Leland called out another instruction.
“Off the line. Voice commands.”
James led her away from the obstacle course, unclipped the lead from her collar, and ran through the basic voice commands. He told her to sit, she sat. He told her to stay, she stayed. Stay, sit, come, heel, down. She would still have to learn the LAPD situational commands, which were different from military commands, but she did these well enough. After fifteen minutes of this, Leland called out again.
“She done good. Reward.”
Leland had been through this with her, too, and waited to see what would happen. The best dog training was based on the reward system. You did not punish a dog for doing wrong, you rewarded the dog for doing right. The dog did something you wanted, you reinforced the behavior with a reward—pet’m, tell’m they’re a good dog, let’m play with a toy. The standard reward for a K-9 working dog was a hard plastic ball with a hole drilled through it where Leland liked to smear a little peanut butter.
Leland watched James dig the hard plastic ball from his pocket, and wave it in front of the dog’s face. She showed no interest. James bounced it in front of her, trying to get her excited, but she moved away, and appeared to get nervous. Leland could hear James talking to her in the squeaky voice dogs associated with approval.
“Here you go, girl. Want it? Want to go get it?”
James tossed the ball past her, watching it bounce along the ground. The dog circled James’ legs, and sat down behind him, facing the opposite direction. Leland had made the mistake of throwing the damned ball way out into center field, and had to go get it.
Leland called out.
“That’s enough for today. Pack her up. Take her home. You got two weeks.”
Leland returned to his office, where he found Mace Styrik drinking a warm Diet Coke.
Mace frowned, just as Leland expected. He knew his men as well as his dogs.
“Why are you wasting his time and ours, giving him a bad dog like that?”
“That dog ain’t bad. She’s just not fit for duty. If they gave medals to dogs, she’d have so many, a sissy like you couldn’t lift’m.”
“I heard the shot. She squirrel up again?”
Leland dropped into his chair, leaned back, and put up his feet. He brooded about what he had seen.
“Wasn’t just the dog squirreled up.”
“Meaning what?”
Leland decided to think about it. He dug a tin of smokeless tobacco from his pocket, pushed a wad of dip behind his lower lip, and worked it around. He lifted a stained Styrofoam cup from the floor beside his chair, spit into it, then put the cup on his desk and arched his eyebrows at Mace.
“Have a sip of that Coke?”
“Not with that nasty stuff in your mouth.”
Leland sighed, then answered Mace’s original question.
“His heart isn’t in it. He can do the work well enough, else I would not have passed him, but they should have made him take the medical. God knows, he earned it.”
Mace shrugged, wordless, and had more of the Coke as Leland went on.
“Everyone has been carrying that young man, and, Lord knows, my heart goes out to him, what happened an’ all, but you know as well as I, we were pressured to take him. We passed over far better and more deserving applicants to give him this spot.”
“That may be, but we gotta take care of our own. We always have, we always will, and that’s the way it should be. He paid dear.”
“I’m not arguing that point.”
“Sounds like you are.”
“Goddamnit, you know me better than that. There are a thousand jobs they could have given him, but we are K-9. We aren’t those other jobs. We are dog men.”
Mace grudgingly had to agree.
“This is true. We’re dog men.”
“He is not.”
Mace frowned again.
“Then why’d you give him that dog?”
“He said he wanted her.”
“I say I want things all the time, you don’t give me squat.”
Leland worked the dip around again, and spit, thinking he might have to get up for his own Coke to wash down the taste.
“That poor animal is unfit for this job, and I suspect the same about him. I hope to God in His Glory I am wrong, sincerely I do, but there it is. They are suspect. That dog will help him realize he is not right for this job. Then she’ll go back to that family, and he’ll retire or transfer to a more suitable job, and all of us will be happier for it.”
Leland dug the remains of the dip from his lip, dropped it into the cup, then stood to go find a drink of his own.
“See if he needs a hand with her crate. Give him the dog’s file to take home, and tell him to read it. I want him to see what a fine animal she was. Tell him to be back here at oh-seven-hundred hours tomorrow.”
“You going to help him retrain her?”
Dogs suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder shared similar stress reactions with humans, and could sometimes be retrained, but it was slow work that required great patience on the part of the trainer, and enormous trust on the part of the dog.
“No, I am not. He wanted that German shepherd, he got her. I gave him two weeks, and then I will re- evaluate her.”
“Two weeks isn’t long enough.”
“No, it is not.”
Leland walked out to search for a Coke, thinking how some days he loved his job, and others he didn’t, and this day was one of the sad ones. He looked forward to going home later, and taking a walk with his own dog, a retired Mal named Ginger. They had long talks when they walked, and she always made Leland feel better. No matter how bad the day, she made him feel better.
6.
Scott held the driver’s seat forward, and hipped the door open wide to let the dog out.
“Here we go, dog. We’re home.”
Maggie stuck her head out a few inches, sniffed the air, then slowly jumped down. Scott’s Trans Am wasn’t a large car. She filled the back seat, but had seemed to enjoy the ride from Glendale to his place in Studio City. Scott had rolled down the windows, and she lay across the seat with her tongue out and eyes narrowed as the wind riffled her fur, looking content and happy.
Scott wondered if her hips ached when she got out as much as his side and shoulder.
Scott rented a one-bedroom guest house from an elderly widow on a quiet residential street not far from the Studio City park, and parked in her front yard under an elm tree. MaryTru Earle was short, thin, and in her early eighties. She lived in a small California ranch-style home at the front of her property, and rented the guest house in the rear to supplement her income. The guest house had once been a pool house and game room, back in the days when she had a pool and children at home, but when her husband retired twenty-odd years ago, they filled the pool, created a flower garden, and converted the pool house into the guest house. Her husband had been gone now for more than ten years, and Scott was her latest tenant. She liked having a police officer close at hand, as she often told him. Having a police officer in the guest house made her feel safe.
Scott clipped the lead to Maggie’s collar, and paused beside the car to let her look around. He thought she might have to pee, so he took her on a short walk. Scott let her set the pace, and sniff trees and plants for as long
