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The paint on my office door is so new you can smell it. My office furniture smells just as new, because it is. And today I got my first paying patient—a male beagle someone dropped off at the Port Gracie animal shelter. He’s neutered, maybe forty-five pounds, cute as a bug, but in serious trouble. At some point, he’d tangled with a porcupine and caught a face full of quills. Pulling those quills is a job from hell. The pain is horrific. Dogs have to be sedated and often will whimper and writhe, even under heavy anesthetic. I sympathized with