seen him steal a can of cat food from the counter and puncture it with his teeth to pry it open) and he was utterly obsessed with deer. We had to walk him on a lead from the kennel to the house because if there was a deer within a kilometer, he would smell it out and take off. Once we chased him and the deer literally across the county line.
One day I was in the house while John played trains in the garage.
Caesar was chained up to the front porch railing. I heard him barking. I deduced there was a deer. I was just deciding I’d have to get up and go get him when John came in to announce that Caesar was in the flooded woods, still tied to the porch railing he had ripped loose when he took off. Our porch railing was now wrapped around a tree.
April progressed, and with it the finishing touches on the building. The lights were all working, and finally the plumbing, HVAC and air exchanger systems were functional. The kitchen and bathroom were ready to go. A nice neutral beige paint covered the wall. The foyer was beautiful. Between the foyer and the play room, we had installed antique french doors with stained glass that we had salvaged from my parents’ house.
The interview room was furnished with an antique oak table and two Arts and Crafts period chairs. One of John’s stipulations for the kennel design was that we have a comfortable, dedicated space to intake clients, and to have discussions about their pets. We wanted a secure place to meet the dog or cat, where the dog or cat had quiet, safe surroundings to meet us at everyone’s leisure. He hated that at other kennels, he was made to stand around in a sometimes crowded, noisy entry way, while the person in charge stood behind a desk or propped up a wall. He would try to tell them about his dog’s or cat’s needs and eccentricities, while they paid no attention to our pet and very little attention to us.
On April 28, 1999, the kennel was declared officially complete. We could now start the next phase of our developing business – filling our state of the art facility with paying guests and pumping income into our feeble bank account. With only two months to go until the income from my partnership terminated, this was crucial.
I remembered with something akin to despair my hope in March that things would slow down some. Things didn’t just slow down, our business became moribund. By April 30th, we only had five dogs boarding. A few days later and we were down to one dog. One.
We were not unaware of the irony. We had moved heaven and earth to look after 15 or more dogs in a construction zone, run extension cords for light, plugged in heaters, lugged over water from the house three times a day and walked in the dark in freezing temperatures, through snow drifts and over icy driveways. Now daylight blessed us at both opening and closing every day. Now the kennel was completed, with 24 pristine rooms, running water, fenced yards, heat and light.
Now we had one paying guest.
While there was not much money coming in, the demands on our bank account only seemed to increase. In addition to the $7,000 we paid for the “extra” alterations to accommodate the new plumbing/heating system, the Region had decided to assess us another development fee of $8,000 in addition to the $10,000 we had already paid. There always seemed to be someone with their hand out. The sense that we were bleeding money had only increased.
With spring came tax season. We retained a local accountant to do the kennel financial statement and income tax return. We expected him to be impressed by what we considered a very strong opening performance. He informed us, astonished at our stupidity, that it’s really difficult to make a living in the kennel business and strongly advised me not to give up my law practice.
We stared back at him. What were we supposed to say? “Oh, okay, we’ll tear the building down and just forget all the money we’ve poured into it.”
In the car on the way home, John remarked, “Awesome pep talk. He must be a member of the ABKA.”
“Yeah,” I responded. “If the whole chartered accountant thing doesn’t work out of him, he has a brilliant future waiting for him as a motivational speaker.”
My law firm estimated each partner’s tax instalments and paid them directly to Revenue Canada each quarter. At the end of the year, we filed our individual personal tax returns. I had always relied on a national accounting firm to do my personal taxes, using the complicated financial statements prepared by my firm’s accountants.
Some years I had to pay a little, some years I got some back, but usually it worked out more or less the way it should.
On a fine day in the middle of April, I was standing outside the kennel with the contractor, discussing the landscaping we wanted to have done to make Oak Meadows look less like a construction site/mud lake and more like a resort.
John came along and joined the discussion, handing me the mail, among which was a letter from the accounting firm who did my personal taxes. I ripped it open in an abstracted fashion while the landscaping discussion was going on, hoping maybe I would get a little refund.
It took me a few moments to absorb what I was reading. I held it out to John, saucer-eyed, and pointed to the bottom line. We looked at each other, speechless. This year, for whatever reason, I would owe Revenue Canada in the neighbourhood of $30,000. We both felt physically ill. We told the contractor to forget the landscaping. Our contingency funds, such as they were, would all be going to the Revenuers.
Now we were not only massively in debt for the kennel construction, not to mention the mortgage on the house, we had pretty much run through our liquidity. And paying guests were down to nothing – almost literally. We had practically killed ourselves (not to mention the architect, contractor and assorted regulatory officials), getting our kennel from an idea in my head to completion in only seven months. The early signs had all been positive. But now we were starting to get an uneasy feeling that the pendulum was swinging back in the opposite direction.
When I got my second dog bite in mid-May, it seemed only a fitting footnote to the general feeling of gathering doom.
We were up from one boarder to four. Orville was a mastiff and although he was a puppy, he had a head the size of a basketball and jaws of steel.
The other three dogs in residence belonged to the same owner: Sable, a sort of whippet type, Clarisse, a rottweiler and Spike, a Jack Russell terrier.
The four dogs all got along fine. They especially loved to play tug of war. Anyone not acquainted with these breeds except through popular lore, would assume the mastiff or perhaps the rottweiler would win the tug of war game every time. They would be wrong. It was always Spike, the Jack Russell, who emerged triumphantly holding the rope toy at the end of the fray.
The bite? Surely that was the rotti? Nope again.
One day, in the melee, I stepped back and accidentally trod on Spike’s toes. He stood back while I hastened to make my apologies. He listened to what I had to say, tipped his head consideringly to one side and then darted in and quite deliberately bit me on the ankle.
That seemed about right, given how things were going. Later, Spike managed to get hold of the nose of an Irish terrier through the fence and wouldn’t let go. Nothing in our experience prepared us for such behaviour.
That spring we had our first phone call from a dissatisfied customer. An indignant voice asked how long her dog had had diarrhea in the kennel before she went home. Dumbfounded, I replied that her dog had not had diarrhea at all during the three days she was with us.
“Oh really?” said the voice, dripping with sarcasm. “Well, she had explosive diarrhea all over our carpets. We had to leave her in the kitchen all night. We had to take her to the vet. My husband is very upset over your negligence.”
John, listening off stage, reminded me that this dog had brought her own homemade food, which included meat. I inquired of the client whether it was possible the meat had been off when they brought it in.
“No! That’s impossible,” came the immediate reply. Our client went on to explain why this was indisputably the worst case of negligence in the history of the world. No other explanation could possibly be correct.
I was so upset, I called every other person who had had a dog with us at the time of this dog’s boarding to see if their dogs were alright. Everyone else reported happy, healthy dogs.
A few years later we got a call from this woman wanting to board her dog because, she claimed, she wouldn’t take her dog anywhere else. We were fully booked. Or maybe we just said we were fully booked. We tended to take accusations of negligence to heart.
Our telephone book ad marketing campaign started bringing out the nuts and weirdos.
“I NEVER board MY dog, but my FRIEND is THINKING about GETTING a dog and I’m checking prices in case she ever wants to (hypothetically) board her (hypothetical dog).” Or “I need two days’ boarding, starting today, for a dog I’m keeping for a buddy whose vet is in Florida, so I don’t have any vaccination records.”
Someone called to see if they could board a dog and goat together. One of their dogs was wildly attached to the goat and wouldn’t be happy without her. They also had two other dogs, one of whom we were informed, you couldn’t touch while she was sleeping, or she would bite you. Awesome.
We discovered that there were people who projected all their own anxieties and neuroses onto their dog. (Cat owners didn’t seem to be as subject to this particular malfunction, although when they were crazy, they occupied a whole suburb in Mentalsville.) I’m not talking about people who thought of their furry friend as their baby. I’m not talking about people who allowed their dogs on the bed to sleep with them. I’m talking about people who dressed their dogs in pajamas and kissed them good night on the lips before tucking them into bed beside them.
I’m not talking about the lovely man who brought his Bernese mountain dog in for the first time, lugging a whole barbecue chicken and a five pound block of cheddar cheese because he was worried she wouldn’t eat while she was with us. Or the restaurant owner who used to bring in meals from the restaurant for his dog. After all, John and I used to take Caesar for ice cream every Friday night in the summer.
I’m talking about owners who tried every weird food regimen that came along, insisting in advance of their first boarding that their dog could only be fed a raw meat diet or they would break out in skin lesions. We dutifully slung raw chicken necks into the bowl of one dog on this regime. When they returned the next month, we were told by the same people that their dog would only be eating vegetables and fruits, as the raw meat diet was the worst thing anyone could possibly do to their dogs. One dog didn’t just get treats from the table; he had his own chair pulled up to the table and was poured his own bowl of cornflakes and milk at breakfast. Could we do the same please?
Frustrating though this could be, I would nevertheless go a long way with anxiety prone owners, because they were genuinely concerned for their pets, even if in an obsessive and unhealthy way. John was less tolerant – of the owners, not the dogs – but went along for the most part.
We boarded a rescued greyhound we’ll call Romulus. The lady who owned him was very pleasant and rational. Her husband was not. He was obsessively attached to the dog, and correspondingly deeply worried about leaving him. Even though Romulus had been with us before and no difficulties or concerns had arisen, the husband was clearly very upset when they arrived for the second boarding. He insisted that he wanted to go back with Romulus to settle him in his room. We had made the mistake of allowing him to do this when Romulus came for his first visit. We explained why we had stopped allowing it – it invariably upset the dog.
We understood why people wanted to go back to the room with their dogs. But the people who most insisted on doing this tended to be the very people who were having trouble letting go of their dog. Dogs pick up on our emotions. They can tell when something is up. A dog coming into a kennel is already facing a new environment with strange people and lots of unknown dogs. Now their owner is trying to force them into an enclosed area where their stuff has been placed. The dog is asking herself what her bed and toys are doing in this strange space. The owner is sending out distress signals. When the owner tries to leave the dog’s room, they have to somehow get out the door while forcing Fifi back in. Fifi struggles to follow them. Everyone is hysterical.
We explained this at length to Romulus’ owner. No reassurance, no logic could penetrate his emotional fog. We got a call an hour later. They had only driven about an hour from Ottawa when the husband became violently ill, running at both ends. The wife was pretty sure it was his anxiety over leaving the dog. They cancelled their trip.
We also quickly discovered that there was another subset of neurotic drama queens out there who leapt on the poetic words of our ad as the next big thing in their never ending quest to play up their own importance. Or to put it another way, we got acquainted with a whole lot of dog and cat people who were crazy as shithouse rats.
They were much worse than the owners who were simply terribly anxious about their dog. These people’s lives were a never ending dramatic production with themselves firmly placed at centre stage. Their pets were merely tools in their quest to demonstrate to the world how extremely special they themselves were. They would make constant, ever escalating demands and reject any solution offered as inadequate. A report that their dog had done well in our kennel was met with patent scorn and disbelief.
They required their dogs to adore no one but them. They would come for a visit, clutching their little dog in their arms while explaining in hyperbolic terms how fearful their dog was of anyone but them. As John said, if it looked like the dog had no legs, it was always a bad sign. We would invite them to put the dog down. At the first sign that the dog was going to approach one of us, it was snatched back by the owner, as a child from a dangerous predator, and returned to the iron grip of its owner. On being collected after a boarding, any of these dogs who greeted their owner politely, then made clear their affection for us by frolicking back to us, was quickly secured by the owner and never seen by us again.
The result, more often than not, was that the dogs were badly behaved, confused about their role in life and as neurotic as their owners.
One woman had two labs we’ll call Franz and Sally. Sally was a member of the subset of crazy hyperactive labs. She was obsessed with Franz, and wouldn’t leave him alone for two minutes. Poor Franz was also nutty as a fruitcake, either because he lived with Sally’s obsession or because his owner was a loon, or both. When you tried to walk Franz, he would get out to the end of the 25 foot extendable lead and pull for all he was worth, barking constantly all the while. In fact he barked obsessively on lead or off. In addition to long bookings, the owner brought them for daycare, so we saw a lot of them.
Franz and Sally had to eat only baked potatoes. Their owner insisted that the potatoes couldn’t be microwaved. They had to be baked in the oven. In these early days, I was keeping to my sales strategy of being fawningly servile to prospective clients, so I agreed. There I was, in addition to everything else that was going on, putting two and three potatoes in the oven at a time and baking them – for a Labrador retriever no less.
John, by way of contrast, ate stale Froot Loops for Easter dinner, because that’s all we had in the house, and neither of us had the energy to go to the grocery store, let alone cook. Too bad John didn’t eat potatoes. Maybe he could have wrestled Franz for one of his.
The “completion” of the kennel to my surprise, did not include the cat room. It turned out that John had told the contractor that he himself would do the finishing work in the cat room (actually constructing the kitty condos). I never did get a good reason why, except a vague indication that he wasn’t sure how he wanted them to be, and was therefore incapable of giving direction to the contractor. He kept assuring me he would finish them “shortly”. We didn’t stop accepting cat boardings though, which meant we often had up to four cats in the available rooms in the house.
The lady who owned the weird Franz and Sally also owned a cat, who stayed in the house of course. This gave us twice the aggravation. The owner had to come to the kennel with Franz and Sally, where she would go through detailed instructions about the dogs’ menu and exercise regime. Then we would all troop over to the house and go through the same thing with Oz the cat. These were the same instructions we got every single time her pets came in, whether for day care or a longer stay.
On one occasion when she was collecting Oz, she put him into his carrier, but neglected to fully close the door. No sooner had she left the house with the cat than the door to the carrier came open. Oz shot out like a cannon ball and took off as fast as he could go.
She just stood there watching him disappear. I ran off after him as fast as I could go, and to the great surprise of both me and Oz, managed to catch him.
Travis was a Siberian Husky who also howled and barked constantly.
He was one of the strongest dogs I’ve ever known. His life was a bit of a tragedy actually, since he was clearly born to be a sled dog. His owner was a fanatic on the subject of positive-only training. She explained to us that we must never say “no” to Travis. We had to make him want to obey whatever command we were giving. She was unhelpfully vague on how exactly we were to create this desire in Travis. Judging by Travis’ behaviour, she herself was a complete failure at getting Travis to want to do a damn thing he didn’t feel like doing. Take, for example, heeling calmly on lead.
Walking Travis consisted of holding onto his lead with both hands, opening the door and shouting “Travis! Stop! Travis Heel! Travis Stay!” as loudly as you could while Travis towed you up snow banks and through drifts at about twenty miles per hour.
If you were particularly unlucky, you’d slip and fall on the ice he took you skating over. But you’d still hold on like grim death, because if Travis ever broke free, the last you would see of him would be his tail disappearing towards the American border.
This lady eventually got a second Siberian puppy, a female who had a bladder control problem and was also kind of aggressive. The puppy had to take a pill twice a day to control her incontinence. We never had any problem giving her the pill. This was not good enough for her owner however, who was convinced that only the specialest of specialest specialists could possibly manage her dog. Eventually, the owner told us that in future she was going to board her dogs with the breeder, because the breeder was somehow more capable of giving her puppy a pill than were we. We bore up under the disappointment.
Three years later, we received a call from this lady.
“Hi, it’s Mrs. Impossible. I’d like to book Travis and Puppy for Christmas. My breeder has shut up shop, and I know what wonderful care you will give them.”
It was her bad luck that John took the call. He had even less patience with these drama queens than I did and he never forgot or forgave what he considered to be an insult.
“Sorry, we’re fully booked.”
A moment of silence while Mrs. Impossible recovered from the shock of being told no. “But surely you keep a few spaces for good customers?”
“In what possible universe is a person who has gone elsewhere after telling us we were too incompetent to administer a pill twice a day and who then hasn’t been heard from for three years, a “good customer”?” John inquired in a perfectly level voice. “And how is it that we were incapable of looking after your dogs three years ago, but we’re suddenly judged acceptable now?”
“But I’ve tried other kennels and Travis hates them!”
“Gee, then I guess you’ll just have to work harder at making him want to go there, won’t you?”
While she was still spluttering, he said goodbye and hung up.
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