"Huh," said Officer Ybarra. She looked at him a moment longer. "Okay." And she went down my walk to her truck with the dented tailgate and drove away, and I sat down on the floor next to Rook's bed and put my face in his ruff and stayed there until it got dark.
VI.
The ninth incident happened on a Sunday, eight days before the hearing, at the foot of Candace Vreeland's own front steps.
I didn't see it. I heard about it the way the whole neighborhood heard about it, through the app, at 7:12 a.m., in a post with three photographs and no punctuation to speak of. This is my own front walk. I almost stepped in it. When I went to the end of my driveway to take pictures her dog was on the sidewalk and LUNGED at me barking. I have a scar on my arm from a German Shepherd attack when I was seven years old. I am shaking as I write this. I have called the county.
And here is the part I have to be honest about, because if I'm not honest about it there's no point in telling any of this.
Rook and I had been on the sidewalk. Not near her house, but across the street from it, on our way back from the far end of Sandpiper, because I had stopped taking him on the pond path and stopped taking him past the mailbox island and the sidewalk was the only place left for him to walk. It was 6:50 a.m. Candace had come down her driveway in a quilted vest with her phone held up in front of her, and she had been moving fast and talking loudly, saying, "There it is, there it is," and Rook, who was trained for seven years to pay attention when a person moves fast toward his handler while shouting, had stopped, and stood square, and let out one bark. One. Deep and short. He did not pull. He did not lunge. He stood next to my left leg with the leash slack and barked once, and then he looked up at me, waiting to be told what the situation was.
My doorbell camera didn't catch it; we were too far down the street. Candace's phone did. She posted a clip twelve seconds long. You could see Rook bark, and you could hear her scream, a real scream, and then the image jerked wildly as she turned and ran up her driveway.
Officer Ybarra arrived at my door at 9:40 that morning. A second county truck pulled up behind her. She stood on the porch with her clipboard and her face very still.
"Mrs. Kowal," she said. "I'm sorry. I have to take him."
I don't remember exactly what I said. I know I didn't scream or cry. I know I told her about the one bark and the slack leash and how Candace had come at us fast, and I know she listened to all of it, and I know that when I was done she said, "I believe that's what you saw. I'm still required to impound pending the hearing. That's not up to me."