Paws before dying

old-fashioned double doors, the ones that pull out instead of swinging up overhead. I grabbed a handle on the door that Rowdy was scraping and pulled hard, but it didn’t budge. He kept whining at me. I stopped yanking and pressed my ear against the door. Deep, angry male voices rumbled distantly. Leah screamed.
     

Chapter 27

     
    THE car or the van would have broken down the garage doors, but both vehicles were locked. My frantic search for keys stashed in those little magnetic metal boxes revealed none. Rowdy was impatient, whinnying at me and tugging at his leash. The damned leash was strong, but it was a standard six-foot training lead, way too short. Besides, although he’d pull willingly enough with the leash snapped to his collar, the harder he pulled, the more the collar would press against his throat. To harness his real power, I needed just that—a harness—but his was hanging on a hook on the inside of my kitchen door.
    My sore ribs reminded me of Kaiser’s rope. Was it tied to a tree? I had no knife. I retrieved the flashlight from the blacktop by the garage doors, hauled Rowdy across the lawn, and nearly tripped on the rope a second time. I picked it up, pulled *n both directions, and began gathering it up. At the dog’s end was a metal snap. The other end was tied not to a tree, but to a sturdy metal tethering device, a corkscrew stake. I unscrewed it from the wet earth, and Rowdy and I headed back to the light.
    The end of the rope fastened to the corkscrew stake had to go around the door handle; otherwise its sharp spiral could injure Rowdy. The harness I fashioned for him from the snap end of the rope was nothing to brag about. A good harness is made of webbing, not rope. It’s padded. Mine wasn’t. It’s designed for its purpose: It’s an X-back sledding harness, a racing harness, a trail harness, or a freight and weight-pull harness. My arm was to approximate any harness at all, and the result was rough in design and rough on Rowdy’s breastbone, withers, and forelegs, I’m afraid, but if it worked at all, he’d feel those ropes cutting into his flesh for only a few seconds before the garage door yielded. Or the handle tumbled to the ground. Or the old wet rope broke. Even when new, it had been more like clothesline than like any rock climber’s special, and the combination of Kaiser’s lunging and exposure to the elements had obviously weakened it. It was knotted in a couple of places and, in others, beginning to fray.
    I knotted the corkscrew-stake end around the sturdier-looking of the garage-door handles, and at the opposite end of the rope, about fifteen feet from the door, positioned my rope-trussed Rowdy to face away from the garage. I got behind him and gripped the slimy rope in both hands. I wouldn’t be much help, but I intended to do my share.
    The rain was still drifting down in a fine mist, but the thunder and lightning had stopped, and the wind had entirely abated. Ahead of me, Rowdy’s wet coat reflected the weak floodlight. Drenched and shed out, he was a bony, ragged creature who looked more like an unkempt wolf than like a malamute. Rain had transformed the plumy white of his tail to limp clumps and spikes. Mud coated his feet and clung to his legs and belly. My hope rested on this skinny gray dog.
    “Rowdy, pull!” I shouted suddenly, before I lost my nerve. “Pull!” My voice sounded weak.
    When he moved forward, the rope dug and bit into my palms, but the door didn’t give.
    “Whoa,” I said.
    I breathed out, and Rowdy stopped. He shook himself off and spattered me with water and mud. The heaviest weight he’d ever pulled before was a light sled with smooth, fast runners designed to glide across snow. He’d never been harnessed to a dead weight, never been asked to haul a loaded sledge, never been told to strain. And he’d never known failure. Until now. But the rope hadn’t broken. I renewed my grip on it.
    The words that I whispered to Rowdy were the words Jack London gave to Thornton, the words Thornton whispered to the great dog Buck. “As you love me,” I whispered. I raised my voice, repeated the words, and added my own: “As you love me. As I love you, Rowdy.” Then I shouted: “PULL! ROWDY, PULL! PULL, BOY! PULL!“
    Head lowered, forelegs bent, crouching as if to flatten himself to the ground, Rowdy gave a single mighty lunge that shot the rope through my hands and burned off skin. His great hind legs struggled, his massive forelegs