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backflip over the porch rail. Now you think I'm mama?"
           Unless he had never been terrified of her at all.
           Unless that which had come so soon afterward, that which had so frightened both Brenna and Sunny, had not been their combined imagination at all, and this dog had felt it too.
           Something else that made no sense. Brenna shied away from thinking about it.
           Sunny's antics in the crate acquired a certain fevered intensity, and Brenna retrieved the longe line, snapped it to Sunny's collar, and tied the end around a porch pillar, all while keeping half an eye on their guest. He sat waiting with all the patience in the world, and when she stuffed her hair down the back of her sweatshirt, grabbed a handful of towels from the top of Sunny's crate, and crouched by him again, he stoically allowed her to sop up what mud she could. That gritty, black mud, as if something had driven him through one of the many local mini-swamps at top speed.
           Though she didn't know what it could have been, that wouldn't have caught him. Nimble and speedy as the Corgis were—and well they should be, having been bred to herd cattle—those short legs wouldn't outrun anything big enough to be a threat, not in the long haul.
           Then again, she hadn't actually seen anything out there tonight, and he had performed Corgi gymnastics to run from that .
           Quit trying to make it make sense .
           Sometimes things just didn't.
           What she knew for sure was that she had a Cardigan Welsh Corgi in her dog room, and that even the generous pile of towels accruing beside her wouldn't do anything but soak up dirty water, leaving the grit in his coat and a bath the only recourse. She couldn't be sure—not in this light, not without someone holding him so she could step back and take a look—but she had the feeling he was a fine dog, lots of good bone and without the crooked front and twisted ankles that cropped up so quickly with bad breeding. Someone would be missing him. She ran her hands around his neck and finally came up with a narrow nylon collar, no more than a tag holder. And the tags, too, clinking dully in their wet and mud-coated state.
           She tried to make them out, turning them to catch the light, but the engraving would take a good scrubbing before it became legible. The dog cocked his head at her, a quizzical expression, and it was then that she realized how she'd squinted her face up in her attempts to read the unreadable. He was alert, then, and plenty responsive. She could stick pencils up her nose and waggle her fingers in her ears without getting anything but a bland stare from Sunny.
           Not that she ever had . Ever.
           In any case, she'd take him into work tomorrow—stealing a few moments with the tub and dryers was a job benefit for any groomer—scrub him up, clean up the tags, and see what she had to work with. Along with a few phone calls to animal control and the local volunteer adoption group, it would probably be enough to have this fellow home by tomorrow night.
           She left the wet collar around his wet neck and pulled out one of the smaller wire crates; a touch too small for him, but for one night he could deal with it. The sharp noise of the shuffled crates put him on edge; his huge ears went from alert to wary as he moved to the far wall, his body hunched and poised for escape—even if there was nowhere to escape to , not this time. Still, no point in making it hard for him; she took the crate into the kitchen and assembled it there, flipping the sides into place with practiced ease and snicking the fasteners into place. She had planned to keep him in the kitchen, anyway—he was too wet to stay out in the cold dog room.
           Unlike Sunny, who had been outside quite long enough to take care of her needs. Sunny whined and moaned and threw herself at the door if Brenna tried to