Page 23 of Shielding Instinct

Petra bent her knee and pulled her leg onto the seat to turn sideways, leaning forward to focus.

“So, I’m out in the country, taking a drive to clear my head. And this tiny pup ran out in front of my vehicle, where he squared off and barked at me ferociously. It was comical, really. And I climbed down from my cab to see if he had on a collar so I could get him back to his mama. Cooper was so small; I wasn’t even sure he’d weaned yet. I was afraid he was going to runaway, so I got into a low squat and was chirping at him, trying to get his curiosity and courage up so he’d come see me. Every time I got close, he’d bound off a bit, then turn to see if I was following. So now he had sparked my curiosity. He stopped at a ditch with tall weeds, and I thought that, since he didn’t have a collar on, his litter mates might be in there and be hungry. I was making plans for rounding them up and getting them to a no-kill shelter.”

“But it wasn’t more puppies,” Petra whispered.

“It was a human baby. Seven months old. He must have crawled from his yard toward the street. And was just then coming up the side of the ditch. Determined little bugger.”

“Baby! Can you imagine what would have happened without a warning?”

“Especially in the size truck I was driving,” Hawkeye said. “I could have easily missed the baby on the road. Lots of bad could have happened. There was cold water in the ditches. If the baby hadn’t crawled out, he could have gone hypothermic and died pretty fast if he hadn’t drowned first, weighed down by his clothes. He could have crawled into the woods and disappeared, lots of wild animals, coyotes, and the like.”

“A random baby in the weeds? Like Moses in the reeds on the Nile?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. But, that is about how it looked. When I picked the baby up, he seemed okay, damp and dirty from crawling, mud from head to foot. I could see through a break in the trees that a gravel drive was hidden under the dried leaves. And a few paces in, I could see a house.

“The baby wasn’t crying? What was Cooper doing?”

“The baby let me hold him without any fuss. Cooper looked satisfied that he got someone to pick up the baby. I felt there was a lot more to this story. Things seemed too still. If a baby is missing, alarms are clanging.”

“Like the cat on the plane. Everyone was in motion. You’re right. A still environment was suspect,” she said.

“I had no way to stow the baby away safely while I checked things out, so I cautiously approached the house in the shadows. The puppy bounded out toward a patch of sunlight, then he raced back, yipping at me to hurry up.”

Petra reached out and gripped his arm.

“I followed, coming up over the mound where I saw a blanket laid out with baby toys. As I walked closer and could see the other side of the elevation, I made out an elderly woman. She was non-responsive. So, I have a puppy nipping at me to get me to fix things. The baby starts screaming bloody murder, and I have an unconscious woman in front of me.”

“9-1-1 was far away?” Petra asked.

“I didn’t have a cell connection out there. I put the baby in the middle of the blanket and told the puppy to keep that baby on the blanket. The woman didn’t have any discernable vital signs, but her skin still had color and was warm to the touch, so she hadn’t been down that long. I gave her CPR. Every time I looked over, the puppy was hard at his job. And I was hard listening for a vehicle to come up the road. A few minutes in, I hear one. I lifted a finger to the puppy—and I say here puppy, not Cooper because you know big Cooper, and you shouldn’t have that image in your head. This puppy was small enough to curl up in a cereal bowl.”

“My goodness.” Petra pressed a hand to her chest.

“I held up my finger so the puppy would remember he was to do his job guarding the baby, and I tore off through the woods to intercept the car. It was an off-duty firefighter. He had a radio in his truck and some medical equipment. An oxygen bagger. Soon enough, the paramedics showed up with an ambulance. They loaded Grandma up and took off. The firefighter and Iwaited for social services to send someone to take custody of the baby.”

“How was puppy-Cooper doing through all that hubbub?” Petra asked.

“He never lost focus on his job. He was pushing toys over to the baby with his nose, and he’d bop the baby in the chest when he got close to the edge of the blanket.”

What a fascinating story. Petra had so many questions about what was going on in the puppy’s brain. But since her own circuitry was buffering, she’d save most of them for a more cogent time. For now, she’d just ask for this much, “From a K9 trainer’s point of view, why did that work? How did Cooper know what to do?”

“We became a team. It was a life-or-death situation, and animals of all kinds tend to line up and work toward a common purpose when a life is on the line. Cooper saw me as the leader. I sent him a picture of his duties, and he did them.”

“Like a movie in your head? That’s what you showed him? Clairvoyance?”

“That’s right. Cooper was creative as hell with the problem-solving. Just a miracle puppy on the side of the road.”

Petra felt tears sting her eyes. A miracle puppy. The ramifications of his showing up were enormous. “He had to come from somewhere, right? But it sounds like that wasn’t his baby or his owner.”

“Before the social worker showed up, the baby’s mom arrived with the groceries. She said the puppy didn’t belong to their family, everyone was terrified of dogs, and she’d never seen the puppy before.”

“What did she think of her baby crawling to the road?”

“I never told her about that,” Hawkeye said. “I said there was a puppy in the road, and I went to see if it belonged to the house. I mean, it’s true enough, and the mom was prettydistraught by all the doings, near hysterical. I drove the woman and the baby to the hospital and got a ride service to take me back to my truck.”

“And Cooper, where was he? Waiting on the blanket?”

“In my coat pocket, curled up asleep.”

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