Chapter 2
“Biscuit. Sit? Sit, buddy. Sitting is a thing we do now.”
Biscuit inspects the rubber matting. Around the ring, seven other dogs are parked on their haunches, gazing up at their owners. Mine has located a smell.
I shorten the leash. “Sit. Please. I’m asking so little.”
He watches a poodle across the ring do a flawless down-stay. He’s a fan of other dogs’ obedience. Loves to spectate.
I try again and hear it as it leaves my mouth. The word starts out flat and bends up at the end. Sit becomes siiit? becomes a negotiation I’ve already lost.
Biscuit’s tail keeps going. His tail always keeps going. It’s one of the reasons I can’t stay mad at him, and one of the reasons he runs my house.
Dean comes down the line, correcting a grip here, a treat-hand there. He stops a few feet from us. Doesn’t take the leash. Doesn’t crouch. Just looks at my dog.
“Sit.”
Flat. Even. Not loud. Quieter than me, actually.
Biscuit’s butt hits the mat so fast I hear it.
“Good,” Dean says, right on the second, and moves on down the ring.
Biscuit sits there, beaming up at nothing, the picture of a trained animal. I stand at the other end of the leash, doing math I’ve been avoiding for four weeks. Same dog. Same word. Same barn, same fluorescent light, same rubber floor. One variable changed, and it’s holding the leash.
“Traitor,” I tell Biscuit.
He looks up at me, one ear up, one folded, eyebrows working, still sitting. For Dean. Sitting for a man who’s already three dogs away and hasn’t looked back.
I loosen the leash, and Biscuit pops up and goes back to the smell.
Dean loops back around at the end of the drill. Class scatters into water breaks, and I busy myself untangling the leash from where Biscuit has wound it around my ankles.
“Robin.”
“I know,” I say. “He sat for you. I saw it. Everyone saw it. The poodle saw it.”
“He’s not my dog.”
“Right, but he sat for you, so maybe there’s a custody arrangement we could discuss.”
Dean chuckles. He steps closer and looks at my hands on the leash. “Say sit for me. Just the word. Dog’s not the audience right now.”
“Sit,” I say.
“That was a question.”
“It was not.”
“Your pitch went up at the end. You asked him. He’s a dog. You gave him a multiple choice, and he picked the smell.”
“Okay, but in my defense, the smell was clearly very compelling.”
“Try again. Drop it at the end. Sit.”
“Sit,” I say and hear the little rise sneak in on the T anyway, a tiny escape hatch, in case Biscuit has feelings about it.
Dean waits.
“Sit,” I say again, flatter this time. It comes out of my mouth sounding like a stranger, like someone who returns things without a receipt.
Biscuit sits.
I look down at him. He looks up at me, tail sweeping the mat, absolutely delighted.
Dean crosses to us. He’s been working the ring all night, one dog at a time. It’s different when the attention arrives at your own station. He stands closer than I expect. Not touching anything. Just there, watching Biscuit, watching my hands on the leash.
“Mark it,” Dean says.
“What?”
“Good. Say good. He earned it four seconds ago. You’re already late.”
“Good boy,” I say, and Biscuit wiggles without breaking the sit, which I didn’t know was physically possible for him.
“Better,” Dean says to Biscuit. Then, to me, same tone. “Good.”
It goes through me. Somewhere below the sternum. Lower than that, frankly.
He moves on to the corgi two spots down before I can decide what to do with my face.
Biscuit is still sitting. I haven’t released him. I don’t actually know the release word yet. We’re four weeks in, and I’ve never needed one. Now my dog is holding position and looking at me like I’m supposed to know what happens next.
“Okay?” I try.
Nothing.
“Free? Go? At ease?”
Biscuit holds the sit, eyebrows going.
Across the ring, Dean says, “Break” to the corgi, and my dog stands up.
Class runs another twenty minutes. We do leash walking, which for Biscuit means towing me toward the poodle at a forty-five-degree angle while I say, “Heel,” in a voice that convinces no one.
Dean calls corrections down the line. “Shorter lead. Stop when he pulls. You’re teaching him pulling works.”
I stop when Biscuit pulls. Biscuit hits the end of the leash, rebounds, looks back at me with genuine surprise, and tries again. We travel eight feet in five minutes. The corgi laps us twice.
But twice, twice, Biscuit drifts back to my hip on his own. Both times, I get the “Good” out inside the second, and both times, his ears do the thing where they try to point at me at once.
Dean wraps the session at the whiteboard by the barn door, marker squeaking through the week’s homework. Ten sits a day. Marked and released. Off the property, at least three of them, because a dog that sits in a barn is not the same as a dog that sits in a parking lot.
“Owners,” he says, capping the marker. “The homework is for you. The dogs already know the word.”
People laugh, clip leashes, drift out. I’m crouched, wrestling Biscuit’s harness buckle, which he treats as a wrestling invitation, when Dean’s boots stop on the mat in front of us.
“He sat six times tonight,” Dean says.
“Four of those were for you.”
“Two were for you. Four weeks ago, it was zero.” He crouches, and Biscuit abandons the buckle war to shove his whole head into Dean’s hands. Dean rubs behind the folded ear, businesslike, like he’s checking a tire. “The dog’s fine. The dog was always fine.”
“So I’m the one who needs training. Got it. Do I get treats?”
“If you earn them.”
He says it in the exact tone he’d use for shorter lead, already standing, already reaching to hold the door for the woman with the corgi. I stay crouched a beat too long over the buckle. Biscuit licks my chin.
Outside, the parking lot gravel crunches under my terrible backup flats. Biscuit pulls toward the truck at the end of the row. Then, at some private conclusion of his own, he drops into a sit beside my knee.
“Good,” I say. “Break.”
Biscuit breaks and immediately re-sits, gambling on a second “Good.”
Down the row, Dean kills the lights, slides the barn door shut, and clicks the padlock.
I’m walking before I’ve finished deciding to. Biscuit trots alongside, thrilled about the detour.
“Hey. Do you do private lessons?”
Dean turns.
“For Biscuit,” I say. “He’s clearly capable. We saw that tonight. He’s just … The group setting has a lot of smells in it. Distractions. Smells.”
I hear it. He hears it. Biscuit sits without being asked, which feels pointed.
“Sure,” Dean says. “Thursday, seven. Leave the dog at home. We need to work on you first.”
“Wait. Leave Biscuit?”
He nods.
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. Your dog is fine.”
I’ve been hit on before. It has been a while. At least he isn’t asking to swipe anything first.
“All right … I’m still hoping for treats though.”
He smiles. Damn. He has a nice smile.
“If you’re good.”
Dammit.
I load Biscuit into the back seat. He does his three rotations and flops. I get in, put my hands on the wheel, and sit there while Dean’s truck pulls out of the lot.
I start the car. In the mirror, Biscuit is already asleep, one paw over his nose, homework complete.