Elizabeth Watson
The doggie doctor
CHAPTER ONE
Mimi Spender was born and raised with animals. The family cat was born on her birthday – October 13 – and her father kept two pure-bred, hot-blooded Irish Setters for duck hunting season. On page five of the family album a newspaper clipping, headed: "Dog Saves Woman from Burning House" sported a photograph of Mimi's grandmother with her arm around her pet German Shepherd. Not to mention the notorious woman, Aunt Celia, who raised and trained racing horses.
With a family tree that was partial to animals, nobody raised an eyebrow when Mimi, against anti-feminine odds, made up her mind to become a veterinarian.
At the age of nineteen she entered the University of California at Davis in the school of Veterinary Science, an unexpectedly unique field for a girl of Mimi's equally unique physical stature.
A tall, chestnut haired girl with locks that had never been clipped, Mimi Spender was a traffic-stopper. Lanky and limber, her body moved in rhythm to the sway and jounce of her thick, waist-length hair that in the sunlight shimmered with red highlights. A modest smile and apple cheeks accented a perky up-turned nose and freckles that disappeared with her golden summer tan. Shy and unassuming by nature, her eyes, the color of swimming pools, twinkled with a suspicion-raising non-chalance.
Her agility was near to animalistic. Mimi could ride and train horses as well as any six-shooting, gun-toting Zane Grey character. Maybe it was this potentially ego-deflating quality of her's that put men off. Men (… or boys, really) seemed to be afraid of her. A girl in veterinary school? Had to be something weird about her!
But that was not to say that Mimi didn't need sex as much as any healthy female. These days her love life seemed doomed to emptiness, and that disturbed her greatly. Men and money… those seemed to be her two pitfalls.
The end of her freshman year found her with no boy friend and a high B average, just a fraction away from the 4.0 requirement to renew her scholarship. For two weeks she fell into deep depression, wondering how a young woman as herself could extricate herself from this sticky spider-web of rotten luck. Her defensive female instincts told her that Dr. Osborn ('Horse-Face') as he was called) had slighted her with a C because she was a woman – the only woman in his freshman agronomy course. Playing the weak female didn't change his mind, and playing the strong liberated one put him off worse. He "… didn't want to hear about it," claiming he had serious students to consider, and he could only give out so many A's and B's, and whoever got stuck on the low point of the Bell-shaped curve was just that… stuck.
What to do? Her parents, poor farmers, couldn't afford to pay her tuition and room and board, too. Job hunting was fruitless; this was the depression and there weren't jobs even for married men with families. Who would hire a college girl planning to go back to school in three months? Except for her part-time come-and-go as-you-please job at the university farms a mile and a half out off campus, she had no income.
The answer… or so it seemed to be at the time… came unexpected when she was exercising in the university corrals a horse, Pansy, who was recuperating from a cyst operation. On that late June afternoon she'd noticed a man leaning against the wooden gate, elbows braced on the post, watching her intently. Mimi had noticed that beside him was a tripod and a very expensive looking camera attached to it, and he was focusing on her. Feeling it her duty to watch the grounds, she'd drawn Pansy to a halt and inquired what he wanted. This was not a farm open to the public, she curtly informed him.
Apologetically, he introduced himself as John Dobkins, a photographer who wanted to take photographs of her with the horses. Vignettes… a pretty girl feeding the horses, brushing their coats, leaning against a pitchfork in pristine, countrified style. She dismissed the idea with a shoo of the hand, wondering what kind of flaky character would want to take photographs of her.
… Until he mentioned money.
Lots of money. That caused Mimi to put her finger to her pouty lip and reconsider. Was this manna from heaven?
It didn't take much for John Dobkins to sweet-talk Mimi into posing the next afternoon. But what he failed to mention (and with reason) was that he was a photographer of nudes, employed by a men's slick magazine.
Next day found Mimi charged with energy. Hair freshly washed and brushed to gleaming, she rode her ten-speed bicycle to the university farms for her appointment with Mr. Dobkins at the horse stables, empty on Sunday afternoon except for the on-call vet.
Mr. Dobkins, a fair-skinned, not-too bad looking man for forty-five was setting up his tripod in the horse barn when Mimi came panting in, cheeks flushed from the five mile ride from her dormitory on campus. He'd told her not to get dressed up, that Levi's and a farmish-looking midriff tie top was fine… perfect, in fact, for the bucolic image he wanted to capture. Still, Mimi felt a little silly about posing in front of a camera dressed like a farm girl.
"Hi!" she greeted, finding him in the empty stall at the eastern corner of the barn where piles of loose sweet-smelling hay were stacked. Behind Pansy, Dapper, Saul, and Carrie swished their tails fending off the bee-sized horseflies. Pushing her hair back behind her ear, she took time to stroke Pansy's nose. "Beautiful, isn't she?"
"… Huh? Yeah…" Mr. Dobkins was obviously more concerned about staging the shot than the condition of the horses, loaded the camera with film.
When he was finished, he turned to watch Mimi for a slight moment as she examined amateurishly the incision on Pansy's right flank, drawing in a hissing breath at the sight of the coagulated crust of blood. "You ready?"
"Ohhh… sure," Mimi shrugged her shoulders apologetically, then looked sheepish for a moment before whispering, "… what do you want me to do? I… I've never modeled before."
"No problem. Just follow my orders," he directed, appraising her lithesome body with hungry eyes. "First I have to check you out… see what your best angles are," Dobkins grinned, showing the gums of his teeth. "Don't, worry, honey," he assured, checking to see with a quick turn of the head that the barn door was closed, "It's all right… it's part of my job. I have to look girls over all the time. I've done everything from still-lifes to nudes… a subject is a subject."
"Gosh… I thought you'd just take a couple of fast shots, but then I don't know anything about photography," she wrinkled up her nose, admitting ignorance. There was her downfall…
"Now be a good kid and stand up straight so I can get a good look at you."
"Oh… all right." Mimi stroked her hair smooth and, squaring her shoulders, gave Mr. Dobkins one of those helpless little girl grins that drove men wild. "Do… do I look okay?" she stammered, running her hands down over the tight-fitting faded Levi's she wore, suddenly feeling terribly asexual and embarrassingly innocent for a model. Mimi turned her profile to his eager eyes, her firm full breasts swelling out provocatively beneath her farmer's handkerchief print blouse that knotted about four inches above her waist… just enough to let a sliver of tanned stomach peek through.
The photographer nodded approvingly. "You look great… at least from what I can see. But you're going to have to show a little more leg, honey. Remember, I have to entice the reader." He stood up after adjusting the camera, his hand posed pensively under his chin. "… Guess I shoulda told you to wear cut-offs… you know, the kind with the ragged edges… Levi's, you call them…?"
"Oh… yeah. That would have been nice," echoed Mimi cooperatively. Then her eyes brightened, blue as the sky on a June afternoon. "I could ride back to the dorm and pick up a pair."
Mr. Dobkins' joviality suddenly vanished. "No, no, no… we don't have time for that. Take off your Levi's and let's see how you look in your panties."
"I… I couldn't do that…"
Mr. Dobkins stiffened. "See here little girl…" he growled. "I have a reputation at stake here and I'm offering you a good sum of money to take off your Levi's. Okay, if you won't I'll find another model!" his impatience pierced the stillness of the barn where an occasional flag of a horse's tail was the only sound on that Sunday afternoon.