Gun Shy (12 page)

“There’s still a lot about this that doesn’t add up, though,” I said. “I wish your friend Letty would call back. It sounded as though she knew the Whites personally.I’ll bet she could answer a lot of questions.” I had told Maude about the overseas phone call she had missed, and I had also told Uncle Roe that Letty Cranston could be found in Crete. Of course the fact that she had lost the connection before leaving a return phone number did not make her any easier to track down.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Maude said abruptly, and I looked at her in surprise. “Speaking of missed phone calls, in all the excitement I completely forgot. That fellow from Coastal Assistance Dogs returned your call. I told him about the incident this morning with the gunfire, and he seemed most concerned. He wanted to talk to you personally. He said he’d be in the office until five.”

I hurried to find the number and place the call.

It was put through immediately, and Wes sounded relieved to hear from me. We talked for a few moments about the jumping-through-the-window episode, and I assured him that there was no serious physical injury. But I knew that his concerns about the dog went beyond the Lab’s physical well-being.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this kind of behavior is deeply alarming,” he told me. “Even a one-time occurrence can make the dog too unreliable to be returned to service.”

My heart sank. My instinct was to make excuses for Hero—he had just been through a terrible trauma, he was stressed both physically and mentally and if this had never happened before, surely he deserved a second chance. But by force of will I kept my mouth shut. This man was the expert, not I. And people’s lives really were at stake.

I said, “If you can’t take him back into the program, what will happen to him?”

“Oh, we have a list of highly qualified applicants waiting to adopt one of our retired service dogs,” he assured me. “Very often they can be placed as a pet with a member of the deceased’s family.” He hesitated. “But in this case I see there is only the husband and a father.”

I said, “The husband still hasn’t been located.” And because I thought, on behalf of Hero, he had the right to know, I added, “There’s a possibility he might not be, um, able to care for a dog.” This was true, whether he was found injured, dead or guilty of murder. I could sense the puzzlement in Wes’s silence but didn’t feel free to elaborate.

He said, “I found a volunteer who can pick Nero up on Saturday, but I could arrange to be in your area later next week. I’ll be driving back from Atlanta. I’d like to evaluate Nero myself, and then I could bring him back with me. I know it’s an imposition to ask you to keep him—”

“Not at all,” I assured him. “He’s really no trouble. I like having him around. And now that I know about his noise phobia, I’ll definitely keep him closer to me. I got your fax of his list of commands, and I can keep practicing with him. Do you think it would be okay to take him out in public some?”

“That would probably be good for him,” Wes said. “Just be sure he minds his manners, and don’t let him get away with anything a service dog shouldn’t be doing.”

“I don’t think that will be problem,” I said, looking across the room at those sweet liquid eyes gazing at me from the floor.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Miss Stockton. I’ll be in touch.”

Maude was clearing away the tea things as I returned. “I take it we have a boarder for a little while longer?”

I nodded, snatching another tea cake before she removed the plate. “He wants to come down and get the dog himself next week. That’s fine with me. I always wanted to train a service dog. I mean, I know that’s not what I’m actually doing, but just taking him through his paces is fascinating to me.”

Maude cast a skeptical glance in the direction of Hero, who had not once moved from the place I had assigned him on the floor by my chair. “I don’t know, my dear. He still doesn’t look like he’s quite up to being put through any paces.”

“His heart may not be in it, but he’s too well trained not carry out his commands. Watch this.”

I snatched one of the napkins from the tray Maude was carrying and dropped it on the floor. “Hero,” I said. “Take.” I pointed to the napkin.

The Lab pushed to his feet, ambled over to the napkin, picked it up off the floor and returned to sit in front of me. “Good,” I told him, and held out my hand. “Drop.”

He released the slightly soggy napkin into my hand. I praised him and ruffled his ears. He seemed to tolerate, rather than appreciate, my affection.

Maude said, “Very nice. Now if he would just do the dishes and tidy the kitchen before he goes to bed, we’d be all set, wouldn’t we?”

“Well, I don’t know about the dishes, but he can at least lock up and turn off the lights for us. Hero, door.”

Hero trotted toward the front door, jumped up and clawed at the doorknob until he turned the deadbolt and it locked into place. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, “Good boy! Now, lights.”

For a moment he was confused, since he had only recently learned where the light switch was in this house. Then he located the white switch plate on the wall by the door, leapt up and pawed the switch off. The two table lamps that were controlled by the switch went off and the room was left in dimness. I exclaimed again, “Wonderful! Good boy, Hero!”

Cisco, alerted by the enthusiasm in my voice, got up and looked around expectantly for the treat that usually accompanied that level of vocal enthusiasm. In his mind, all things good in the universe centered around him.

“Very clever,” agreed Maude, still holding the tray. “I don’t suppose he could, er . . .” She gestured to the light switch with one shoulder.

Heady with my own power, I said, “Hero, lights.”

Hero jumped up and pawed the light switch again.

A golden blur charged across my peripheral vision, accompanied by a snarling, sharp-voiced bark that was so outrageous coming from my mild-mannered golden retriever that at first I didn’t recognize it. Cisco leapt on Hero and knocked him to the ground, and the whole world erupted into a confusion of rolling yellow dog bodies and furious vocalizations. Majesty sprang to her feet and started barking; the two Aussies charged forward, excitedly cheering the combatants on; the tea tray clattered as Maude set it aside and moved quickly to grab the collars of the nearest dogs.

It was over in a matter of seconds. The Lab yelped and Cisco gave a final series of hell-houndish vocalizations. I shouted, “Cisco, leave!” and the moment he turned his head I grabbed his collar and marched him silently out of the house and into the backyard, where I exiled him behind a locked dog door.

By the time I returned, Maude had my other three dogs in their crates—a testament to her efficiency and smooth handling skills—and Hero was cowering under a table.

“Damn,” I said. My heart was thundering in my chest. “Damn, damn, damn. Is he hurt?”

“Not even a speck of slobber on him,” replied Maude mildly. “It was all talk.”

But whether he was injured or not, I knew the kind of psychological damage that could be done to a dog who has been attacked by another dog. Something like this could turn a formerly social dog into an aggressor, or trigger a fear of others of its own kind that could last a lifetime. As if the poor thing hadn’t been through enough. The fact that
my
dog had been the aggressor . . . My Cisco who had actually attacked a service dog who was performing his duties . . . I could hardly get my mind around that. I just couldn’t believe what I had seen.

“What in the world got into him?” I demanded shakily. I sank to the floor beside the table where the Lab was hiding and dug into my pocket for treats. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Cisco isn’t aggressive! What happened?” I realized that I sounded like half the clients who came to me wanting me to “fix” their aggressive dogs. The one thing they all had in common was denial. But this was Cisco!

“Calm down,” Maude said in that same easy, matter-of-fact tone she used to calm spooked animals. “You’re not doing this fellow any favors by shoving cheese into his face. Leave him be.”

She was right, of course. My body language radiated tension, and I was crowding a dog who already felt trapped. I left a few tidbits on the floor and moved away several feet, consciously trying to relax my shoulders.

“He’s jealous, that’s what it is,” I said. I deliberately forced my voice into a close approximation of Maude’s calm tone. “I’ve been paying too much attention to Hero, and this is Cisco’s way of trying to eliminate the competition.”

“Dogs don’t have secondary emotions,” Maude reminded me. “More likely, he saw Hero’s jumping behavior as a threat, and he was defending himself—or you.”

I knew her explanation was the most logical one, and I wanted to believe it. But it’s hard not to anthropomorphize when your dog does something as shocking and as completely out of character as Cisco had just done.

Maude said, “Hero, here.”

Hero left the shelter of the table and came to her, his tail low but wagging. She stroked his ear. “Let Cisco in on a lead. Likely he’s completely forgotten the whole thing by now.”

I did as she requested, and of course she was right. The two dogs sniffed noses, wagged tails and lost interest. Hero went to his crate, and Cisco looked up at me as though wondering why he was on a leash inside the house.

“Just watch them for a while,” Maude advised. She unsnapped Cisco’s lead and he went back to his rubber bone. “They’ll be fine.”

But for the first time I began to feel as though five dogs inside the house might be too many.

After that unsettling incident I was supersensitive to the possibility of another, and when I was awakened by the sound of violent barking before daylight the next morning, I shot out of bed and was halfway down the stairs before I realized that the noise couldn’t possibly herald another dogfight: All the dogs were crated except Cisco, and he was right on my heels. I made my way groggily down the remainder of the stairs, quieting the dogs with a sharp word. Of course, quieting a herding dog is more easily said than done, and since most of the barking was coming from the two Aussies and the collie, all I got was an occasional break in the chorus.

In the spates of silence I was able to discern what had set them off in the first place—the grinding sound of heavy-equipment engines as they rounded the curve in the road at the end of my drive. Standing on tiptoe to look out the high glass window in the front door, I could see the flash of headlights from the highway—two, three, four big trucks lumbered their way up a grade that rarely saw more than a dozen vehicles of any description each day. Who in the world would be transporting heavy equipment along this little-used road at five forty-five in the morning?

It took even my foggy brain only a moment to make the connection.
Tomorrow we bring in the bulldozers.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Miles Young,” I muttered. Was this what I had to look forward to all winter?

The barks quieted down as the last truck whined its way into the distance, and the dogs stood alertly in their crates, anticipating, in the way only dogs can at five forty-five in the morning, another wonderful and exciting day. I checked first on Hero, who, in perfect service dog fashion, had not barked but simply stood, edged toward the back of his crate, awaiting whatever I required of him. He did not seem particularly distressed by either the loud trucks or Cisco’s presence, but he was far from exhibiting the happy insouciance of the Aussies or the grinning, tail-curling stretches of the collie. I let Cisco and the other three dogs out into the yard; then I came back for Hero. Maude was probably right—the disagreement (I couldn’t bring myself to call it a fight) had been a one-time incident that was by now completely forgotten by both dogs. But I did not want to risk another one.

Though I cursed Miles Young for every lost second of sleep, the advantage of having been awakened before dawn was that I had a head start on the day. I finished feeding and exercising the kennel dogs, cleaned the runs, laundered the dog beds, sterilized the dog dishes and brought the accounts up to date. Since it was still too early to make or return phone calls, I spent some time working with Hero.

It broke my heart to think that such an incredible dog might never again do the work for which he was trained. And even though I knew, intellectually, that once the temperament of a service dog broke down there was very little that could be done to correct it, I was determined to do what I could to prepare him to shine in the eyes of Wes Richards when he arrived to evaluate him next week.

I locked Cisco in the office while I worked with Hero in the training room, and I could hear him barking indignantly. When it came to treats, or the possibility of treats, he had extrasensory perception.

Although nothing about Hero’s demeanor demonstrated enthusiasm for his work, and though he often showed such reluctance to obey as to require an admonishment, it was an unmitigated thrill for me to work with a dog who could perform complex tasks on command. I was amazed to the point of delighted laughter on more than one occasion and felt a brief stab of jealousy for those lucky trainers who actually got to work with dogs of this caliber every day.

A little after eight, the phone rang. I had brought the portable phone with me to the training room and left it on the sign-in table by the door. I knew from the list that Wes had faxed me that Hero was supposed to be able to take the phone in his mouth and bring it on command, whether or not it was ringing. So I told him, “Phone,” and even though it was cheating, I pointed him toward the place where the portable phone chirruped on the table.

His response time was so slow that if I hadn’t met him halfway across the room the caller surely would have hung up before Hero brought me the phone. But it was such a wonderful thing to see the Lab cross the room, put his paws up on the table, take the phone in his mouth and start to return to me with it that I called the exercise a success. I offered him a treat as I pushed the TALK button, but Hero simply turned away, crossed the room to an empty crate and lay down inside it.