At first they were minor incidents, the kinds of things that often happen in everyday life. Raz pulled a muscle while hunting and had to limp home on three legs. Then a branch snapped off a tree and hit one of the dogs. Fortunately it hit Gordo, whose heavy padding helped protect him, and actually did more damage to the branch than it did to him. Cal had a narrow escape while scavenging near one of the ball fields. A police car had cruised by just as he had his head and the top half of his body stuck in a garbage can. He managed to extricate himself and slip past the cops just in the nick of time. And though there was nothing unusual about any of these events, their frequency became alarming. But then things started to get much more serious. Alona suddenly became very sick, and nobody knew why. She couldn’t eat, was feverish, and got alarmingly weak in a very short span of time. She had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer stand when Felicia decided to take her to Alan, the veterinarian who had treated Tazar.
