Chez Stinky by Susan C. Daffron

over Tessa’s head. Then she grabbed the dog firmly by the shoulders so she could affix the strap under her stomach. Tessa noticed the extra weight from the water bottles in the pockets of the bag, which slowed her jumping a bit. Kat took advantage of this momentary slowdown to clip a leash on the harness.
    She and Tessa went out the door and once again the dog started dragging Kat toward the forest. As she passed Linus, Kat grabbed the top of his harness. The weight of the giant dog combined with her own gave her enough ballast to stop Tessa’s forward momentum. Kat picked up the end of the leash that had been dragging from Linus’s harness and clipped it to Tessa’s. The two dogs were now attached to each other.
    Kat then unclipped her leash from Tessa so the two dogs would be free to walk together without her. She knew Linus wasn’t going anywhere and he weighed about three or four times as much as Tessa, so she wasn’t going anywhere without him. The big dog looked at Kat with a confused expression as Tessa whirled around him in gleeful exuberance.
    “It’s okay Linus. Your job is just to keep Tessa from running away. Feel free to run around. Tire her out. Please. I’ll be right here behind you.”
    Linus turned back and headed off toward the forest trail with Tessa by his side. The golden retriever was obviously thrilled to be able to go as fast as she wanted, since there was no longer some slowpoke human dragging her down. Kat followed behind with Lori and Chelsey. She laughed as the two harnessed dogs figured out how to work together as a team to deal with obstacles like trees. She was amazed how quickly they caught on, although she did have to untangle them a couple of times after they went on opposite sides of a tree. “Don’t do the George-of-the-Jungle thing, you guys,” she admonished. “It’s embarrassing.”
    Kat started playing a little game to help give Tessa the idea that coming when called could be fun. She whistled and Linus would stop, perk up his ears and come running back to her. Tessa had no choice but to follow. Then the pair would run ahead again along the trail. Now that she was able to run and was weighted down by the water bottles, Tessa finally was showing signs of fatigue.
    With the dogs occupied, Kat was able to relax and simply enjoy the experience of walking through the forest for the first time. She paused to notice the mingling of fragrances wafting through the trees. She recognized pine, wild roses, and the loamy smell of leaves decomposing in the rich, dark soil of the forest floor. Lori and Chelsey trotted along by her side, obviously just content to have a human around to take them on walks.

    After the walk, Kat was feeling proud of herself. When she had put Tessa back into her enclosure, the dog had curled up on the floor for a nap. It was unprecedented: the spaz dog was tired. The thrill of victory coursed through her body, but stopped at her stomach where it dissolved into a pang of hunger. She was out of most of the “road food” she had been eating at the Enchanted Moose and she was getting tired of subsisting on stale chips and Triscuits, anyway. All this walking through the forest made a girl hungry.
    Kat went back into the house and started investigating the kitchen. Although thankfully someone had cleaned out the refrigerator at some point, the cabinets were a different story. Behind the rustic tongue-and-groove cabinet doors lurked some seriously antiquated foodstuffs. Sorting through the contents quickly quelled her appetite. Some of the jars in the back of the cabinets looked like they might contain produce Abigail had canned the last time Kat had been here in the 70s. It also appeared that Abigail wasn’t bothered by details like dating her canned goods and the mysterious reddish-brown contents harbored underneath those rusty lids didn’t look appetizing.
    Death by botulism didn’t seem like a good way to go. A trip to the grocery store for food, cleaning