Chapter Three
One dog-human combo occupied Zepke’s training area when Clara, LuLu, Gracie, and I arrived — a small, black, curly-haired cutie with a gray-haired man, who smiled at us briefly while reserving most of his attention for his dog.
That was mutual, because his dog’s attention was on the man with a focus I only achieved with Gracie when holding top-notch treats.
We’d passed through Zepke’s store to a zig-zag of a hallway that led to this training area. It was a large, rectangular space with folding chairs and elevated mesh dog beds alternating around the perimeter, leaving an open area in the center.
We walked directly across the open area to the opposite wall, which was one of the rectangle’s long walls.
Clara put LuLu on a bed between her chair and mine. I gave Gracie the place command to take the bed to my right.
She looked around for something more interesting to do, then deigned to comply.
This room was a later addition to the original Zepke’s building, which was a mere century old, but echoed the buildings around the town square a block away. It had an alternative exit door that led to a narrow passage between buildings before opening on Beguiling Way.
Whoever constructed the buildings in this block that faced Tanner Street on one side and Beguiling Way on the other must have been a jigsaw puzzle devotee.
The trainer, Leo, came in, greeting each dog by name, even though it had been more than a year since he’d encountered Gracie and LuLu, while bestowing generic smiles on the humans.
Probably didn’t know most of the human names. Not that I held that against him. I approved of his priorities.
A couple more human-dog combos arrived.
Following the same dynamic I’d noticed in places such as waiting rooms, each successive arrival sat in the middle of the largest remaining open gap.
Until the next set of two humans and one dog.
The preteen holding the leash of the bouncing black, brown, and white puppy started toward the gap that would have perpetuated the trend of newcomers halving the largest remaining open space. She was stopped by an older woman with her.
That older woman was Donna, the undisputed boss of the dog park, who pointed the girl and Bernie the Bernedoodle toward us.
Gracie and LuLu alerted with delight, knowing both Donna and Bernie from the dog park.
Bernie’s distracted excitement — people! dogs! — zeroed in on us with recognition and the girl had all she could do to hold onto him, leaning back in her effort to counter his energy.
I gathered in Gracie’s leash to prevent her from meeting Bernie halfway. Clara lost LuLu’s leash and resorted to hugging her around her neck.
“Grandma,” the girl panted.
“You’re doing fine. Put him on that bed and sit there.”
There was a chair on the far side of a dog bed that Bernie mostly occupied the space above and in front of — but not on — as he circled and bounced, bounced and circled.
Donna took the chair on this side of Bernie’s bed.
That put her next to Gracie.
Oh. Noooooo.
“Hello,” Donna said to us. “This is my granddaughter. Layla, meet Clara Woodrow and Sheila Mackey from the dog park.”
The girl, occupied with Bernie, muttered a hello.
Donna said to her granddaughter, “The collie with Sheila is called Gracie and—”
Hearing her name was enough to send Gracie into a scrabbling effort to launch herself around Donna’s shoulders to lick all over her face.
Her version of hello for people she liked.
Did I mention she’d regressed on the polite greeting?
In a vain attempt to look like I was in control, I clamped my foot on Gracie’s leash, holding it in place on the floor, which should have brought her into a down on the bed.
It didn’t. Her butt stayed in the air at the same time she contorted her body into a C to face Donna. All she had to do was lie down and she’d be comfortable. Instead, she maintained a position that would have broken Gumby.
“—that white beauty is LuLu.”
“Hi, Donna.” Impressive that Clara could get words out while using her body to block LuLu from springing across the space to greet Donna and Bernie.
“But what are you doing here? You don’t need .
. .” Clara let her words fade out. “Oh, you want to give Bernie the distraction of other dogs during training?”
“Not only Bernie.” With a glint, Donna said, “I’ve come with family members before, as well as friends. Usually, to get them started, then I leave them to it.”
That made sense.
But she wasn’t done.
“And now and then I come back for a refresher with Hattie.”
“Hattie?” I echoed the name of her senior golden, while finally getting Gracie to lie down by sliding my foot along the leash until it nearly reached her neck. As soon as she connected with the bed, I eased my foot back.
Donna’s glint intensified. “No dog is perfect, nor is any owner. Training is never done. Not for canine or human.”
It was like she’d plugged into my earlier thoughts about Lassie Syndrome and its attendant fear of failing Gracie.
Beside me, Clara gasped.
Not loud, not dramatic, but enough to turn both Donna and me toward her, then shift our gazes to follow Clara’s toward the entry.
I don’t think I gasped, but I knew a temptation to sob. Donna clicked her tongue.
Berrie Vittlow stood there with two of her younger Boston terrier fosters.
The thought that this meant a dozen or more Boston terriers were left without human oversight produced a moment of empathy for Berrie’s neighbors, immediately overwritten by the thought that the dogs never had much human oversight with Berrie on hand, either.
Berrie considered herself an expert dog trainer, despite all evidence to the contrary. She also widely dispensed her would-be expertise, despite all efforts to stop her.
At this moment, she had the leashes of the two young dogs crossed in front of her as they strained in opposite directions to bark and lunge at the closest dogs.
Gracie stood, possibly recognizing the two Bostons, certainly poised to dash across the open area to herd them into her version of order.
I reined her back in, which is how I missed exactly what happened next.
Shouts of “control your dog,” followed by other comments that weren’t G-rated, from various voices, barking, and the sounds of lots of feet scrambling.
When I looked up, Leo had a two-fisted grip on Berrie’s raincoat from behind. It was the only reason Berrie wasn’t face-planting, because her feet, caught up in the Bostons’ crossed leashes, were stuck well behind her center of gravity.
Two couples in their thirties flowed past her and Leo, one couple on each side, without glancing at Berrie and Leo, still caught in a messy and decidedly unromantic knockoff of the iconic I’m flying image of Jack and Rose from Titanic.
The man half of the right-side couple, had shortened the leash so much that his young dog’s front feet practically came off the ground. He half steered, half dragged the large puppy, who showed interest but no sign of aggression, past the Boston on that side.
A woman followed him, displaying no interest in any of the events unfolding.
The woman half of the couple on the left stepped over the Boston on that side with exaggerated high steps that were in keeping with the exaggerated spindliness of the spikes on her knee-high shiny black boots.
Her boots were not made for walking, though possibly for stabbing anything that got underfoot.
Like dogs.
In her ostentatious movements, I saw no apparent concern for the Boston, but rather an air of someone stepping over poop and believing the universe owed her better.
Not an air that people who care for their dogs, including picking up after them, frequently exhibit.
I’m no fan of Berrie. But this left-side woman had no call to treat the Bostons with disdain. They were young and had the Berrie disadvantage. Besides, they were cute with their black-and-white tuxedo fur pattern.
Behind that woman, a man with a young goldendoodle followed, awkwardly avoiding the Berrie-and-Bostons blockade.
That man and woman circled well into the open area to meet up with the couple and dog from the right. As they did, the man from the right with the leash choke hold and the booted woman from the left exchanged a look.
If it had lasted longer, it might have set a loud, certain chord clanging in my spidey sense. As it was, it hit a solitary note of suspicion.
When I looked to my left, I found Clara looking at me, clearly having heard the same note.
“Oh!” came a squeak from across the space. The black-booted woman from the left seemed to stumble, reaching toward the man from the right — not the man she’d walked in with.
“Give me your hand,” she cooed.
“You’re fine,” he said shortly and moved on.
I sent another look toward Clara, but she was watching the two couples.
Past Clara, I saw the gray-haired man with his little dog, at the center of the short wall to the left. The dog stood in stiff alert, focused up at her owner. The man appeared frozen in contemplation of the tableau at the entryway.
The two couples and their dogs went to the left of the entryway, taking seats in the remaining gap that accommodated them while retaining an open space on either side of their group.
Leo gave a hard tug to Berrie’s coat, righting her. She complained, “Don’t drag my babies,” because the motion — combined with the Bostons lunging forward — tautened their leashes.
Securing his sainthood in my eyes, Leo said only, “Have a seat over there, Berrie, and let’s get started.”