SHE might well have. The dog was still exactly as Dom had left her. He squatted beside her and winced.

She was an obvious stray. She wore a frayed collar with no identification. She’d been dumped. She looked emaciated and exhausted and ill almost to the point of death.

Maybe it would be more humane to put her down, he thought ruefully. As the only person with any medical knowledge for fifty miles, Dom had been called on for veterinarian duty in the past. He had something in his bag that would be fast and painless.

But…

But the dog was looking up at him. He’d never seen such pleading eyes.

He swallowed. It’d be sensible…

The dog’s gaze wasn’t leaving his face.

He watched as another contraction rippled through her body. It was weaker than the last. It was a wonder her contractions hadn’t ceased altogether, given what she was going through.

He did a fast, basic examination. There was no sign of a puppy coming.

How long had the contractions been happening? Erin had obviously not been in a state to notice, but the fact that the second contraction was weaker than the first told its own story.

This was an abnormal labour, in a dog near death.

He couldn’t do a Caesarean section. He’d learned a few basic vet skills, but this was way beyond him. He had no anaesthetist to help him. Even if could find out the dosage, what sort of anaesthetic could he give a bitch so close to death?

Erin’s heroics aside, what was the sensible course of action?

She was a badly injured, stray dog in obstructed labour. He knew the logical thing to do.

But still her eyes pleaded.

Okay. Soft-touch Doc Dom. He sighed and hit his phone. Fiona McLay was the nearest vet, fifty miles away. She was as soft a touch as he was. Like Dom, Fiona was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. She was nearing seventy, she was wonderful, and when he was having a bad day he reminded himself that if Fiona could do it, so could he.