The water in the tub was still steaming when the first sharp yelp cut through the bathroom door, high and frantic and entirely wrong for a Tuesday morning. I had the small portable radio on the porcelain edge playing some old morning talk show, but Barnaby has this specific high-pitched bark he only uses when a stray raccoon gets brave enough to test the back fence. Except the sound wasn’t coming from the yard. It was coming from right down the hallway, muffled for a second by the hollow-core door before a sound that wasn’t an animal at all ripped through the air.

A child’s scream, thin and terrified and sharp enough to make my chest seize up instantly. I didn’t bother drying off. I grabbed the first towel hanging from the ring, wrapped it around my waist while water dripped down my legs onto the cold tile, and shoved the bathroom door open so hard it banged against the drywall.

Barnaby was in the middle of the living room, his little black-and-tan body stiff as a board, growling in that deep, rumbling way dachshunds manage when they think they’re guard dogs the size of mastiffs. Beneath him, backed hard against the heavy oak TV stand, was a little girl who couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, wearing faded pink leggings and a light blue windbreaker that was zipped crooked.

Barnaby wasn’t mauling her, but he hadhis teeth clamped firmly into the thick cotton of her pant leg, tugging backward while the child screamed and thrashed with her arms over her face. Blood was already smudged across her white sneakers and pooling in a tiny dark circle on the beige carpet near her left ankle.

I didn’t think, I just moved. I grabbed Barnaby by his harness, hoisted his thirty pounds off the floor, and hauled him backward despite his frantic snffing and writhing. “Drop it, Barnaby. Drop it right now,” I hissed, wrestling him down the hall and shoving him straight into the bedroom, slamming the solid wood door shut behind him before he could dart