Epilogue
Several Weeks Later …
Dwight asked Timber, “How is the coyote that came in yesterday?”
“I haven’t looked at him yet this morning,” Timber replied, “but he was the last thing I checked on last night. He’ll lose part of that leg, but I think he’ll adapt, as he’s pretty young.”
“He’s just a pup, isn’t he?”
“I think so, maybe four months or so. Tiffany wasn’t exactly sure. She will try to bring Keisha out to take a look at him today.”
“That’ll be good. I’m sure she’ll come out pretty much every day she’s not working at her clinic.”
“She’s welcome to do just that,” Timber stated, with a sigh. “She’s not charging me for her services, so God knows she’s welcome to come help anytime.” He took a chair beside Toby.
“You’re doing good things here, boss.”
Dwight nodded in agreement.
Timber snorted. “I still don’t know how I ended up with all I ended up with and so fast,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“So many people still work here, making things happen. Just trying to keep an eye on all the projects, not to mention the scheduling and management of everything else, is a hell of a job in itself.”
“Which is a good thing, especially now that you have somebody to look after it,” Toby pointed out.
“Shirley is a great help, but let’s face it, Toby. I’m not paying her or anybody else, including you. That can’t go on much longer.”
“No, but right now that’s not an issue.”
Timber sighed. “I come from a world where, if you do a job, you expect to get paid.”
“And yet what about you? You’re trying to set up something to help animals, so when do you get paid?
Maybe what you need to do is find a way to make some money off your rescue organization.
I don’t have any suggestions as to that part,” Toby began, then chuckled.
“However, with all the land you’ve got here, what about boarding horses? ”
Timber looked over at him. “You mean, that dozen we’ve got isn’t enough?”
“No, not considering you’ve got room here for hundreds,” he replied, with a smile. “We would have to set it up properly, but it would be a good source of income, and an awful lot of people want to keep their horses nearby but don’t have the land for them.”
“We’re a little out of the way for that, aren’t we?” Timber asked, with a sigh.
“Sure, but it’s not too far from town, and we already know that horses absolutely love being here. But the good part is that it would give us some income. The other thing I was thinking about was dog boarding, you know, like for vacations.”
At that, Timber immediately nodded. “I was going to mention that myself,” he muttered.
“I think that’s pretty good money, and you’ve definitely got the space,” Toby noted, circling his arm. “I think you could do a lot with that idea. And then, of course, you’ve been talking all along about training some animals.”
“I wanted to train some therapy animals, for sure,” he agreed, “and maybe some other canine specialties, depending on who and what comes along. I’m particularly talking about K9 training to locate contraband, for airports and the like.”
“That would be great, but do you have any experience with it?”
“I have some, but, better still, an old K9-training buddy of mine reached out, and he’s just come out of rehab. Sounds as if he’s a little lost.”
“That seems to be a perfect answer for him and for the Haven,” Toby said. “Who is it?”
“His name is Sterling.” Timber laughed. “Good memories there. He’s been training animals for airports and for the police, really all kinds of specialty work, depending on what the animal showed an inclination for.
He’s been working on helping identify and increase their training abilities, so I was wondering about that. ”
“That sounds great.”
Timber added, “I hesitate to even bring this up, but you did hear a rescue in town needs help?”
Toby nodded. “I wondered if they would contact you at some point.”
“Yeah, they’ve asked me about, … are you ready? Fifty dogs. They’ve just gotten dogs from a puppy mill breeder that was shut down. Among the fifty are something like thirty-two puppies and maybe eight nursing mothers.”
Toby just stared at him, then shook his head.
“Good thing you got the extra acreage, I guess. You’ll need to get set up to recover the cost of caring for these animals in the adoption fee.
You know, the cost of the care and the cost of finding them good decent homes.
You’ll also need somebody who can keep track of that too. ”
He snorted. “That’ll require somebody with good organization and clerical abilities. I would suggest Shirley do it, but I’m afraid she’s got enough to keep track of as it is. I sure don’t want to run her off.”
“Maybe this Sterling has somebody in mind.”
Timber shrugged. “The rescue did say they had somebody coming over to check out the Haven’s surroundings today.
I didn’t give them a time. I just told them to pop on by whenever and explained how we were all still really busy building the needed structures around here.
She seemed quite impressed. So anyway we can expect to see someone named Lindsey Sagwey come by today,” he shared.
“Good, and when is Sterling coming?” Toby asked.
“He took a bus, arriving in town today. So, I thought I would run in and pick him up. Plus, I can go grab feed and anything else we need.”
“Sounds good,” Dwight agreed, with a nod. “Have him here for lunch, and he’ll get to know everybody real fast.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Timber murmured. “He’s a big man, but he’s one of those huge gentle-giant types,” he said. “And animals of all kinds seem to love him.”
“There you go. Looks as if he’ll fit right in. How many individual properties do we have lined up?” Big Toby asked, lost in thought. “At the rate we’re going, you could end up needing quite a few of them.”
“We have twelve at the moment,” Timber replied. “I’m not sure on the rest of that.”
“You know that Dwight and I want our two,” Toby reminded him. “So any time you’re ready to start designing them, we’ll start surveying the property.”
Timber frowned at him. “Yeah, Dwight, you’re a surveyor, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“That would be perfect,” he muttered, and then he laughed. “I swear to God. … I started to build a rescue, and I feel as if we’re building a town or something.”
Toby turned to him, shaking his head. “No, not at all. You built a community, dude. This is a rescue, but it’s more than that. True to its name, it’s a haven for all of us, … animals and people alike.”