Author's Note: This is for a request from reviewer Agent Last Wish. Thanks for the kind review, hope you enjoy this new one. It may have a sequel or two.

Tony had been saying it for years, and he was right. Abby had Gibbs wrapped around his little finger BIG time. How else would she have been able to talk him into such a hair-brained notion?

She had been at bowling practice with the Sisters when one of them mentioned that the brother of a cousin of one of the parishioners had found a litter of puppies in a box along the road side, obviously dumped off by, in Abby's words, a "cruel and irresponsible and totally sub-human person!" And now she was on a mission to find homes for them all, and Abby-on-a-mission, by all those who knew her well, was an unstoppable force.

Thus, Leroy Jethro Gibbs found himself with his shaky new charge at the giant pet retailers, spending money that he had saved for a new wood-working project on an extensive list of 'must haves' stuffed into his jacket pocket by his beloved lab tech. As the cart filled and his savings dwindled, Gibbs kept replaying the fateful conversation in his head, trying to figure out just where and how he'd missed the legal loopholes of puppy ownership. None of his excuses seemed to fly with Abby - she countered him at every angle, as if she'd been practicing for this very confrontation. In the end, he had lost. She knew he would, but she hadn't fought fair, either. She'd already picked out a puppy for him and had it tucked away in a pet carrier in her lab, at the ready to spring on him and make him cave. It had worked. He'd caved, and now he was the proud father of yet ANOTHER stray, this one not quite house-broken yet. Well, he'd managed to puppy-proof his place enough for his 'loyal St. Bernard, AND housebreak him, too, so how hard could it be for a real one? And Tony had excitedly pledged to help him when he'd found out about the new addition - it seems DiNozzo had never been allowed any real pet of his own, much less a puppy, so Gibbs made the lame excuse that he was really doing it for Tony's benefit.

He snuggled the squirming Border Collie pup up under his chin to calm him and felt a sigh of tension and stress leave his own body. Yeah, right. All for Tony. "Hell," he thought to himself. "Let DiNozzo get his OWN puppy!"