Rottweiler Rescue Read Online Free PDF Page A

side, well behaved and watchful.
    Carey didn’t wait for introductions. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I didn’t know whether to feed him or what to feed him.”
    I didn’t tell Carey why it was a good thing she hadn’t fed Robot, but just introduced everyone. Carey disappeared for a moment to shut Greta in a bedroom.
    “She isn’t too happy with a strange dog in her crate,” she explained. “I moved it out of our bedroom and into the family room, but she still doesn’t like it, and since he isn’t staying, there didn’t seem to be any reason to introduce them. You said he should stay in the crate.”
    “That’s perfect,” I assured her as we all followed her down steps into the family room and over to the plastic Vari-Kennel crate, which I suddenly realized, was roomy for Greta but really too small for Robot, who had been squeezed in there for hours.
    “It’s a tight fit,” Carey apologized again, “but you said....”
    “You did just fine,” I told her. “Believe me, he was better off here with you in an air-conditioned house than in the heat for hours with me.”
    I uncoiled the leash from where it rested on top of the crate, reached down and unlatched the wire door on the crate and swung it wide. Robot stepped out as quietly as he did everything else and then stood there, waiting to see what the humans who controlled his life would do next.
    For me, the moment was one of those rare ones when the reactions of others take you back in time and let you see something familiar as if for the first time. I was looking down at Robot, but saw Turner’s gray-clad legs as he took a step back. At the same time I heard Deputy Horton inhale sharply. I never saw Deputy Carraher move, but when I looked up, her right hand was at her holstered gun. Their combined reactions brought back the memory of the first time I’d walked up to a full grown male Rottweiler, how my mouth had gone dry and my pulse had quickened.
    Contrary to urban legend, Rottweilers are not giant dogs, and Robot was a proper twenty-six inches at the shoulder. He tipped the scale at my vet’s office at one hundred and twenty pounds, a good weight that included little fat and showed off sleek, powerful muscling. He had come to rescue with no known background, but Susan estimated he was between two and three years old, a mature male with the typical substantial bone, strong level back, and deep chest.
    In his time in foster care Robot had shed a lot of dull, dry hair, and now, after the bath I’d given him the day before, his short black coat had a healthy shine, and the mahogany markings on his legs, chest, and face had a rich glow.
    Still, it is undoubtedly the head that leaves so many people in awe of these dogs. Broad in the skull, with ears folded close to his head in a way that emphasized the breadth, Robot also had the developed cheekbones and shortish wide muzzle that all add up to impressive. His eyes were the proper medium size and almond shape, but instead of the dark brown, almost black color, the breed standard calls for, Robot’s eyes were a topaz that made them stand out almost eerily in his dark face.
    I pretended not to have noticed the reactions of any of my companions and snapped the leash onto his collar. My thanks to Carey were all the more prolonged and profuse because of my new insight into exactly what this small woman had done for me in putting a strange big dog into her car, taking him home, and stuffing him into a too small crate in her home.
    Carey refused to let us leave until Robot had a drink, and I refused to put him in my car until he had a walk down the block. I even offered Deputy Horton the full plastic cleanup bag after our walk, but he insisted in a most gentlemanly fashion that I keep custody of the “evidence.”
    Turner and I followed the sheriff’s car to the emergency veterinary hospital the county had decided to use to examine Robot. The hospital was a new one, open nights and weekends and