Gus­tav sat up as the small grey and black dog walked into through the open gate. He looked around at the pack of dogs that flanked him on both sides.


He smiled, which con­sid­er­ing he was a large Golden Retriever made a fairly expres­sive grin.


"Sam. You have some nerve com­ing here. Espe­cially with out your lit­tle white bodyguard."


"I fig­ured she might upset you a lit­tle after the inci­dent last month, and I wanted to talk to you peacefully."


"Talk? Why should I talk to you? You and your lit­tle 'pets' mean noth­ing to me."
Gustav tried to put every ounce of dis­gust he had into pets. It was a lot.


"Maybe, but the sub­ject mat­ter of our con­ver­sa­tion will inter­est you a great deal. "


"Really. And what could you pos­si­bly want to talk about that I would be inter­ested enough in to pre­vent me from sic­c­ing Thun­der after your scrawny butt?"


"I'm help­ing a cat try to find his friend…"


"A cat!", if pos­si­ble Gus­tav man­aged to put even more dis­gust into cat than he had into pets, "Why on earth would I care about help­ing some flea bit­ten lit­tle furball?!"


"Because he might be a vic­tim of a cat­nap­ping and ani­mal traf­fick­ing." 
 Gus­tav froze with his mouth par­tially open. He close his mouth, licked his lips and looked around at the oth­ers sur­round­ing him. They were all look­ing back at him with a mix­ture of anx­i­ety and sadness.


Finally he low­ered his body to the ground, stretched his paws out in front of him and held his head up.


"Let's talk"


**********


Wat­son was on his hind feet with his front paws on the side of the house try­ing to push his nose as close to the open win­dow as possible.


"Inter­est­ing."


"Whats inter­est­ing?" asked Harley, trot­ting over to see what Wat­son had discovered.


"Sniff and tell me what you smell."


Harley put his nose to the ground and sniffed every­thing he could find. He cir­cled under the win­dow sev­eral times, occa­sion­ally look­ing around as if he expected to some­thing to sud­denly appear.
"Fear."


"And why is that odd?"


Harley sniffed.


He con­tin­ued to sniff and began to work his way away from the house towards the yard.


"Oh, because if he was run­ning away he wouldn't give off fear, but would be anx­ious or nervous."


"Right."


"So he was stolen!"


"Slow down, all it tells us is that he didn't runaway.


Harley sniffed again.


"There's else some inter­est­ing here."


He began weav­ing back and forth across the yard, try­ing to pick up the scent again. Occa­sion­ally he would look around as if expect­ing some­thing to sud­denly appear.
 Sud­denly he froze and looked up at Watson.


"Dog!"
 


**********


"So my con­tacts at both the Wilm­ing­ton and Tewks­bury police depart­ments con­firm what Gus­tav said." Zena said as she set­tled down into a lying posi­tion on the blan­ket next to Sebas­t­ian, "There have been 31 thefts in the last 3 months. No one has any idea who is doing."


"Is there any kind of pattern?"


"Not really. They are tak­ing all types of dogs from pure breed to mutt, cats, rab­bits, ham­sters and even a par­rot. The only anom­aly seems to be age. Older ani­mals aren't being taken."
 "So all young animals."


"Yep." replied Zena. She sat on the floor and looked around at every­one. The only miss­ing mem­bers of the group were Tim­o­thy and Mag­gie who were assist­ing Mal­com with the search for Peri.


Every­one had returned home and gath­ered to share what infor­ma­tion they had gath­ered. No one looked par­tic­u­larly happy.


Sam paced around in cir­cles. He went over to the water bowl, got a drink and water, and with his beard still wet sat down and looked at Watson.


"What did you guys learn at Peri and Chester's house?"


"There was a lot of fear scent all over the place under the win­dow and even some up the wall. Almost like he was try­ing to climb back in."


"Fear scent would be expected in a kid­nap­ping" replied Zena, "Even up the wall. He was prob­a­bly try­ing to get away."


"That was my orig­i­nal the­ory, but he wasn't kid­napped. We fol­lowed the fear scent away from the win­dow and across the yard to a tall oak tree. He appar­ently climbed the tree to escape a dog."


"Wait," inter­rupted Sam, "What do you mean escape a dog?"


"There was a dog scent that over­lapped the trail we fol­lowed out to the woods, but it doesn't look like the dog was actu­ally chas­ing him."


"Wouldn't the dog cause the fear even if he ran away?", Sam asked.


"The dog scent seemed to weave back and forth across Peri's. It appears the dog fol­lowed the scent to the tree, cir­cled a few times and finally gave up."


"Did you find any place where Peri came down?" Zena asked.


Wat­son waited and after a few sec­onds nudged Harley gen­tly with his nose.


"Oh right! Yea!" Harley exclaimed real­iz­ing it was his turn to share infor­ma­tion, "This was my idea! The branches in the trees are thick and look fairly sturdy. There are a lot of them close together and I think Peri, real­iz­ing there was a dog below, must have used the branches to travel with­out com­ing out of the tree."


Tim sud­denly appeared in the win­dow out of breath, "Malcom's patrols found Peri!", he shouted, "He's about 2 miles away in a lit­tle cul­vert. They said he looks okay but appears to be scared out of his mind. Not that I blame his with all those birds cir­cling overhead."


"It's far­ther than I thought he would be but if he used the branches like Harley sug­gested it would be pos­si­ble." replied Sam as he stood up and began pac­ing in circles.


"Far­ther than you thought? You know some­thing we don't?" Tim­o­thy asked as he leapt down from the win­dow and sat fac­ing Sam.


"I think have a fairly good idea of what hap­pened, and I believe I know how."
 
 


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