Lord of the Fleas by Kassandra Lamb

Author:Kassandra Lamb [Lamb, Kassandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: misterio press LLC

The weekend went by fast, as weekends are prone to do. Will and I had some quality time on Saturday. We didn’t talk again about the shooting, other than my suggestion that he needed to get some counseling. He hadn’t argued the point. “The department’s got somebody they refer to. I’ll get their name and number.”

That evening, we grilled steaks on our back deck for supper. Will seemed more relaxed than he had in weeks.

On Sunday afternoon, my new assistant, Carla Cummings, brought over our new mutual trainee. She’d spent the last two weeks reinforcing the basics—such as sit, come, and stay—with this new dog, a big and incredibly furry Chow-Siberian Husky mix.

This recently recognized designer breed, dubbed Chuskies or Husky-Chows, was popular right now. But sometimes those cute fluff balls people had acquired as puppies became too overwhelming when they grew into fifty to seventy-pound adults. Some of them were ending up in rescue shelters.

This gal was one of those rescues. Her soon-to-be veteran owner had named her Bear.

Neither Huskies nor Chow-Chows normally make good service dogs. They both tend to be too independent. Chows also bond strongly to their owners, which could be good or bad from a service dog standpoint.

But both were incredibly smart, and when the two breeds mixed, you could end up with a more mellow blend of both. Bear seemed to be one of those dogs.

Mattie Jones, the director of the agency I train for, had made my position as a trainer of other trainers official. She’d even talked the board of trustees into an hourly rate. It was barely above minimum wage, but it was nice to have my efforts recognized.

Plus, having a trainer-in-training assistant meant I could concentrate on one dog at a time, putting the final touches on the training and working with the veterans, while said assistant handled the more basic, and more boring, stuff with the next dog.

This particular service dog trainer-in-training, was already an experienced dog trainer, so my job was mainly to show her the ropes regarding the specific tasks that service dogs perform. Carla was also several years older than me. I wasn’t real sure how she felt about receiving instruction from someone younger.

Today, in the backyard of my training center, she was showing me what Bear could already do. The dog seemed to be well-behaved, with a heart almost as big as her body. Things went smoothly, until I pointed out that a non-verbal gesture needed to be paired with each verbal command.

“Why?” Carla demanded.

“For flexibility. In public, the veteran may not want to be too obvious about his or her signals to the dog, so a subtle gesture may be better.”

“Then why don’t we train the dogs to just respond to the non-verbal commands? Wouldn’t that be easier than the veteran having to remember both?”

I counted to five. Asking questions was good when you were learning something new, but I wasn’t crazy about her tone.

“What if the veteran’s hands are full?” I said. “The sergeant I’m working with now either walks with two canes or is in a wheelchair.

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