“You seem to be moving a little slow,” Harriet observed as she ran her rotary cutter along the long edge of her Plexiglas quilting ruler, slicing the edge off the piece of fabric.

“It’s nothing. I banged my hip on the square edge at the top of my bedpost yesterday. Curly was running around while I was making my bed, and I was afraid I was going to step on him. I was looking at my feet instead of where I was going, and now I’m sporting a big purple bruise.”

“You need to be careful. That little dog isn’t worth you breaking your hip.”

“Easy for you to say,” Mavis said with a laugh. “You don’t look at his sweet little face staring up at you every morning when you wake up. If he could talk, I know he’d be saying how happy he is that Aiden rescued him and brought him to live at my house.”

“Cute or not, he’s not worth breaking your hip, or worse, over.”

Mavis sighed and rolled her eyes skyward.

“You just wait until you get Scooter home,” she said, referring to the small, mostly hairless dog who was still living at the Main Street Veterinary Clinic, recovering from a series of skin grafts he’d needed after spending his short life living in squalor in the bottom cage of a tall stack in a dog-hoarding home.

The Loose Threads had all participated in a socialization program, holding the neglected dogs and getting them used to human contact so they could become eligible for adoption. So far, as each dog had graduated from the program, it had been adopted by the Loose Thread who had socialized it. They were now working on a second group of animals, hoping to release them to the public when they were ready.

“Who’s saying Scooter’s coming to live here?”

“Don’t even go there. We all see how you look at that little fellow.”

“Well, he’s still weeks away from being released medically. That urine burn on his back was so deep it has to heal more before they can get a permanent skin graft to take.”