It was a beautiful May morning for the wedding of Kaybri Lynn and Noah Stoltzfus at the Stoltzfus Farm. The joyous event was attended by hundreds. Cars were parked for a mile in every direction. Young boys and girls were assigned to tend the hundred or so horses and buggies that assembled on a newly harvested field near the barn. Spare bedrooms in Amish homes were hard to find as friends and relatives drove their buggies for days to reach the Stoltzfus Farm.

When Kaybri told Teri about the project, she pitched it as a way for Teri to help both dogs and humans at the same time. But Teri didn’t need to be convinced. “It’s perfect,” Teri said. “I love this idea. And with my experience running a nonprofit, I think I can pull this together pretty easily.”

On a Sunday morning in June, Kaybri woke up to a phone call from Noah, who told her that Phoenix was ready to have her puppies. He politely requested that Kaybri come to the farm and

be present in case of any problems with the births. He explained that it meant a lot to him and his father that their first puppies be as healthy and happy as possible.

Kaybri thought about the one thing that always calmed her down when she was agitated. It had always been the dogs.

“Would you like to meet Phoenix?” Kaybri motioned with her arm for the group to follow her to the dog’s kennel.

A ding from her phone woke Kaybri up just before the alarm was supposed to go off. She was exhausted after having examined and transported thirty dogs to the Stoltzfus Farm the previous day. When she saw it was a text from Noah, she immediately became wide awake.

After what Noah said to her, Kaybri didn’t try to contact him that night.

The next day, Noah didn’t come into the clinic. Autumn said he called and wanted Kaybri to replace him. Autumn said that she didn’t know whether he meant temporarily or permanently.

Kaybri couldn’t fall sleep that night. She was angry at everyone and at the same time filled with self-doubt. She started to question whether she should even bother going into the clinic the next day. It wasn’t really her practice—it still belonged to Frank. And he was threatening to throw her out.

The council expected that surprises would come from teenagers during their Rumspringa. Thomas Stoltzfus, however, was a respected elder of the community. His family had been farming in Lancaster County forever, and never in the family’s history had there been a serious violation of the community’s rules. Until this day. 

Two days later, Kaybri received an urgent call from Judge Thompson’s bailiff. She needed to appear in court at ten o’clock. Kaybri had no time to change into business attire, so she threw a coat over her scrubs and walked the four blocks to the courthouse.

Teri McGee was in a grim mood when she arrived at the clinic at seven on Sunday morning. 

“I don’t really see what we’re going to accomplish today,” she said as she climbed into Kaybri’s truck.  

Teri grudgingly agreed to meet Kaybri Sunday morning. After she left, Kaybri checked in with Noah. She found him in the yard behind the clinic playing with the collie they had rescued from the pet store.  

     “How is she?” Kaybri asked. 

     “She’s going to make it. We also dodged the bullet with the other dogs. None of the rescued dogs have parvo. It’s almost a miracle.” 

Kaybri ignored the whistles and compliments that the staff sent in her direction when she entered the clinic wearing her business attire. She couldn’t wait to change back into her jeans and flannel shirt and trade the patent-leather pumps for sneakers. 

Noah entered Kaybri’s office and handed her a packet of papers. He could see Kaybri’s face darken with each page she read. “Who has a lawyer who can file a suit with the courts that fast?” Kaybri couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. 

Two weeks after the barn was evacuated, Kaybri received a visitor.  

Kaybri had heard all about Teri McGee and her organization Helping Every Dog (HED) from Frank, who had banned Teri from the clinic. It wasn’t that Frank disagreed with her. He had a distaste…

“Keep your eyes on your work,” Noah would quietly remind Kaybri as one dog after another was extracted from its wooden cage. Since most of them were too weak to walk, they were put on a litter and brought to her. After living their entire lives in a confined space, the dogs’ muscles had atrophied.  

Kaybri wept from the time they left the farm until they reached the Stevenses’ home. Every few miles, she’d erupt in anger and slam the steering wheel with her hands. Frank and Dorothy who were sitting next to her worried if they would all make it safely home. 

The large rectangular dinner table was set for twenty-two people. The children were dispersed at smaller tables placed wherever there was an open space on the main level of the house. Thomas Stoltzfus sat at one end of the adults’ table, and Noah’s mother Elizabeth sat at the other, but she quickly…

Sunday afternoon, Kaybri drove the truck to pick up Frank, Dorothy, and Noah. When Kaybri knocked at their door, Dorothy pulled her enthusiastically into the house and then into her bedroom.

Noah woke Kaybri, who was asleep in her office and put a note in her hand. It took a minute for her eyes to focus.  

     Your father wants to see you. And bring the girl vet. Love, Mom 

As they drove away from the farm, Kaybri kept glancing to her right to watch Noah as he wrapped his hand with a bandanna and tied the ends to stem the bleeding. Kaybri, seeing the blood flow through the cloth, pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the truck.  

On the Thursday after the dinner party, Kaybri informed Noah she wanted to visit the Stoltzfus farm that night. As Noah started to protest, Kaybri cut him off and stated that she intended to leave the clinic at ten and needed him to show her how to get to the farm. 

Kaybri was asleep on the sofa in her office when Frank touched her hand to wake her.  

“What time is it?” she asked, raising her head groggily. 

“It’s six a.m.” 

Kaybri found Noah’s and Autumn’s report on her desk a week later. The information was clear without doing a statistical study. The dogs sold by Puppy Camp were dying too young and too often. Of the sixteen dogs that had died, eight had been purchased there. She asked Noah to go with her to Puppy Camp.

As Kaybri walked under the enormous sycamore tree and spotted Frank on his rocker on the porch, she wondered if he had spent the night right there with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. Fairbanks was still at his feet. There were even more children and pets running across his lawn than there had been the previous day. 

Later that day, Tandy and Ethan Danzig arrived at the clinic carrying Linny, their gray Labradoodle. Autumn paged Kaybri and Noah to come to the treatment room right away. When they arrived, Tandy and Ethan explained how they had read every book they could find and watched hours of video online, but the thought of being responsible for Linny and the birth of her first litter was too much for them.  

Even though the clinic didn’t start seeing patients until eight, Kaybri arrived at six a.m. on Tuesday. She loved the quiet of the morning, the dew on the grass, and treating the recuperating dogs even if she didn’t agree with how they had arrived at the clinic.  

When Kaybri arrived at the clinic, Dr. Frank Stevens and his staff of three greeted her warmly. Dr. Stevens was tall and thin and had only a few tufts of white hair on his head and a sparse white beard. He struck her as quite elderly, and he seemed to have trouble walking, but he had a youthful smile and seemed genuinely delighted to meet her.  

Many nights, Esther felt all alone despite her mother’s presence in the house. At night, she would often hear her mother plodding to the bathroom of their small apartment and then the squeak of the medicine cabinet opening and closing. By the time she was six years old, she understood that her mother was taking pills to “make a sad feeling go away,” as she explained it. She said the pills helped, but she never seemed to get any better despite taking them more and more frequently.  

     It was a gorgeous sunny day for the outdoor graduation ceremony on the quad. When Dr. Stevens, the dean of students, saw Kaybri Lynn seated with her classmates, she left the faculty processional for a moment to say something strange in Kaybri’s ear. “Come see me after the ceremony. I have a contract for you.”   

     Had she said contract or contact? What could this be about? But first Kaybri had to give her speech. She was the valedictorian of her class of fifty-four at the California School of Veterinary Medicine.