Play Dead
Chapter One
"ANDY, YOU'RE NOT GOING to believe this."
This is the type of sentence that, when said in a vacuum, doesn't
reveal much. Whatever it is that I am not going to believe might be
very positive or very negative, and there would be no way to know
until I see it.
Unfortunately, this particular sentence is not said in a vacuum;
it's said in the Passaic County Animal Shelter. Which means that
"positive" is no longer one of the possibilities.
The person speaking the words is Fred Brandenberger, whose job as
shelter manager is an impossibly difficult one. There are far more
dogs that come through his doors than potential adopters, and he
therefore must helplessly supervise the euthanasia of those that are
not taken. I know it drives Fred crazy; he's been in the job for two
years, and my guess is he's not going to last much longer.
It bothers me to come here, and I rarely do. I leave this job to my
former legal client, Willie Miller, who is my partner in the Tara
Foundation, a dog rescue operation. We rescue a lot of dogs, over a
thousand a year, but there are many more wor ... read full excerpt from: Play Dead ebook
